Killing bats and shooting inside city limits is generally illegal. So is speeding and not paying tax on internet purchases......legal is legal, but right and wrong are very subjective. Just sayin.
Certainly times have changed...some. But whether your a farm kid or a ghetto kid virtually all kids still have a fascination with guns. Shooting 80 tin cans or 80 bats has as much to do with education as any inherent psychosis.
The rest is long. read it or not
I was born in the 70's. Silent Spring was published in 1962, but I didn't read it till 1992.
As I said, If I got *caught* shooting songbirds I was in trouble. That is different than having an inherent belief as a 8 yr old that the fun of shooting a bird I had "ambushed" was bad. (birds will learn to avoid little boys as easily as cats) Shooting 80 rats? 80 bats? I wouldn't have batted an eye and my mom would have probably made me a pie. (yea I would have considered rats and bats as comparable vermin). I have an article at home somewhere where a 2 story, 100 yr old home was "infested" by bats and was burned to the ground by it's owners!
I had no desire to shoot cows (they were good for something) or rabbits in the summer since they weren't considered safe to eat then. Animals were classed as livestock, edible game, and everything else.
By contrast, by brother who was raised in the same house shot basketballs instead of 22's and the only creature he ever shot was a single Robin. He just didn't like killing for any reason and really couldn't understand my love of hunting.
The un PC truth is that some people (including me) DO like hunting and at a more basic level killing. Hopefully that desire is shaped and tempered by a solid code of ethics and fundamental education of right and wrong at an early age. Unfortunately right and wrong are subjective on who's teaching you, and some people simply ignore any constraints. I suspect that being raised by the president of PETA vs Ghenghis Kahn would make a difference.
Were the adults and kids who killed the Carter Caves bats inherently evil or did their version of "right" just differ from ours? Gordon Birkenhimer would have us believe they were nearly sub-human animals whom should be punished to the fullest possible extent as an example...
I disagree. I have been in that cave in winter. I think the GATE placed on that cave in response (paid for by the USFWS) will help attract more bats to a death trap roost and one day kill far far more bats by drowning. (A nearly ideal, already protected, and heavily used roost is a short distance away) But drowning bats is ok as long as your "protecting" them.