Children Hunting Alone: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
The MSNBC has a piece up today about how minors hunting sans supervision is legal in 21 states, with the jumping-off point being the case of young Tyler Kales, recently sentenced to thirty days in juvie for mistaking Skagit County hiker Pamela Almli for a bear and shooting her in the head, killing her instantly. So many things wrong with this story: the fact that the then-fourteen-year old was armed with only the supervision of his sixteen-year-old brother; that the two were out huntin' in the fog; and that hunting near hiking areas is a-okay and doesn't require any signage to that effect. Or how 'bout the fact that hunting rights groups still think that parents, not the state, should be the ones determining whether or not their children should be out alone hunting bears? While we think that without any rules in place, something like this was bound to happen sooner or later, we certainly hope that this tragic situation will help get State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles' bill to set some sort of minimum age and/or supervision requirement [pdf] passed soon.
