Many people, when they think of guns, only think about gun crime.
And I understand why that is. Those people almost certainly didn’t grow up with firearms, and if they’ve been watching the legacy mainstream media for their news, chances are that they’ve never heard any other viewpoint than the “guns kill people” narrative that those media outlets push.
The thing is, firearms are useful for a number of other purposes (besides committing crimes), some that many people may not have thought about. Take the problem of wild hogs, for example.
Many people simply don’t realize how much of a problem that wild hogs can be. Jacob Burg writes,
Descended from both wild boar and escaped domestic pigs, feral hogs have overtaken at least 35 states in the past 40 years.
Often weighing between 75 and 250 pounds, feral hogs are large, fast, and destructive. They cause billions in damage to agriculture every year and foul soil, native plants, crops, waterways, and grasslands, making them one of the most harmful invasive species in the United States.
They are also extremely dangerous to humans and small animals.
Dangerous to people and small animals, and they cause billions of dollars in damage to crops and nature every year.
I’d say that’s a problem.
But what do you do about that problem?
If you’re anti-2A, you hope that they go away. What else are you going to do?
But if you’re pro-2A, you have a solution, a solution that simply doesn’t cross the minds of many people: you hunt them. Burg continues:
Cook said experts have tried everything from trapping and poisoning to putting up exclusion fences to slow the spread of invasive feral hogs, but hunting and shooting the pigs is required to combat their destructive impacts on the environment.
“It’s like a giant wrecking ball through an ecosystem where they don’t belong,” Cook said.
And, yes, this is where guns come in because most hunting these days use firearms for the hunt.
But if hunters don’t cull down the feral hog population, then it can become dangerous both because of the hog’s aggression and because of how unsanitary they are.
In short, using guns to reduce the wild hog population helps to protect people and property, and that’s a good thing.
