Following their Thanksgiving weekend deer hunting trip in Oklahoma, Rep. Paul Ryan and his daughter Liza each celebrated bagging a buck. But their success brought an angry backlash from PETA, who presented Ryan with its 2012 “Bad Dad Award.”
The Washington Examiner reports Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, sent a letter to the former vice presidential candidate, condemning his father-daughter hunting trip. “You deserve the award because, instead of teaching your young daughter respect for wildlife and encouraging her to embrace nonviolence, you gave her a gun and encouraged her to kill animals for fun,” Newkirk wrote in her letter.
The PETA president went on to correlate hunting with more violent practices, like shooting other humans. As proof, she pointed to the hunting background of two young people — 16-year-old Andrew Golden and 17-year-old T.J. Laine — who killed their classmates. “In light of this fact alone, it seems grossly irresponsible to encourage a child to kill for ‘fun,'” she wrote.
Newkirk also accused the Congressman of having “a desperate need to assert your old-fashioned idea of manhood” by killing defenseless animals for the “perverse thrill of it.” She went on to add that many people must be disappointed in him because of his “lack of empathy.”
Recently, PETA also objected to President Obama’s pardon of the Thanksgiving turkey, claiming the animals had done nothing wrong and therefore did not need to be “pardoned.”
The father-daughter hunting excursion was 10-year-old Liza’s first solo hunting trip, The Examiner reports, meaning that she is now old enough to occupy her own hunting stand. Ryan had been anticipating the trip since he bought his daughter her first gun, a Remington 700 .243, last Christmas, according to CNN. He purchased her a camo outfit back in September.
Ryan’s “Bad Dad” certificate will be mailed to him, according to Newkirk’s letter.
