Letter: Hunting – not just a way to fill the freezer

Dear Editor:

I think I have figured out why all our country’s enemies, foreign and domestic, want to see us disarmed.

After the Japanese decimated our fleet in Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, they could have sent their troops, ships and carriers directly to California to finish what they started.

The prediction from our Chief of Staff was we would not be able to stop a massive invasion until they reached the Mississippi River.

Remember, we had a 2 million man army and war ships in other localities, so why did they not invade?

After the war, the remaining Japanese generals and admirals were asked that question.

Their answer? They know that almost every home had guns and the Americans knew how to use them.

The world’s largest army … America’s hunters.

I had never thought about this, but a blogger added up the deer license sales in just a handful of states and arrived at a striking conclusion:

There were over 600,000 hunters this season in the state of Wisconsin.

Over the last several months, Wisconsin’s hunters became the eighth largest army in the world.

More men under arms than in Iran.

More than in France and Germany combined.

These men deployed to the woods of a single American state to hunt with firearms, and no one was killed.

That number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and 700,000 more hunters in Michigan.

Toss in a quarter-million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.

The point?

America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of homegrown firepower.

Hunting – it’s not just a way to fill the freezer. It’s a matter of national security.

Food for thought the next time we consider gun control.

Gary Bruce
St. Augustine, FL

Photo credits: © 2011 Historic City News staff photographer