You say this with a lot of conviction. Unfortunately, that doesn't make it so. Anyone who wants to approach this logically has to temporarily forget about elephants and how they feel about them. What is being proposed is a ban on a product which has been traded commercially for thousands of years, including within the US until recently. It is an innocuous product that does not in and off itself cause health issues or criminal risks; we are talking about piano keys, key chains, chess pieces and the like. And the nexus for regulation is at best weak if not a complete fantasy. The elephants and other animals who were harvested for the vast majority of the ivory in U.S. died long before any of us were born; in the case of mammoth tens of thousands of years; nor can it be argued that the confiscation of these items will bring any of these beast back to life. It is doubtful that such a ban would help any of the remaining elephants in the wild. They are being exterminated because of the challenged posed by agricultural development in parts of the world where civil wars and weak government prevail. Perhaps the focus should be on the millions of Africans who have been butchered, but that would be a different topic altogether.
So on the basis of this dubious argument, we are willing to invest a vast fortune to create a policing force capable of detecting the movement of your great grandmothers ivory pendant. And on the basis of such a proposition, we are willing to confiscate lawfully acquired property and punish all involved. Someone is using your emotional ties to Disney's Dumbo to justify the establishment of a police state and the weakening of your property rights. Again, if this had anything to do about elephants there would be much more effective propositions to look at; including spending such fortune to purchase and staff elephant preserves or perhaps aiding key countries to regain the necessary stability so as to be able to protect their populations of both people and animals.
Assuming that we are blind enough to be led down this road, what would prevent the authorities from designating additional prohibitions on other products? What if the dictate said that you could no longer fuel, service, or transfer your gasoline powered vehicles; after all, these things are said to be the cause of global warming, wouldn't such a thing also contribute to the demise of your precious elephants? What if they decide to ban wood and paper products, I mean those trees should be preserved, it is they who primarily filter the excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Allowing you to buy a wooden chair means that some tree somewhere will need to die. So perhaps no more chairs. Then again our homes incorporate wood in their construction. There is no need for that. We can learn to use aluminum studs and other man made materials. Let there be air.
But, aren't those same man-made materials often made from evil petroleum. How can we allow such a devastating industry to continue to be rewarded.....
My point is that once you go down this road you set a precedent. In this case a very dangerous precedent that allows the authorities to confiscate antique and fossil ivory because they care not distinguish between that and the stuff that may have been harvested last week. We are back at the "kill them all and let god sort them out" level of due process. And nothing that you own can be safe from this mechanism once it becomes accepted law. When they finally come for your smart phone, you will say nothing, because there will be nothing left to be said; a enslaved peasant has no rights, and you have no one to blame but yourself.
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