mojaveman
05-28-2016, 19:22
The National Park Service is calling part of a Civil War battlefield "an active crime scene" following a series of illegal excavations.
I suppose some of the stuff they find and take must be worth a lot of money.
http://cnn.com/2016/05/28/us/petersburg-battlefield-looting/index.html
This happens down here all the time. The places of history are everywhere and can not all be protected and patrolled 24/7.
I do not think it is generally professionals. Its typically very uneducated folks just barley hanging on, with delusions of striking it rich, but only finding buttons and coins to put some food on the table.
I have met some local detectorists and they rarely even know that this is illegal until they are told. Many of them have done this many times until someone lets them know. The reality is the folks I have met like this do not have internet and many of them have never even heard of it. They find a cheap detector at a flea market and just run off with detecting. Expecting them to research the law, or just know it is illegal is asking a lot. Expecting them to understand the moral and ethical issues is so much farther.
It is a terrible thing that this happens. It is also terrible that some folks (many) are so poor, uneducated and desperate that they feel they need to do something like this as just to find another way to get by. They see it as nothing different than collecting cans for nickels. (Not defending them, just an observation.)
With the above information considered, I believe the context of reason in the article is incorrect.
Things more appropriate to its context are things like the story about people "tagging" the VN memorial in LA. Or the flags stolen from all the graves and the sticks then broken and placed in a pile. Whatever is going on there is far more disturbing in its obvious intention.
However, all of it is tragic.