School shooters always take more than the limit.

Let me explain.

When I hunted doves in the Midwest, the game laws allowed you to shoot 10 doves a day, and you were allowed to have 20 dead ones in your possession. Any more and you got fined.

Doves are hard to hit, too. A dove flies not in a straight line but in zigs and zags, like a child running joyfully across a playground. Also, we were using shotguns, not AR-15s, so you very often burned eight shells to hit one dove.

Not much meat on a dove, either, though the meat you get is tender. All you eat is the [D1]dove's breast, and you get to it by holding the dead dove in one hand and then pushing the thumb of the other hand through the feathers and the thin skin, up under the breast. Then you rip the breast out of the dove. It's good rolled in corn meal and fried in Crisco, but so are most things.

It was considered unsportsmanlike to shoot a dove when it was sitting in a tree. You were supposed to shoot them "on the wing," which means while they're flying. The same rule applies to ducks and geese. You never shoot them when they're sitting on the water. You wait until they're flying because it's more of a challenge.

Most laws for shooting game come out of the government's concern that if we kill too many animals too fast, there won't be any animals to hunt.

But your school shooter continues to operate with no thought for the future, taking 15 or more trophies in a day. That's no way to ensure the survival of the game species we call "children."

If we don't have the will to stop school shootings, and we don't, can we at least declare children to be a hunt-able species and get some regulations in place?

First of all, let's establish a season on children, say, between Christmas and Easter vacation.

Then, let's make it illegal to bag more than one child a day, with no more than two in possession. Also, you can't kill the girls. They're the breeders.

And no killing kids while they cower motionless in a classroom. It's not sporting. Wait until they're running across the playground. Catch 'em when they're in flight.

When I used to hunt on wildlife reserves owned by the state, there were signs posted reading, "Kill your cripples." Leaving a duck to die of its wounds was considered cruel. Get some of those signs on schools.

Sell a child hunting license. Who would buy such a thing? The same guy who posts on the internet saying he's going to shoot up a school, that's who.

Don't let hunters use any gun they want to, either. No semiautomatic rifles. When hunting in a school yard, you will have to use a shotgun. It's more sporting. The only time you can use a rifle is if you're hunting children out in nonurban settings, like forests or mountains.

I know. There aren't any hunt-able children wandering around in the woods, but there would be if you brought some children out there and left them in the woods. That's how some states brought back turkey hunting. The turkeys had been hunted out decades ago, so the state got turkeys from other states and turned them loose in the woods. The turkeys are thriving now, and the hunters are happy. I believe the children of the poor could easily be relocated to the wild places and encouraged to frolic until somebody gets off a lucky shot.

Best of all, allowing people to hunt children removes "mental illness" from the discussion. There's nothing crazy about hunting. Hell, you've got a license, don't you?

Last of all, put game wardens in charge of the whole thing. I've seen a game warden walk up to a man with a loaded shotgun in his hand and say, "Sir, can I see your license?"

This is America, by God. Nothing's wrong if it lets you keep your guns and if it can be described as a "sport."

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion, and read features by Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Devil's Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.

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