Maybe the tax-free gun holiday wasn't such a bad idea after all

Spread the word -- South Carolina is no longer last in everything.

Our state just sponsored the nation's first weekend for tax-free gun purchases.

At first I thought: "We need that like we need a hole in the head. We've sure come a long way since our last 'first' -- starting the Civil War."

But this actually could help save the Lowcountry. If it helps hunters, it can help anyone who doesn't want to see the Lowcountry turned into Little Atlanta.

For a long time, we've been killing the places where deer roam and quail fly. It seems that the closest we get to nature anymore is moving into a subdivision with an outdoorsy name. From hacking out underbrush to leveling entire forests, we are steadily destroying the habitat that wildlife needs.

That's why the tax-free gun weekend might help.

The Lowcountry today needs what hunters need: open space, habitat for birds, healthy marshes, active farms, education on conservation and families spending more time outdoors.

The state legislator who proposed the tax-free weekend said it was to celebrate the Second Amendment, which establishes the right to bear arms, and to let people know it's every bit as important as the First Amendment, which establishes freedom of religion and speech.

But I think it can do something much more practical.

The only gun in our house is a little .22 caliber rifle that was my grandfather's first gun when he was a boy almost 100 years ago. It works, but its function has little to do with our protection or the Constitution. It serves as a wall decoration in the den.

And I've been hunting just once. The only thing in any danger of being killed was me.

But I've been around here long enough to appreciate that hunters -- by selectively killing things, oddly enough -- can help keep all of us from killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

They can help us save john boats, duck blinds, working dogs, dirt roads, tree stands, camaraderie in the forest, camping, trucks, allays of oaks and lifetimes of studying the intricate patterns of nature. They can help save the Lowcountry.

Hunters already saved the Lowcountry once. Around the turn of the 20th century, rich Northern industrialists started buying former plantations throughout the Lowcountry and turning them into hunting preserves.

Many of those large tracts remain intact and now play a big role in conservation. They form the backbone of the ACE Basin between here and Charleston.

It's one of the world's great conservation success stories, with more than 350,000 acres protected from development.

Ducks Unlimited long has been a player in Lowcountry land conservation. The S.C. Wildlife Federation and the state Department of Natural Resources work for conservation that helps both the hunter and the general public.

DNR even offers ways we non-hunters can help its conservation and education efforts, which gets even more important as its state allocation gets ridiculously whacked. We can buy hunting and fishing licenses, buy special state license tags, and "check off" on our state income tax forms for its Endangered Wildlife Fund.

You don't have to hunt or own a gun to support the new S.C. Camo Coalition (www.sccamo.org) and the 20 or so organizations it represents. They are fighting for conservation of natural resources.

The nonpartisan Conservation Voters of South Carolina (www.conservationvoters

ofsc.org) has been working since 2002 to make conservation and environmental issues a top priority among South Carolina's elected leaders and voters. It hopes to soon have a clear majority in the Statehouse that understands the link between traditional South Carolina values and today's need for conservation and environmental protection.

These values long have been championed by hunters and anglers. If a tax-free weekend on guns helps us get back to our conservation values, South Carolina won't be chided as last in everything much longer.