In Noem invites California-based gun manufacturers to SD to escape new taxes, a new Quick Read at the South Dakota Searchlight, Makenzie Huber shares a startling fact:
. . . Noem did not mention that South Dakota has a higher firearm mortality rate than California. In 2021, the most recent year of available data from the Centers for Disease Control, South Dakota had a firearm mortality rate of 14.3 out of 100,000 residents — or 128 deaths. California’s firearm death rate was 9 per 100,000 residents — 3,576 deaths.
Of the 240 violent deaths in South Dakota in 2020, nearly half were caused by firearms, according to the 2020 state Department of Health violent death report (the most recent report available). Of the 180 suicides that year — which accounted for 75% of the total violent deaths — nearly half were caused by firearms. Two gun control bills failed during the 2023 legislative session. . . .
We're not sure how many of those violent deaths--if any--belong to the most recent crop of ditchbank Nimrods who die hunting along South Dakota's roadsides. South Dakota News Watch's Abbey Stegenga reports in South Dakota road hunting laws the most lax in the Great Plains as the stats in her piece only cover deaths as recent as 2018. Surely these death fall ybder the category of accident, rather than violence:
No neighboring state is as liberal as South Dakota when it comes to traveling with loaded guns and hunting on, along or over roads.
Despite accidents in which hunters have been killed or wounded, it remains legal for a hunter to drive with a loaded, uncased firearm along almost any highway or road except an interstate.
The hunter can pull over, exit the vehicle and then fire at pheasants, waterfowl or other small game from the pavement or the ditch – even at a bird flying across the travel lanes.
Hunters cannot fire within 660 feet of any church, school, occupied dwelling or livestock. With few exceptions – special permits granted to handicapped hunters or people trying to kill predators such as coyotes — hunters are not allowed to shoot from the vehicle.
Even though driving with a loaded gun while on the hunt is legal, some law enforcement officers and hunter safety teachers say it is dangerous. . . .
Numerous hunters have been injured in South Dakota while road hunting or while carrying a loaded gun in a vehicle, according to state records.
From 2003 to 2013, 29 vehicle-related incidents leading to four deaths were reported. From 2015 to 2018, officials documented 10 incidents involving road hunting or gun transport.
In addition to a couple close calls where family members had guns discharged in a vehicle, a co-worker of Kolbeck’s lost her husband to a hunting accident in South Dakota in 2008 when a loaded gun went off in a vehicle, killing him.
Statistics illustrate the dangers of road hunting
Hunting carries inherent risks that, according to hunter safety teachers, can be minimized through a combination of following all laws, using common sense and engaging in practices that limit exposure to harm.
Each year, several South Dakota hunters are injured or killed while in the field, according to Patrick Klotzbach, who has worked as a HuntSAFE Coordinator for the GFP.
From 1988 to 2018, the state recorded 920 hunting incidents involving injury or death. During that period, 34 deaths mostly from firearm incidents occurred, though heart attacks and drownings while hunting are also included in that number.
The vast majority of injuries occur during pheasant hunts when hunters are struck by pellets from shotgun shells fired by others in their party who swing the gun to follow a flying bird or who shoot unknowingly into other hunters ahead of them in a field.
But road hunting factors into many of the incidents . . .h
When I first read the article this morning, it was dated 2018, but the publication date has been changed to today's date, September 28, 2018.
Whatever the case, Bluestem urges all South Dakota citizens to practice basic hunter safety, regardless of whether firearms manufacturers relocate here from California.
Hunter safety isn't a partisan rthing. My very conservative Goldwater-conservative father insisted that we all practice gun safety, while our loyal, highly skilled bird dog frowned on ditch hunting
Image: According to Word Origins, in 1947 animated short What Makes Daffy Duck, in which Daffy Duck refers to Elmer Fudd as “my little nimrod.” Originally, the word was the name of Noah’s great-grandson, whom the Bible describes as “a mighty hunter before the Lord” (Gen 10:9).
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