The Personal Website of Steve McRoberts
Advocating ethics through empathy
& treading lightly upon the Earth
Ethics/Animals
 
Hunting is Murder on Animals
Part XI -- Hunting and Children: Instilling the Wrong Values
Boys holding up animals they've killed

What values are we instilling in a child when we take him or her hunting or fishing? Are we sending a message to our children that it is a perfectly wholesome and fun way to spend a day shooting animals...
Father and son fishing

...or tricking animals into swallowing hooks?

These are not the values we should be handing down to the next generation if we ever hope for a non-violent world.
Young girl holding up fish she has killed

While many state wildlife departments place a high priority on the introduction of children to hunting, fishing, and trapping, studies by psychologists, sociologists, and educators have shown a link between childhood cruelty to animals and violent crimes committed as adults.
A boy, dressed in hunting attire, posing with his gun

The American Journal of Psychology stated that:

Violent crimes occur with twice the frequency with individuals that have had a history of cruelty to animals as compared to those who do not have cruelty to animals in their backgrounds.

And anthropologist Margaret Mead said:

Children who display in cruelty to animals are likely to embark on a long career of episodic violence and murder.
A young girl holding a fawn

Wouldn't it be better to teach our children respect for all life? Isn't peace better than war? Isn't love better than hate?

I know many hunters claim that they do love their victims, but such schizophrenic love the world can do without.

Wouldn't it be better to inculcate in ourselves -- and our children -- a peacful attitude towards animals, and at the very least a philosophy of 'live and let live,' rather than a delight in torturing and killing them? There's no reason to be waging our war on wildlife: that need ended with the dawn of civilization.
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