I feel sorry for the police officer who has to explain to a district court judge the maximum range of the gun used by the first hunter charged under this ridiculous law. If I'm the National Rifle Association, I take this case for the publicity.
As for doubling the safety buffer, that's a false sense of security. Remember, the hunter charged with unsafe practices was just 23 yards shy of the new and improved buffer. If he had been in a tree stand instead of standing on the ground or had a different gun, who's to say his slug couldn't have gone the distance?
Speaking of tree stands, the bill shrinks the 300-yard buffer to the original 150-yard buffer if the hunter is "shooting downward" from a tree stand that is a minimum of 10 feet off the ground, or is (I presume) a waterfowler shooting a shotgun loaded with shot.
Unfortunately, the bill doesn't stop there. It also extends the prohibition on hunting on less than 10 acres from the Metropolitan District - roughly the eastern half of the county - to the entire county.
If this passes, a police officer will have to be equipped with a range finder to size up yardage, a tape measure to check tree stands and property maps to ensure the size of a hunting parcel exceeds 10 acres. That's not a police officer, that's a Re/Max agent.
The bill, being introduced at the request of County Executive Ken Ulman, is co-sponsored by four of five council members. A hearing is tentatively set for 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 21 at the Board of Education board room on Route 108, Ellicott City.
I don't know why the council is rushing to pass such a ghastly piece of claptrap. With deer season ending Jan. 31 and resuming in mid-September, there's plenty of time to get it right.
And there's a simple fix. Adjust the boundaries of the Howard County Metropolitan District to reflect the expanding suburban population or establish a firearms ordinance zone. Caught outside with a gun inside the zone, you're busted.
Last summer, a survey by the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research at UMBC showed that about 58 percent of county residents believe there are too many deer, half of those polled said they had either been involved in a collision with a deer or have a relative or friend who had been in the past five years, and half said they had bushes or crops damaged by deer.
If you think there are too many deer now, just wait a year or two, gang, when no one will hunt in Howard County because it's not worth the trouble.
