The Second Amendment says nothing about hunting. It’s a point we’ve made time and time again, including earlier today. It’s a whole thing, of course.

However, we can’t ignore that defending the Second Amendment also defends our right to use guns for hunting purposes. There is a certain degree of overlap in that regard.

It seems the Department of Agriculture has appointed an interesting individual to a hunting council.

“The Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council’s purpose is to provide recommendations to the Federal Government, through the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture, that (a) benefit wildlife resources; (b) encourage partnership among the public; sporting conservation organizations; Federal, State, Tribal, and territorial governments; and (c) benefit fair chase recreational hunting and safe recreational shooting sports,” the Council declares on its website.

A name included among primary council members raises a red flag, particularly in how it is presented:

“Ryan Busse (Unaffiliated) representing shooting sports interests”

“The appointment of Ryan Busse to the Hunting and Wildlife Conservation Council, a federal advisory committee, is a farce and demonstrates the contempt the Biden administration holds for lawful gun owners who hunt on America’s public and private lands,” Mark Oliva, the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Managing Director of Public Affairs tells AmmoLand News. Busse was listed as ‘unaffiliated,’ but that is not true. He is not an unaffiliated shooting sports interest expert.”

“He is an advisor for the Giffords gun control group and has openly advocated the ban on the most popular selling centerfire rifle in America – the Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR),” Oliva explained. “He has published a book advocating radical gun control policies.”

“Glaringly absent, however, is any representative from the firearm and ammunition industry even though the industry is responsible for the vast majority of conservation funds through the Pittman-Robertson excise tax,” Oliva continued. “To date, the firearm and ammunition industry has provided over $15.3 billion to wildlife conservation since 1937 and over $1.1 billion of the conservation funds apportioned to the states last year was directly tied to taxes paid by firearm and ammunition manufacturers.”

Busse isn’t an uninterested observer. He’s a senior policy advisor to Giffords, a gun control group that supports numerous restrictions on our right to keep and bear arms.

For him to be appointed to this council while absolutely no one from within the firearm industry makes it clear that this council exists to do pretty much one thing: Advance gun control.

As writer David Cordea notes in the above-linked piece, this is why terms like “Fudd” exist.

Hunting is a great thing. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time in the woods and I’m kind of antsy to get back to deer hunting and maybe look at pursuing other game as well.

But we’ve all seen how some think that so long as hunting is preserved, the Second Amendment is as well. Busse is likely one of those–after all, he seems to think you can have gun control without infringing on the Second Amendment–so I fully expect nothing good to come out of this.

Look, hunting is wonderful, but Fudds need to understand that after they get the handguns and the “assault weapons” and things of that sort, what they’ll come for next are the hunting rifles.

They won’t call them that, of course. They’ll frame them as “sniper rifles” and talk about how they can kill from a thousand yards away or more among other things, but they’ll still be coming after the hunting rifles.

You cannot hope these people will hit a point where they’ll be satisfied.

Busse, in particular, is a problem. The truth is, his conversion toward gun control should be raising huge red flags among people, including the Department of Agriculture. But again, there are no questions at all because he’s pushing the right narrative.

And it’s a narrative as bad for hunting as our gun rights in general.