The Second Amendment doesn't have anything to do with hunting, but hunting is something that generally requires some kind of arms. In other words, there's a tie in, but it's not about what we "need" for hunting versus protecting our nation and the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Yet, let's be real. Many of you are currently hunters or, like me, lapsed hunters. Others are at least sympathetic to hunting.
And a case before the Hawaii Supreme Court could have major implications for hunting.
A case involving two elephants at the Honolulu Zoo could have consequences far beyond the zoo’s gates. On Nov. 9, the Hawaii Supreme Court will consider whether “Mari” and “Vaigai” can invoke habeas corpus, a legal remedy traditionally used to protect human liberty, to challenge their confinement.
The anti-hunting group Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) is once again pressing ahead with the claim after two other Hawaii courts already rejected it. The immediate dispute involves elephant captivity. The larger question is whether activists can use the courts to establish animals have legal rights that could eventually be invoked by animal rights activists against animal ownership, zoos, livestock operations and science-based wildlife management, including — and especially — hunting.
Another Court, Same Legal Theory
NhRP filed its petition in 2023 seeking to transfer the two elephants to an accredited sanctuary. A circuit court dismissed that case in 2024. In January of this year, Hawaii’s Intermediate Court of Appeals affirmed that decision, holding that elephants are not, in fact, “persons” entitled to habeas corpus relief under state law.
The appellate court concluded that Hawaii Revised Statutes Chapter 660 supersedes common law habeas corpus and that its protections apply only to human persons, not elephants. The state Supreme Court will now consider whether the statute displaces the common law writ and, if not, whether that writ can extend to nonhuman animals.
...
Recognizing habeas rights for two zoo elephants would not, by itself, prohibit hunting. But if courts extend animal personhood theories to other species and contexts, anti-hunting activist litigants could seek to challenge established wildlife management decisions in the name of individual animal rights. That is a risk hunters and wildlife agencies cannot afford to dismiss.
More than that, it also has implications that could impact our entire food system, as there's no way this wouldn't immediately be turned into a cudgel to bully and beat farmers for keeping livestock.
If there's good news here, it's that this has less chance of happening than me winning the next 12 lottery drawings, all in a row.
And I don't play the lottery.
As noted in the above-linked piece, they've lost at every level, and the same Supreme Court that voted 9-0 to tell Mexico to pound sand on its lawsuit against the gun industry doesn't strike me as being one that will view "personhood" for elephants as an actual thing, especially since there's no sign the animals are being mistreated.
I think that's important. These are well cared for zoo animals, who might be in captivity, but have ample food to eat without looking for it and are treated well by the zoo staff, so far as we can tell. They don't require freedom from the zoo to protect their life or their quality of life.
This group just doesn't like anything that involves the ownership of animals. It's just that simple.
While I'm confident in my prediction in how this one will go, it's still a case worth tracking, if for no other reason than laughing at the morons who want to treat animals as people. They're not, and while I think we should treat animals humanely, I'm not deluded about where those shrimp I had last night came from.
Meat might be murder. Tasty, tasty murder.
