By Sean M. Pond | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice
If you hunt, own a gun, raise livestock or care about the Second Amendment, you need to pay attention to what is happening at the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission.
The people coming after hunting have found an easier path than convincing Colorado voters. They can take a so-called citizen petition to an appointed commission and ask that commission to regulate hunters out of the field.
They do not have to ban your rifle if they ban the ammunition it fires.
That is exactly what one petition now before the Commission is designed to do.
The proposal seeks a statewide ban on traditional lead ammunition while taking wildlife. It was filed by 18 organizations and presented by attorneys for Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy. Both organizations were founded and are led by Wayne Pacelle, the former head of the Humane Society of the United States and one of the most experienced animal activists in the country.
The list behind this petition includes animal sanctuaries, wildlife rehabilitation groups, Audubon chapters and other environmental advocacy organizations. This is not a grassroots uprising of Colorado hunters, ranchers, outfitters and rural families. It is a coordinated push by national animal activists and anti-hunting interests to dictate what ammunition Coloradans may use.
Their own language exposes the goal.
The petition defines prohibited lead ammunition as any ammunition containing more than one percent lead by weight in the projectile. It would make it illegal to possess that ammunition and a firearm capable of firing it while taking or attempting to take wildlife anywhere CPW has enforcement authority.
Read that again. Possess the ammunition and possess a gun capable of firing it.
This is not limited to prairie dogs. It is not limited to public land. It is not limited to one season or one species. It reaches rifles, shotguns and handguns used to hunt elk, deer, pronghorn, bear, turkey, predators, small game and everything else legally hunted in Colorado.
This is an attack on all hunting.
The word toxic is their excuse. Calling lead toxic proves nothing by itself. Copper, aluminum, titanium and nearly anything else can be toxic at a sufficient dose. That does not prove Colorado has a statewide wildlife crisis and it does not justify turning ordinary hunters into criminals.
Anyone who wants to use nonlead ammunition can already buy it when it is available. This petition is not about creating another choice. It is about taking your choice away.
It would force hunters to buy ammunition that can cost more, be harder to find or not exist for a particular caliber. Some families would have to replace rifles that have been passed down for generations. Others would simply stop hunting because government made it too expensive or too difficult.
That is how they win without ever banning the gun. They leave it sitting in your cabinet and make it illegal or unaffordable to use.
That is not conservation. It is a backdoor attack on hunting, gun ownership and the practical exercise of the Second Amendment.
The same crowd is also targeting prairie dog shooting.
Pam Wanek, a board member of the Prairie Dog Coalition, filed a petition seeking to ban shooting and all other avocational take of prairie dogs on federal land and land controlled by CPW. The written petition left private land open year round without a bag or possession limit, but a possible bag limit on private land has also been openly discussed.
Do not ignore that discussion simply because it was not written into the original petition. Today they close public land. Tomorrow they limit what a rancher can do on private land. We have watched this process too many times to pretend the first proposal is where it ends.
Prairie dogs are native, but native does not mean harmless. Their colonies consume forage, spread across the ground, damage pasture and create real control costs for farmers and ranchers.
Prairie dogs do not recognize property lines. They do not stop at a fence because activists decided one side should be protected and the other side should pay the bill. If shooting is prohibited on adjoining public land, those colonies can expand onto private ranches, hayfields and pastures. The landowner is left with the damage while the activists congratulate themselves from somewhere else.
Ranchers and agricultural producers live with these consequences. The activists writing petitions do not.
The Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission makes all of this possible. Its 11 voting members are appointed by Governor Jared Polis and confirmed by the Senate. They are not elected by the people. They can impose regulations affecting firearms, hunting, agriculture and private property, yet voters cannot remove one of them at the ballot box.
Governor Polis appointed this Commission. His husband, Marlon Reis, has made animal welfare a public cause and has inserted himself into Colorado wildlife debates, including the fight over wolves. Reis does not formally appoint commissioners. Polis does. But nobody should pretend this administration’s ideology has nothing to do with the direction of Colorado wildlife policy.
These activists are not hiding what they want. They are coming after the ammunition. They are coming after predator and varmint control. They are coming after the authority of ranchers and landowners. Piece by piece, they are making hunting harder, more expensive and easier for government to control.
Hunters fund conservation. Ranchers provide wildlife habitat. Rural Coloradans live with the animals, the damage and the regulations. Yet the people carrying the burden are being pushed aside while national activists use an appointed commission to write the rules.
Read what they are proposing. Contact the Commission. Call your legislators. Tell every gun owner and hunter you know.
If they control your ammunition, they control your rifle. If they control your rifle, they control whether you can hunt.
That is the plan, and Colorado had better wake up before it becomes the law.
Sean M. Pond is a Montrose County Commissioner for District 3, a U.S. Navy veteran who served in the Persian Gulf including during Operation Desert Shield, and a fifth generation Colorado native. He has stood on stages across the state defending constitutional freedoms, protecting rural Colorado, and fighting back against government overreach.
Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.