I wrote this essay in response to an application question that asked: What is most important to you in the Constitution of the United States and Why? Never thought I'd pick the Second Amendment...
I must
preface this essay with a slight aside: had I been asked this question six
months ago, before transferring into the Warner College of Natural Resources
and switching my focus from Zoology to Wildlife Biology, this essay would have
generated an entirely different response.
I grew up
in downtown Chicago to liberal parents; my only relation to guns came from news
headlines about the taxi cab driver found dead at the end of my block, the
15-year-old boy who shot his friend near my high school and the stories of
infamous gangsters like Al Capone that shaped my city’s past. I had the notion that “guns are bad” drilled
into my head from a young age with ample backing to prove this point. Regardless of this fact, when I moved to
Colorado six years ago my views on guns slowly began to change. While I still
admit to holding primarily liberal values and have never personally held or
shot a gun, my eyes opened to the importance and value of guns in hunting. I
enjoyed my first venison dinner cooked from the chef’s personal take and began
to see hunters in woods more and more frequently, noticing that they were
enjoying the solace of the wilderness just as much as I was. Despite this
personal acceptance of hunting I still never would have considered writing an
essay on why the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is
most important to me. Now in my second semester of a degree in Wildlife Biology
at Colorado State University my views have changed.
The North
American Wildlife Conservation Model (NAWCM) is arguably the most effective and
vested wildlife conservation model on this planet. This model was enacted to
protect the heavily exploited wildlife of the late 1800s Market Hunting Era, an
era that saw the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon and massive reduction of
Bison populations due to unmanaged commercial hunting. Were it not for the strong influence of
hunters such as Theodore Roosevelt and recognition of quickly dwindling game
populations, many species of wildlife we take for granted here in the United
States might not exist today.
The Second
Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” has been crucial in the
formation of the NAWCM. Without the ability to bear arms, hunters would not
have had the same drive or ability to protect wildlife under the safeguard of
The NAWCM’s Seven Sisters for Conservation. The basic principles of these Seven
Sisters hold wildlife in public trust, prohibit the commerce of dead wildlife,
provide structure to enforce laws surrounding wildlife management, secure
hunting opportunities for all, restrict frivolous use, manage wildlife as an
international resource and place high value on scientific research to guide
management. Nearly all funding to support wildlife conservation under these
principles comes directly from hunting. The 1937 Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid
in Wildlife Restoration Act implemented an 11% excise tax on all firearms and
has since provided more than $3.5 billion dollars for wildlife conservation –
game and non-game alike. Apart from excise taxes, hunters also contribute
greatly to wildlife conservation by way of license fees for game tags and the
sale of duck and habitat stamps.
As I
pursue a career in Wildlife Biology, I can find no other part of the
Constitution that I value more than the Second Amendment. Imagine my surprise.
