WRAL.com reports that a North Carolina Senate Panel has okayed hunting for part of the day on Sunday in the Tar Heel State. The bill, which is being passed on to the full Senate, would allow hunting with firearms on Sundays, but only after 12:00pm. Because…reasons, I guess . . .
It is already legal to hunt with bows and arrows on Sunday, but this bill would allow for those using rifles to hunt on private property with the permission of the property’s owner. In addition to having to wait until after noon, those hunting on Sundays would have to stay 500 yards from a place of worship, a restriction not in place any other day of the week.
I say good riddance. These sorts of blue laws exist to enforce a religious conformity on American citizens, something that government is not properly empowered to do. If you’re not interested in hunting due to religious reasons on, then you should stay at home. But something is either a right or it isn’t, and if hunting is one of the reasons that the second amendment exists (which even President Obama appears to have conceded,) there’s no excuse for these sorts of legislatively-enforced religious restrictions.
Predictably, the bill has caused a bit of ruffled feathers on the part of some men of the cloth. My advice to them is that if the freedom to legally hunt on Sundays will “weaken the value” of what you believe to be the Lord’s Day, then perhaps the people you need to spend your considerable powers of persuasion on are not the members of the legislature charged with upholding the Constitution, but rather the members of your own flock.