Anti-Ivory Groups Take Aim at WA, IA & CA (Mammoth Included) + Fed Update

Mark Knapp said:
So you would argue that an owner of ivory does not have a voice in the issue. Only those that do not own any and those that don't want to should have a say.

I am not an invester in poached African ivory, it's your willingness to lump all ivory together that is the problem.
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You know that you have zero ivory that has contributed to the reduction in elephant populations in the last century?

You have a voice. You're using it.
 
If you're a single issue political organization dedicated solely to preserving and expanding the rights of knife enthusiasts and you can't get a solid consensus on the fight you picked even on a forum dedicated specifically to knife enthusiasts, you picked the wrong fight.
 
RX-79G said:
You know that you have zero ivory that has contributed to the reduction in elephant populations in the last century?

You have a voice. You're using it.
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I know for a fact that none of the ivory I own is from poached African elephants. I think it's a far reach for anyone to say that the ownership of any ivory contributes to the poaching of elephants in Africa is a lot like saying the ownership of a car in Fairbanks Alaska contributes to the theft of one in New York. If you want to stop the theft of cars in New York, catch the guy doing it and put him in jail, catch the guy he's selling it to and put him in jail.

I'm not sure why you have included the whole last century.

So to be clear, in your mind because of my ownership of ivory, all my other arguments can be disregarded, no matter how well they are based in statistical data?
 
The more this is dicussed the more unappealing any ivory seems to me. No thanx. Maybe it's time to invest in Native American remains.
 
lol, yeah i don't know anything about critter or what his motivation is but he failed miserably on this thread. my 3 cents. If you eliminate all demand for an item (ancient or not) by eliminating current supplies. problem solved. doesn't matter if it is mastodon, elephant, whale tooth, walrus or narwhal, if there is demand, people will want supplies. if people cannot get ancient mammoth ivory they might try for pre-ban ivory. if they cant get that they will want living ivory. human nature. ivory is ridiculous anyways, serves no purpose but ornamental. it's not about rights and the government telling you what you can and can't keep. it's selfish greed for most and ignorance by others. peace
 
RX-79G said:
I acknowledge the futility of attempting to get someone in the ivory industry to believe that the US has any influence on the world market.

But I will point out that you became an ivory investor after it was already well known what was happening to elephant populations and the legislation had already began. That's what investment risk is - taking a bet that you might lose.

I can see why this makes you unhappy, just as I can see why the South seceded from US. I'm just not terribly sympathetic about either.
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You don't actually know when I became an investor of ivory. When I became an investor in ivory (I'm am a very small investor, it's not the reason I am engaged in this debate) all of the ivory I invested in was legal, and it still is. It's interesting to me that you chose that part of all I had to say and disregarded all the rest
 
Doug, your last thread on this topic was about as popular as this one, which really begs the question of why you would try this again. Attaching Knife Rights to a toxic issue like this will only make it harder to get support for a legitimate issue down the road.

I am a knife enthusiast and I fully support a ban on the sale of ivory.
 
SidTheMuss said:
lol, yeah i don't know anything about critter or what his motivation is but he failed miserably on this thread. my 3 cents. If you eliminate all demand for an item (ancient or not) by eliminating current supplies. problem solved. doesn't matter if it is mastodon, elephant, whale tooth, walrus or narwhal, if there is demand, people will want supplies. if people cannot get ancient mammoth ivory they might try for pre-ban ivory. if they cant get that they will want living ivory. human nature. ivory is ridiculous anyways, serves no purpose but ornamental. it's not about rights and the government telling you what you can and can't keep. it's selfish greed for most and ignorance by others. peace
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You actually don't understand the issue at all.
 
So far, everyone in this thread and all threads like it that come in favor of an ivory ban think this is just about ivory on a knife handle. It is not, you need to become more informed before you talk about it.

I ask all of you, have you read the Presidents initiative, the laws and mandates coming down on trafficking of animal parts? If you have not then all you have is an uninformed opinion.

You have the right to your opinion but you really cant talk knowledgeably about the subject unless you have read the laws, and the studies.
 
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mark, not sure why it is so important to you but you shouldn't tell people what they do or don't understand. none of your 20 comments on here has supported your cause and by insulting peoples understanding of the issue just makes you look like an ass
 
Mark Knapp said:
So far, everyone in this thread and all threads like it that come in favor of an ivory ban think this is just about ivory on a knife handle. It is not, you need to become more informed before you talk about it.
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Here, let me simplify my previous statement:

I fully support a ban on the sale of ivory.

Doug is associated with a group called Knife Rights, and has picked an issue so toxic that he can't even garner support from a group of people that spend their Saturday nights on a knife forum. If he is this deaf to the wishes of the public (and knife enthusiasts), perhaps lobbying is not his calling.
 
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All the whiners have accomplished something here today...I plan on getting some more mammoth ivory.
The fact that it will annoy some people is just extra icing on the cake. :thumbup:
 
Ultimately, the profits from all this ivory are driven by consumer demand, and consumer demand is rising.

To meet this demand, elephants are being killed in increasingly larger numbers and in increasingly horrific and brutally efficient ways. Many are gunned down by terrorist groups using AK47s.

In Zimbabwe, some 300 elephants were killed by cyanide poisoning.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...kill-300-Zimbabwe-elephants-with-cyanide.html

Poachers poisoned water holes and salt licks, killing not just elephants, but massive numbers of other wildlife:

"Meanwhile, reports have indicated the poison has led to widespread devastation of the ecosystems in the area, with large though at this stage untallied numbers of other wildlife including lions, zebras, wildebeest, hyenas, leopards, cheetahs and several species of birds also included in the list of victims. Especially vulnerable have been vultures feeding from elephant carcasses.

“This is the worst ecological disaster we have seen, and the fallout is going to be massive,” said Johnny Rodrigues, Chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force.

“Watering holes and the ground are contaminated, and the entire wildlife food chain is threatened."
http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/zim-elephant-deaths-soar-1.1584080#.VLrzOsZUM23
 
SidTheMuss said:
mark, not sure why it is so important to you but you shouldn't tell people what they do or don't understand. none of your 20 comments on here has supported your cause and by insulting peoples understanding of the issue just makes you look like an ass
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Please read my last post. I have studied the laws, the Presidents executive order and the studies that support my cause. I have sited them over and over again in threads like this.

You can study them too if you want to.

I did not insult you, I only just told you you dod not understand this issue, who's insulting who. I didn't say you look like an ass.

The presidents executive order, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-07-05/pdf/2013-16387.pdf

USF&W Directive, http://www.fws.gov/international/pdf/directors-order-210-questions-and-answers.pdf

I will get the two ETIS studies for you too, might take me a minute.
 
dozer2025 said:
America may have its flaws, but we are still the best nation in the world. The problem is, our freedom has spoiled or citizens into believing any changes to their way of life or any restrictions to anything they may or may not enjoy this a personal attack on their freedom. Your gun (which in many nations you wouldn't even be allowed to own) can only hold 15 bullets? You can't use the tusks of an endangered animal to decorate your pocketknife? Plans are being made to replace oil with more effective and clean energy sources? An unhealthy cooking oil is being taken off the shelves when there are dozens of alternate methods and oils to use? Wow, we practically live in North Korea now!
I was on Facebook and a meme asked the question "Who is the worst president in history?" A lot of people said Obama because he's the current president, but many people said Abraham Lincoln, because he didn't allow the southern states to breakaway into a slave owning separate nation. Needless to say everyone who said a Abe was white. As a privileged people we want so hard to believe that we don't have it easier than the entire world, that we will scream "Dictatorship!" At the drop of a hat!
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Your post shows some insight but your first sentence is a howler!! I'm a Canadian so I know you're wrong because Canada is the best nation in the World. Of course as an American you've almost certainly never been to Cuba but many people there are quite open about Cuba being the best nation in the world.
 
Twindog said:
Ultimately, the profits from all this ivory are driven by consumer demand, and consumer demand is rising.

To meet this demand, elephants are being killed in increasingly larger numbers and in increasingly horrific and brutally efficient ways. Many are gunned down by terrorist groups using AK47s.

In Zimbabwe, some 300 elephants were killed by cyanide poisoning.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...kill-300-Zimbabwe-elephants-with-cyanide.html

Poachers poisoned water holes and salt licks, killing not just elephants, but massive numbers of other wildlife:

"Meanwhile, reports have indicated the poison has led to widespread devastation of the ecosystems in the area, with large though at this stage untallied numbers of other wildlife including lions, zebras, wildebeest, hyenas, leopards, cheetahs and several species of birds also included in the list of victims. Especially vulnerable have been vultures feeding from elephant carcasses.

“This is the worst ecological disaster we have seen, and the fallout is going to be massive,” said Johnny Rodrigues, Chairman of the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force.

“Watering holes and the ground are contaminated, and the entire wildlife food chain is threatened."
http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/zim-elephant-deaths-soar-1.1584080#.VLrzOsZUM23
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I am sure all of that is true and it saddens me but the issue here is will a US ban stop it? So far, our bans have not.
 
Mark Knapp said:
I am sure all of that is true and it saddens me but the issue here is will a US ban stop it? So far, our bans have not.
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This is where I stand, if any of these laws will save a single elephant, than full steam ahead. Unfortunately it seems like these laws are achieving nothing at the expense of American citizens. Perhaps the time and money going in to this endeavor could be spent in a better and more effective way. I live in New Jersey, where it is now illegal to own ivory including fossilized ivory. I've never owned ivory and probably never will. It seems a little silly that I shouldn't be allowed to own a knife with a handle made out of fossil walrus ivory that was used as originally used as tool by Inuit native Americans centuries ago because of illegal poachers in Africa.

Here is a photo taken by a family member last week at an elephant orphanage in Sri Lanka
jaet07.jpg
 
Mark Knapp said:
I am sure all of that is true and it saddens me but the issue here is will a US ban stop it? So far, our bans have not.
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Yes, our bans have not been effective because they are weak and backed by virtually no enforcement mechanism. Any knifemaker can buy illegal ivory, craft it into a knife handle and tell the buyer it's pre-ban ivory. There is no enforcement body that can counter that claim. When enforcement officers walk into a shop filled with ivory products, the owner says they are all pre-ban. There is no certification program that can prove that claim one way or the other, even when the officers know full well the owner is lying. They'd have to do destructive DNA testing on all the products to know which are legal, and there is no money for that kind of testing. The new bans being proposed are meant to make our laws more effective, but even the new laws are less than is needed.

You can't have a worldwide regulatory agency that says the major buyer of illegal ivory (China) is an approved and responsible buyer of ivory. By some estimated, the demand for ivory in China alone is roughly equivalent to 20,000 elephants a year, which is well above what the elephant population can sustain. And that demand in China is going to grow as China takes the jobs we sent them and grows them into the world's largest economy, which they are close to doing.
 
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