You know as a good libertarian I'm not a big fan of government regulation but sometimes......The exotic animal trade seriously needs to be cracked down on or just banned. When I lived in Texas there was this lovely place between Junction and Ozona, don't remember the town, where you could buy almost anything from emus to eland for canned "hunts" (remember to take the halter off first please). I swung by once and they were selling tiger cubs for $450 a pop. Thats less than I paid for my pointer puppy, and what the hell are you going to do with them when they grow up? There is this horrible Exxon station off I-10 in La. someplace that has a cage about 70'x20', just concrete and bars, with two tigers in it. Great life for a wild animal yeah? We saw how much fun a full grown chimp is with that attack in New York. Here in Florida, we are currently overrun with iguanas (I kid you not I shot a 4' one with my RWS .22 in the back yard a couple of months ago) because people dump them when they get too big. The Everglades are being over run with pythons, FREAKING PYTHONS, of up to 12' because some nimrod couldn't figure out that things will grow. The same true of Oscars, the aqarium fish thats gets to be the size of a bluegill, out grows the tank and then gets dumped. Trouble is they thrive down here and out compete the native species. As far as I'm concerned you shouldn't be allowed to import non-native wild life in an area where they thrive in wild. Iguanas in Minnesota fine, Florida hell no. I might sound like a hypocrite for opposing an AWB and not wanting you to keep a six hundred pound tiger in the neighborhood. I think its different though, in the sense that gun is under your control. The tiger is too, right up until the day it gets out. TABs example is typical, what the hell do you do with three traumitized and abused top of food chain predators, other than the obvious?
fightingquaker13 who will now go hug a tree and clean his hunting rifle