Get Ready; Don’t Bother To Aim, And Fire!

I was really worried that I would not have something to write about today and would miss my self-imposed rule of posting daily. Fortunately, people in Texas like to hunt, a lot. I found this courtesy of Reuters and it’s so fascinating that it almost doesn’t need commentary. A Texas State Representative has proposed a bill that would allow blind hunters (that sounds like a really good name for a novel, by the way) in his state to shoot any animal that hunters who can see are allowed to shoot. I can hear it now: ‘you’ll shoot someone else’s eye out, kid!’

If the bill passes, the rifles of blind hunters would use sighting scopes on the side of the gun instead of the top. This would enable whoever is assisting the blind hunter (it also sounds like a great rock band name, too) to sight the gun while standing next to the hunter and let the blind person actually pull the trigger. Now I don’t know about you, but if someone else did the aiming, it would make my bagging the critter feel a little hollow. After all, it would mean I didn’t do all of the work. I imagine that it would kind of be like an adult using the bumper lanes down at the bowling alley or Barry Bonds using a batting tee to hit home runs. If someone ran 9.99 miles of a 10-mile marathon for me and I stepped in for the last few feet to cross the finish line, I would feel just the same as if someone sighted my gun and told me when to shoot. It would just take some of the challenge, fun and sense of accomplishment out of it. Don’t get me wrong; I am all for equal hunting opportunities but pulling the trigger is the easy part.

Boy things could get really hairy out there in the wild during hunting season. Anyone who routinely spends time outside in Texas had better hope that flying animals are not included in this new law. Even though someone else is sighting the gun, it would be very difficult to track the fowl, tell the hunter to pull the trigger and still have the bird targeted by the time the shot is actually fired. What you would end up with would be similar to South Central Los Angeles at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

“Boy honey, it’s really raining out.”

“No sweetie, those are just bullets. The dang geese are migrating again.”

It sounds like this is the last hurdle to be cleared before sight challenged drivers can take to the road. The seeing-eye driver could sit in the driver’s seat and have control of the mirrors, brake and gas pedals while the blind driver could sit in the passenger’s seat and lean over to hold the steering wheel while the person with sight tells them where to turn. It’s nothing new because we’ve all had someone steer for us before from the passenger seat while we changed the CD, picked up something that dropped or finished the last few bites of that Big Mac. I should add that I think it’s only fair that the blind driver has control of the radio too. If blind driving proves successful then there’s no reason why blind pilots can’t be allowed in the skies.

All of this may really be the safer way to go when you stop to think about it. Most drivers are preoccupied by cell phones, the stereo, the newspaper they are trying to read or they are curling their eye lashes (which I actually saw this morning) and it is their driving and our well being that suffers. It they had someone with them who was tasked with helping them drive safely and not focused on anything else, the roads would be much safer.

I think that anyone who is blind should get to enjoy, as much as possible, all the things that people with sight enjoy and perhaps even take for granted. Hunting is very popular in Texas and there is no reason that anyone who is blind but still owns a gun (which makes you wonder who sold it to them) should have to feel excluded. They should be able to lift their guns, pull the trigger and fire a few rounds off into the mysterious distance. Now if only Dick Cheney had been fortunate enough to have this excuse…