NationStates

[title] The Right to Arm Bears

[desc] After escaping from a mental hospital, @@RANDOMNAME_1@@ went to a zoo in @@CAPITAL@@, somehow managed to acquire guns, gave them to the bears before freeing them, graffitied the zoo with anti-hunting messages and returned to the mental institution. As the authorities have finished rounding up all the animals, disarming them, and sending them back to the zoo, there have now been national discussions about trophy hunting

[validity] must allow trophy hunting, must allow zoos, must allow meat eating, must allow guns for hunting

[option] "@@HE_1@@ maybe crazy but @@HE_1@@ makes a good point." Suggests noted animal rights activist, @@RANDOMNAME_2@@, who is topless and showing off a tattoo of a lion holding a gun captioned "now it's even". "At least if we hunt for food or for clothing, the poor animal died to serve a purpose, but trophy hunting is just killing the poor animal just to show off! Ban trophy hunting!"
[effect] citizens are required to eat all the meat in their refrigerators even if it has expired

[option] "It's duck season, or is it wabbit season?" asks noted hunter @@RANDOMNAME@@, who brought a deer head to your office. "Either way, are you gonna let this little princess push us around? We have the right to hunt animals for sport! No little inner city princess is gonna push us around!" He spits in the garbage bin before exiting your office
[effect] the head is the most prized part of the fish

[option] @@RANDOMANAME_1@@, the escaped mental patient brings an elephant into your office, which matches the description of the one stolen from the same zoo about an hour ago. "Aren't you gonna address the elephant in the room?" @@HE_1@@ questions, "I gave guns to the brown bears, the panda bears, the polar bears, the grizzlies and the koalas. Koalas aren't bears! Everyone calls them "koala bears", but they're silly! They didn't even mentioned that on the news! I'll leave this with you so you can remember the elephant in the room!" @@HE_1@@ chains the animal to a hat rack in your office then exits by abseiling through the window
[effect] residents are required to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the species of animals which destroyed their homes in order to be approved for repairs

This is an interesting idea, but in my opinion it doesn't work very well _

A/ Presumably that escaped lunatic would only have had access to standard firearms rather than specially-modified ones (as you don't explain otherwise...), so the bears mostly wouldn't be able to get their "fingers" inside the trigger-guards: They might be able to apply enough pressure to pull the trigger using only a claw, but I think that that's dubious... and anyway, without very good training it's unlikely that any of them would even think of using the guns as weapons.
(Also, being without opposable thumbs, they'd have trouble holding the gun correctly.)

B/ Those bears have been let out of a zoo, not from an establishment that keeps them for trophy hunters to shoot, so the first option's speaker talking about trophy hunting doesn't follow logically from the introduction.

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If you really want a "bears with guns" issue then I suggest changing the basic premise_

Alter the validity to a high level of Scientific Advancement, probably around whatever levels ares specified for the "growing children in vats" issue/option, or the "bring back dinosaurs" idea, which hopefully will be enough -- bearing in mind those precedents -- for the Editors to consider this draft to be within the acceptable range of developments.

Have the bears involved be the subjects of experimental work by a mad "eccentric" scientist,who gave them thumbs & more dextrous fingers, and [slightly] enhanced their intelligence, then trained them for various jobs... including the defence of his laboratories (using guns that the scientist had had modified appropriately) against potential attack by rival scientists, the authorities, superstitious mobs, or whatever.

Have them released by one of that scientist's assistants (first name hard-coded as "Igor",perhaps?), who's fed up with the imperious way in which the scientist orders their human staff -- as well as the bears -- around.

And then have the options being about what to do not just with that batch of enhanced bears but also with the knowledge of how to produce them (with one option having the Defence Minister suggesting an "army" of them be created...).

Also, as earlier issues have already established a 'Planet of the @@ANIMAL' series of films as existing, perhaps have one of the more worried speakers compare the situation to that?

Bears Armed wrote:This is an interesting idea, but in my opinion it doesn't work very well _

A/ Presumably that escaped lunatic would only have had access to standard firearms rather than specially-modified ones (as you don't explain otherwise...), so the bears mostly wouldn't be able to get their "fingers" inside the trigger-guards: They might be able to apply enough pressure to pull the trigger using only a claw, but I think that that's dubious... and anyway, without very good training it's unlikely that any of them would even think of using the guns as weapons.
(Also, being without opposable thumbs, they'd have trouble holding the gun correctly.)

B/ Those bears have been let out of a zoo, not from an establishment that keeps them for trophy hunters to shoot, so the first option's speaker talking about trophy hunting doesn't follow logically from the introduction.

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If you really want a "bears with guns" issue then I suggest changing the basic premise_

Alter the validity to a high level of Scientific Advancement, probably around whatever levels ares specified for the "growing children in vats" issue/option, or the "bring back dinosaurs" idea, which hopefully will be enough -- bearing in mind those precedents -- for the Editors to consider this draft to be within the acceptable range of developments.

Have the bears involved be the subjects of experimental work by a mad "eccentric" scientist,who gave them thumbs & more dextrous fingers, and [slightly] enhanced their intelligence, then trained them for various jobs... including the defence of his laboratories (using guns that the scientist had had modified appropriately) against potential attack by rival scientists, the authorities, superstitious mobs, or whatever.

Have them released by one of that scientist's assistants (first name hard-coded as "Igor",perhaps?), who's fed up with the imperious way in which the scientist orders their human staff -- as well as the bears -- around.

And then have the options being about what to do not just with that batch of enhanced bears but also with the knowledge of how to produce them (with one option having the Defence Minister suggesting an "army" of them be created...).

Also, as earlier issues have already established a 'Planet of the @@ANIMAL' series of films as existing, perhaps have one of the more worried speakers compare the situation to that?

I prefer to have an issue about trophy hunting, but your suggestion is good for someone else who wants it. As for the lunatic giving guns to bears, he might not have considered the bears being unable to use guns. After all, he is a lunatic. Or maybe he didn't want them to use guns, and put them there to make a point. I'll have to think about it. Thanks

Why did you ditch this issue? It looks like it would be hilarious!