Lack of Hunters Leads to Lyme Disease Explosion in New York
If the lives and well-being of other people weren’t at stake, I’d almost find this irony deliciously humorous.
Leftists have long attacked the Second Amendment over some misguided belief that eradicating legal gun ownership will somehow prevent loss of life everywhere.
That line of thinking has given rise to some truly stomach-churning statements from people like David Hogg and virtually all of Hollywood’s smuggest elites.
But what the left rarely seems to consider outside of the parroted “guns are bad” narrative are some of the unintended consequences that their inane gun laws present.
Take, for instance, what’s happening in New York, which features some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country.
As WROC-TV reports, it’s deer breeding season in the Empire State. One major issue with breeding season is the expected overpopulation of deer.
As cute and cuddly as they may be, deer can also be destructive to the environment. But there’s another side effect of overpopulation that is equally, if not more so, dangerous.
With more deer, there are more ticks. And with more ticks comes a greater proliferation of Lyme Disease.
As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted, issues with Lyme Disease are numerous and can include facial palsy, heart palpitations and nerve pain.
New York is the top spot for Lyme Disease according to WROC-TV, and the issue is only getting worse across America.
“According to the Monroe County Health Department, Lyme Disease has tripled in the United States over the last 15 years. Experts say they’re now seeing 80 to 90 confirmed cases every year,” WROC-TV reported.
A big reason why the deer population is left virtually unchecked? There aren’t enough hunters.
“Despite the (Department of Environmental Conservation’s) best efforts to reduce the population by issuing more deer permits there’s just not enough hunters to fill all available permits, so we’ve dealt with this overpopulation of deer– this increase in ticks is one byproduct of that,” retired wildlife biologist Art Kirsch told WROC-TV.
And, according to the Giffords Law Center, New York has the fifth-strongest gun laws in the country.
Why aren’t there enough hunters to fill out the permits? Could it have anything to do with New York’s overbearing gun laws? There’s probably no way to say for certain, and we’re not going to adopt the typical leftist argument that correlation equals causation. But it’s not a stretch to hypothesize that it plays some role in the lack of hunters.
I know that if I lived upstate, I’d be asking why I should jump through New York’s endless gun law hoops as a law-abiding citizen who has done nothing wrong — especially when there are so many other nearby states that make the lives of hunters easier?
I also know that I’m not surprised at all that yet another far-left narrative has turned out to be shortsighted and completely oblivious to unintended consequences that make life worse for typical Americans.
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