On June 16th 2013, there are eye witnesses to the fact that fox hunters in the Italian Province of Rimini, while hunting for a fox at night within the boundaries of the village of Gemmano, shot a domestic cat (Sandy) with a dum dum bullet from an automatic carbine, while the cat was in a back garden of a house (perhaps on a roof).
This act, if it can be proven, was a criminal act on two counts:
- “it is forbidden to shoot a hundred and fifty meters from the houses” and.
- under Article 638 of the criminal law it is a crime to harm or kills pets, punishable by imprisonment.
It also necessary for people who wish to hunt during the hunting season in Italy to make an application for an impact assessment, to see what effect the hunting will have on the community. As I understand it, the Institute for the Protection and Research (ISPRA) makes the assessment. Was this done?
It seems that not much, if anything, has been done to make the local residents feel secure in their homes. To have bullets flying around at night is alarming for the inhabitants and fatal for this cat.
There is a petition and the petitioner (Carlo Morigi) states:
“As protective and precautionary measures for all the citizens, we ask to know whether some legal action against the shooter has being taken; specifically if the weapon (a gun) has been confiscated and consequently if the hunting licence of the forester (ranger) belonging to a corps of authorized and appointed volounteers has been withdrawn by the competent authorities. ANYONE LIABLE FOR RISKY AND UNSAFE BEHAVIOUR INSIDE A COMMUNITY MUST BE PUNISHED BY THE LAW, SEVERELY.”
The petition is on this page (in Italian).
Foxes are edible. But mostly they are controlled because of preying on domestic poultry, rabbits and other small livestock.
I think of that as “just nature”. If we just stopped putting our hands into it’s supreme system, the planet would take care of itself. We just have to mess everything up.
I agree that foxes preying on animals is nature but people hunting foxes for the fun of it is crap.
Farmers should do more to protect livestock. Live and let live.
I don’t think that I understand why anyone would kill a fox anyway. Are they edible?
I want to rip out their hearts and feed them to piranhas, the only creatures that would eat something so foul!
You are not a typical American.
I HATE hunting, I HATE hunters and I HATE guns with a passion and I sign every petition to get them banned here.
There is no need for ordinary people to have guns, especially young males who are mostly too stupid to realise guns are dangerous weapons.
Yes the target was probably cats as surely no one hunts foxes after dark.
It’s a poor state of affairs if a cat can’t sit safely in his own garden.
Poor Sandy, another image branded into my mind forever along with all the other horrors already there and always caused by humans!
I understand. Sometimes, I just want to shake my brain like an etch-a-sketch. Just erase everything.
Looking into this, I found out that the dum dum bullet is also not authorised for use in hunting foxes. So the cat was likely the intended target all along.
Do you think someone used the fox hunt as cover to shoot the cat?
I’ll have to respond to this later. I get emotional and feel a RANT coming on.
I HATE HUNTERS! I HATE GUNS!
Me too big time. It is something so basic and so wrong and it is still popular in the world. It proves that humankind is still emotionally in the cave, hunting and gathering.