DON’T LOOK LIKE TARGET SHOOTING TO ME

John Tyson, chief state investigator in the shooting deaths of a herd of 31 horses near the town of Sparks in Northern Nevada on Dec. 27, says “I think these were random acts of killing due to people target shooting.”

Anything’s possible. There will always be drunks and morons who kill out of boredom — the same way we remain burdened by the kind of drivers who will swerve to hit a cat or dog.

But 31 horses? Taken down with military-style rifles in calibers .223 and 30.06? Apparently the bulk of a herd, some taken with undeniable skill (which is not to express any admiration for the deed) as they fled at all angles? Such thoroughness — in daylight near a major highway — argues in favor of a purpose and a plan, as well as a certain strength of resolve.

The suspicion lingers that Mr. Tyson’s statement serves much the same purpose as the standard announcement that a murder victim’s boyfriend “is not a suspect, but is merely being sought for questioning” — the kind of questioning which coincidentally leads to an arrest with amazing regularity, once the poor sap is lulled into showing his face.

Between 1987 and 1993, more than 700 wild horses were shot in rural Nevada — mostly in the north around Lovelock and Battle Mountain, east along Interstate 80 and the Humboldt River from the site of Sunday’s slaughter — in what amounts to a minor war between ranchers and government officials enforcing policies which effectively ban the private killing or round-up of any roaming horses, even strayed horses on state or private lands (like those killed in this incident), which technically are not protected by the Wild Horse and Burro Act, pushed through by Eastern “animal-lovers” supposedly to protect only herds of free-roaming wild horses which have run on federal lands for generations.

Such “preservation” measures play well among Bambi-lovers far removed from the day-to-day struggle of earning a living on a ranch in the arid West. Unfortunately, the net effect of such regulations is often that — as the “sacred” horses multiply and monopolize limited forage and waterholes — ranchers can actually be ordered to reduce the number of cattle they run on their range under existing “government permits” … with little regard for those ranchers’ already-thin margin of economic survival.

(This is not mere theory. Nevada ranchers are actually being run off the land via cattle seizures and massive fines, by federal regulators with no patience to await the results of the ongoing landmark court case Hage versus United States, in which plaintiffs argue that such grazing permits only recognize a pre-existing land right — that the federal government has no authority to alter, suspend, or cancel them.)

Everyone loves kittens. But imagine being told you had to open your cupboard and refrigerator to as many cats as chose to come live in your kitchen, even if they bred and multiplied and ate so much your own kids started to go hungry. Now imagine being told that merely rounding up these swarming, yowling beasts and hauling them away would land you in prison.

Sure enough, Dawn Lappin, director of the horse preservation group “Wild Horses Organized Assistance,” said this week her group will “seek felony charges” against anyone arrested in connection with the shootings. (I must have missed the announcement when Ms. Lappin was elected either sheriff or prosecutor in Storey County.)

Ironically, the vastly more expensive method favored by the federal government for reducing the size of these horse herds is to occasionally round up and auction off a handful of horses … many of which then end up being processed for dog food, or else sent overseas to the tables of the Belgians and the French. Presumably no one would be threatening “felony charges” if that method had been employed here. Being stunned and sold for dog food is, you see, more “humane.”

The solution? Libertarians are sometimes accused of parroting the same boring free-market bromides, no matter what the problem. Well, terribly sorry, but that’s a bit like accusing Fleming of recommending penicillin for too many ailments. Whole waves of unintended consequences could in fact be swept aside if we would just return to a few basic principles: 1) get Washington out of it; 2) go back to the common law; 3) allow an orderly assertion of private property rights.

A land-owner (or lessor) must be free to round up animals on his own property. Animals on “common” or unclaimed property may be rounded up by whoever gets there first — a practice which allowed an energetic young man with a horse and a rope to start many a family fortune in the last century. At that point, animals which bear brands or other signs of prior ownership must be returned to their rightful owners, of course, along with their newborns. All others become the property of whoever gathered them up, to keep or sell as he sees fit.

No, this does not mean all wild animals would be immediately slaughtered. Once Tanzanian villagers were finally allowed to claim ownership of the elephant herds near their villages — and to share in the tourist revenues from showing them off — a counterbalancing economic incentive was created to slow down their slaughter of the beasts as worthless crop raiders. The resulting balanced culling is better for all concerned than the system in adjoining socialist Kenya, where all elephants remain “the property of the state,” and thus continue to be poached with such brazenness that the game wardens must now carry machine guns … to little avail.

None of this is to give Nevada’s Sunday horse shootings a broad endorsement. Some of these animals were left down and struggling, and all went to waste. That’s an outrage. But so long as “environmentalists” with no need to eke their living from the land, pressure faceless federal bureaucrats into the inflexible enforcement of laws made thousands of miles away, with little regard for the plight in which they place families who have struggled for decades to make our desert lands productive, we should not expect any quick end to desperate acts by those who find no other realistic means to seek a redress of their grievances.

Comments are closed.