Some little piggies

They ain’t little, and they ain’t piggies

HAVE YOU seen the little piggies crawling in the dirt? If you live in one world, the answer would be: Nope. If you live in another world, the answer would be: Yes, and they ain’t little piggies.

Much of this week there has been talk, sometimes loud talk, about gun control, who has real answers to gun violence in America, what can work and what cannot possibly. Many of those with the loudest protests sometimes prove in their own words that they don’t understand the debate.

For example, there are those who say they don’t want to take away hunting guns, but just want to ban semi-automatic weapons. When some of us hear that, we stop listening to the speaker. The person doesn’t care enough about the problem to understand the definitions.

A musician of some note, Jason Isbell, sparked another round of debate online earlier this week when he asked why some Americans felt the need to own assault weapons. For this one editorial, let’s put aside the definition of an “assault weapon,” and whether they can shoot any faster, or do any more harm, than Grandpa’s squirrel rifle.

One Twitter user (Twitterer?) from southern Arkansas—at least that’s what his bio says—responded to Mr. Isbell by asking how does one go about shooting 30-50 feral hogs in the yard without such weapons?

He was immediately mocked across several mediums. Some sort of game was quickly invented for computer players. One of the Simpsons writers created a mock script called, “Bart Gets 30-50 Feral Hogs.”

We can only imagine the people doing the mocking don’t live in southern Arkansas. Or northern Texas. Or eastern Tennessee. Or in any of the 39 states in flyover country in which feral hogs are real problems.

Even a writer for The Washington Post had to add this to his story, while covering the ridicule and teasing from certain quarters about Piggie Fear:

“And yet, millions of wild hogs have invaded large swaths of the southern United States, eviscerating crops, gobbling up endangered sea turtles and trampling archaeological sites in a rampage that shows no signs of letting up.” Thank you, Washington Post reporter. These pigs—large feral hogs, some weighing several hundred pounds or more—are tearing up the land. Literally. Folks in some parts of this state can’t have gardens, because in one night a herd of wild hogs will tear it to pieces. Farmers wake up in the mornings to see acres upon acres of plowed-up corn or ruined pasture.

These animals eat turkey eggs, destroy quail nests, compete with deer for food sources, destroy habitat for other animals and generally make a mess. And they reproduce at such rates that this state’s Game and Fish Commission has taken away nearly all hurdles to shooting them. You can hunt them at night. You can hunt them in the summer. There is no season. Kill as many as you can.

In Texas, people are allowed to get into helicopters and shoot them from the air. They use AR-15 types of weapons with large magazines. (Those weapons have small bullets. We’ve seen them bounce off large hogs. We prefer a .351 carbine with more knock-down power. Also with a large-capacity magazine.)

The point is that there really is a problem with Razorback us unpleasant us in most of the country, especially in these latitudes. Whether large-capacity magazines for guns can, or should, survive after all these mass shootings in America is a conversation we’re having just now. It’s a conversation that can be had without snarky comments from the peanut gallery, especially from those who don’t know the problem, the definitions or the landscape.

Here’s an idea: Maybe those of us in flyover country could explain it all to our betters by quoting The Washington Post story: Hey y’all, feral hogs eat endangered sea turtles. Can we get on the same page now?