A small boy holds up the antlers belonging to a 160 lb. white-tailed buck. A smile spread from ear to ear on the boy’s face and a shotgun rests against the stomach of the lying deer. Proud parents surround their child, but the rumors linger of how they taught their child to murder an innocent creature. However, behind the wide grin is the knowledge of gun safety and the importance of respecting nature for what it provides to humans. Hunting is no longer just a sport of killing, but rather life lessons to prevent gun violence in a society.

In 2014, an innocent trend of taking selfies took a turn for the worse when a 19-year-old boy from Houston put a bullet through his throat according to police. In the same year, in the town of Billerica, Massachusetts, a 17-year-old takes his life when a bullet accidentally pierces his heart in his own home surrounded by his friends. Two young lives, amongst many others, were lost because a weapon was underestimated. Incidents that could’ve been avoided had these individuals known the importance of gun safety- an aspect that hunting teaches its youth. Most states in the United States require those who want to obtain a hunting license to complete a Hunter’s Education course.  Benefits of an educational course include the acknowledgement of different guns, safe ways to handle these weapons, shoot and or no shoot scenarios, and safe practices that should be executed when hunting. It’s not hunters who are reckless with their weapons. Lance K. Stell found data to support that 70 to 80% of homicide perpetrators have criminal records (Hickey, 2013, p.233). State laws prohibit those who have been convicted of a felony to possess firearms and in that case must hunt using a bow and arrow if they wish to hunt at all. This ensures the argument that criminals can’t be hunters unless they use a bow and arrow, if they already have a record. In an interview conducted by NPR with Lily Raff, an Oregon resident and hunter, claims:

As a hunter, I am subject to all kinds of firearms regulations every fall, when I go hunting. The state of Oregon has some rules about what gauge of shotgun I can or can't carry, what times of day I can shoot, what areas of the state I can shoot in. These are regulations that hunters accept, and even embrace, because they're part of what makes our hunting heritage possible.

This statement represents the majority of hunters that respect the idea of gun control because they follow the law due to their respect of nature and for the love of the tradition. Hunting teaches the importance of gun safety and a respect for nature balanced with a respect for the law.

Statistics suggest that states that have a more abundant hunting demographic have seen fewer crimes involving guns. Southern states have seen more crimes involving guns as of 2007. Louisiana was particularly high as they saw 20.2 of every 100,000 people, involved in crimes with guns. A heat map from 2011 suggests that the demographics of hunters are more abundant in northern states.  This provides the theory that hunters are less likely to commit violent crimes involving guns. Amongst this observation, statistics show that gun owners in the United States outnumber hunters according to the latest data gathered in 2011.  Gun owners outnumber hunters 5 to 1 and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service states that of the 70-80 million gun owners, 15.9 to 18.1 percent are hunters.  To narrow the statistics further, of this percentage, 12.7 million identified hunters over the age of 16 reported using guns to hunt. To summarize, not all gun owners are hunters and not all hunters use firearms. Overall, hunters have a positive effect on areas that have minimal crimes involving guns and also show that there are a smaller percentage of gun owners who are also hunters in the United States.

An argument brought upon hunters is the debate of killing an innocent animal for sport. Some may view hunting as an act of animal cruelty and that it only promotes killing innocent beings. However, in a Field and Stream article, 35 percent of hunters state that the most important reason that they hunt is for the meat. Some view hunting as teaching to kill the innocent but it’s the same as killing other animals for food. The Humane Society of the United States found the conditions of Butterfield Foods in Minnesota, in which chickens were slaughtered inhumanely. In this encounter, birds were scalded alive and hung upside down. This is one circumstance that animals are put through for humans to eat. A hunter tries their best to make a vital shot in order to end an animals suffering as quickly as possible.  With a majority of hunters using the meat from their kill for food, it is justifiably more humane to an animal than some slaughtering establishments.

Let a small child grow with a respect towards the wilderness and firearms; it is doubtful that they will become a killer of humans. Hunting is a respective sport that allows for life lessons to prosper. It allows for the awareness of gun safety to prevent violence and accidents from occurring. While giving the knowledge to save lives, its proven that in areas with more respectable hunters that crimes involving guns are less abundant.  Although some may claim it teaches to kill the innocent, it is the same idea as killing other animals for food in slaughterhouses, and can be more humane in some instances. Hunters are not criminals and gun violence is not a product of the lawful sport of hunting.