Sutter County Supervisors Vote to Hold Off on Considering Proposed Anti-Hunting Ordinance

• Posted by:
• cmichel
• 22 Mar
• No Comments

Sutter County, California: On March 14, 2011, in a standing room only meeting, the Sutter County Board of Supervisors voted to delay considering a proposed amendment to a firearm discharge ordinance that would expand the County’s existing ban on discharging firearms and archery tackle in certain areas to include levees in the county. The Feather River levees are popular hunting grounds, and the proposed amendment would ban hunting there. The proposal apparently stemmed from “levee workers pushing for the ban after encountering gun-toting people on the levees who’d fired somewhat indiscriminately in the river bottoms below,” according to an article in the Appeal Democrat.

National Rifle Association (NRA) and the California Rifle and Pistol Association (CRPA) representatives attended the meeting, pointed out problems with the proposal, and urged the Board of Supervisors to not take the proposed action.  After considering the impacts on hunting brought to their attention at the meeting, the Supervisors agreed to work with NRA, CRPA, and the hunters those associations represent to work to protect hunting on the Feather River levees.  The Board voted to delay the proposal’s consideration to allow input from hunters rights groups.

NRA/CRPA lawyers are now studying the proposed ordinance to provide input. The California Department of Fish & Game (DFG) is also studying the proposal.  Generally, the regulation of hunting is exclusively the job of DFG and outside the parview of local government.

The Board of Supervisors will reconsider this proposed ordinance, perhaps with revisions, at its April 26 meeting, located at the Sutter County Hall of Records, 466 Second Street in Yuba City, at 7 p.m.  Please call the Board of Supervisor’s at (530) 822-7106 thanking them for their willingness to work with the NRA, CRPA and hunters.

Sutter County Board of Supervisors
District 1:   Larry Montna
District 2:   Stan Cleveland
District 3:   Larry Munger – Vice Chairman
District 4:   Jim Whiteaker
District 5:   James Gallagher – Chairman

The simple but surprisingly little known fact is that hunting is one of the safest recreational activities, and that sportsmen have been the backbone of natural resources conservation, and conservation funding, for more than a century.  It has become far too difficult for the average hunter to find a place to hunt in California. We must protect all the available hunting lands that still remain, and encourage increases in hunting land and opportunity. The numerous benefits that hunters contribute to California, from stimulating local economies to being by far the largest source of funding for wildlife conservation, should be encouraged, not curtailed.

Seventeen years ago the NRA and CRPA joined forces to fight local gun bans and local hunting regulations being written and pushed in California by the gun ban lobby. Their coordinated efforts became the NRA/CRPA “Local Ordinance Project” (LOP) – a statewide campaign to fight ill-conceived local efforts at gun control and educate politicians about available programs that are effective in reducing accidents and violence without infringing on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. The NRA/CRPA LOP has had tremendous success in beating back most of these anti-self-defense proposals.

In addition to fighting local gun bans, for decades the NRA has been litigating dozens of cases in California courts to promote the right to self-defense and the 2nd Amendment. In the post Heller and McDonald legal environment, NRA and CRPA Foundation have formed the NRA/CRPA Foundation Legal Action Project (LAP), a joint venture to pro-actively strike down ill-conceived gun control laws and ordinances and advance the rights of firearms owners, specifically in California. Sometimes, success is more likely when LAP’s litigation efforts are kept low profile, so the details of every lawsuit are not always released.

To see a partial list of the LOP and LAP’s recent accomplishments, or to contribute to the NRA or to the NRA/CRPAF LAP and support this and similar Second Amendment cases, visit www.nraila.org and www.crpafoundation.org.