The "model letter" that Ritter wants me to send to my legislators says: Adding insult to injury, the ban goes against U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services' longstanding position that virtually all ivory in the U.S. was legally imported before elephants were listed as endangered species and its sale in the U.S. has no impact on poaching in Africa.
This position is simply not true, and there have been numerous links posted in this thread to prove it. USFW's position is that lots of blood ivory is coming into the US, that the tons of illegal ivory it has seized are just the tip of the iceberg and that the sale of legal ivory in the US gives smugglers the opportunity to exploit our extremely porous borders to increase the flow of blood ivory into the US.
Knife Rights has no reasonable alternative to the ban, other than Mark's assertion that we can simply guard the elephants. That position is completely unworkable for obvious reasons. To guard the elephants, we'd have to field a huge army to spread out across elephant country in Africa, and they'd have to be heavily armed, well-funded and be able to cover massive tracts of remote, rugged terrain to outwit or outmaneuver native poachers who know the land intimately. And they'd have to operate in large tracts of conflict zones.
The elephant protectors would also have to fend off the real armies of the African countries that themselves exploit elephant poaching to raise money.
How many trained, well-armed people would we need to protect all these elephants 24/7, including protecting the elephants' watering holes from being poisoned? How much would that cost? Who would pay? It's a completely absurd position.
The truth is that Knife Rights is not representing knife rights, but rather a few business people who make money selling ivory. Knife Rights doesn't just want to block a total ban on ivory, it wants to remove all bans from ivory of every kind.
This position is simply not true, and there have been numerous links posted in this thread to prove it. USFW's position is that lots of blood ivory is coming into the US, that the tons of illegal ivory it has seized are just the tip of the iceberg and that the sale of legal ivory in the US gives smugglers the opportunity to exploit our extremely porous borders to increase the flow of blood ivory into the US.
Knife Rights has no reasonable alternative to the ban, other than Mark's assertion that we can simply guard the elephants. That position is completely unworkable for obvious reasons. To guard the elephants, we'd have to field a huge army to spread out across elephant country in Africa, and they'd have to be heavily armed, well-funded and be able to cover massive tracts of remote, rugged terrain to outwit or outmaneuver native poachers who know the land intimately. And they'd have to operate in large tracts of conflict zones.
The elephant protectors would also have to fend off the real armies of the African countries that themselves exploit elephant poaching to raise money.
How many trained, well-armed people would we need to protect all these elephants 24/7, including protecting the elephants' watering holes from being poisoned? How much would that cost? Who would pay? It's a completely absurd position.
The truth is that Knife Rights is not representing knife rights, but rather a few business people who make money selling ivory. Knife Rights doesn't just want to block a total ban on ivory, it wants to remove all bans from ivory of every kind.
