Farmers now required to have license to scare birds

RB87 · May 2, 2011

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"WHITSTRAN, Wash. -- Brad Klingele would trust his 13-year-old son to use his bird-scaring gun in the cherry orchard.

But to pack the noise-making gun, which looks more like a toy, Klingele will have to get a federal license and provide his fingerprints and photo identification.

To keep explosives out of the "wrong hands," the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is now requiring farmers who use them to get a license.

ATF gave the contraptions an acronym -- EPCD, for explosive pest control devices -- though farmers typically call them bird bangers, shell crackers or other variations of trade names."

Next up, licenses for sparklers...

chase · May 2, 2011

Absolutely ridiculous, is this just for Washington or a federal law?

PBinWA · May 2, 2011

Soon the farmers can get their kids suppressors for their .22's and send them out to the orchards.

Redcap · May 2, 2011

Asinine.

One-Eyed Ross · May 3, 2011

it's a Federal thing, since the ATF made the rule.

What a bunch of morons. Oh, well, I'll just let the youngster take his 20 gauge out and use it.

Redcap · May 3, 2011

One-Eyed Ross said:
it's a Federal thing, since the ATF made the rule.

What a bunch of morons. Oh, well, I'll just let the youngster take his 20 gauge out and use it.

Yup.

rdb241 · May 3, 2011

I used to work in the orchards in the Yakima valley when I was a kid. We shot those things off all the time. Never lost any fingers. When the cherries get ripe, the #1 enemy is birds before you can get them picked. Is this classified as an AOW? My uncle and I would blow old apple tree stumps out of the ground using small peices of tnt. That was back in the early 70's. But back then you could go to high school with a rifle in your back window and go hunting after school. There is always somebody that thinks they have to control everybody??????????????

Browning55 · May 13, 2011

Our brilliant legislature will also be looking at requiring a license for the birds before they are allowed to be scared.

darkminstrel · May 14, 2011

And I bet the bloke doesn't get a single one back even if he's found innocent. Or at least he'll be charged storage fees for them, and I bet they'll be in worse shape.

moose · May 15, 2011

I bought a couple boxes of those several years ago. I remember having to provide a reason (I described a scene from Hitchcocks's The Birds) for ordering them and sign a form before they would let me have them.

marty8587 · May 15, 2011

A kid in an orchard shooting sparrows.... sounds like a Norman Rockwell painting to me. We are loosing our heritage.

jvbutter · May 15, 2011

Its truly amazing how much spare time our legislators have, they can make up silly laws and regs.... Kind of like Oregon working on plastic bag ban vs the budget and spending reform

kenno · May 15, 2011

This is EXACTLEY the point of all federal authority: total enslavement of all law abiding persons and the outright destruction of human rights using outlaws to opress and terrorize the citizenry so that they will view Totalitarian rule as prefferable to rape and pillage.
Silly Laws are an expression of a governing class's distain/disgust of the Citizen/Subject class.
Drowning in high fuel prices/crime? Here's a plastic bag law we spent month's on instead of addressing real problems created by a corrupt political system that uses political pay back as pay-off for political contributions from corrupt Unions and Businesses!

Stomper · May 16, 2011

"ATF must weigh the potential threat to public safety from illicit storage and use of these devices against the needs of legitimate end users. Items that may appear harmless cease to be so in the wrong hands," said Scot Thomasson, chief of the ATF Public Affairs Division.

Maybe the ATF should weigh the potential threat to public safety from an over reaching, and out of control FEDERAL GOVERNMENT instead!!