An ounce of prevention, and all that

There's an interesting discussion going on at Geocaching.com, one with arguments and concerns that will probably sound familiar to gun owners.

The original poster brings up the 'what if' possibility of the government trying to ban or regulate geocaching. The most common response is that geocaching will simply go underground if need be. People would try to follow the letter of the law, but circumvent the spirit. Good for them. But the posting developed into a long, thoughtful discussion of could it happen, how could it happen, why would it happen, can we prevent it and how? Maybe it's a discussion gun owners should have had in 1934.

Mom told me about a letter to 'Dear Abby' or one of her equivalents, in which the writer suggested hunters abandon hunting those poor widdle animals and go geocaching instead. I suspect there's a tremendous difference between hunting a moving creature and hunting a stationary box, but leaving the merits of the letter-writer's argument aside, it's just interesting that that type of mind (animal rights fluffy-fluff) would be involved in geocaching.

OK, so I'm making a big leap here - automatically placing 'animal rights' people inside the 'gun-grabber' box. But it seems a fairly safe assumption to make 9 times out of 10. I wonder, would a left-leaning geocacher start to understand gun-owner concerns if Big Gov put the screws on geocaching as it has on guns?

What if, what if? I'd hate to find out the hard way, by seeing govt actually tax and regulate geocaching to death. But it would be interesting to watch in an alternate universe.