There are several reasons Jews never got involved in hunting, as you stated one of the reasons being forbidden.
There is no Jewish hunting tradition, owing to the halakhic requirements for humane slaughter of animals and ban on their cruel treatment. We are taught to identify with the hunted, not with the hunters.
Throughout three millennia of dwelling as a pariah minority amidst the gentiles, the traditional Jewish response to pagan, Christian, and Moslem persecution has favored paying off their persecutors, on the assumption that they would not be dumb enough to kill the goose that keeps laying golden eggs. The logical conclusion of this survival strategy is incisively documented in Raul Hilberg's treatise, The Destruction of the European Jews. In spite of this fiasco, Jewish disdain for self-defense and political autonomy continues as a matter of self-loathing and inertia.
http://judaism.about.com/library/3_askrabbi_c/bl_hunting.htmlook up the passage in the old Hebrew history book that states: "was there a shield or a spear seen amoung fourtythousand in Israel?"
In another passage it states that the Philistines/ Palestinians did not permit the Jews to sharpen their farming tools for fear that they would forge swords and spears! That is part of your tradition. I'm supposing it came about, at least in part during the Babylonian/ Iraq / Iran captivities where the Rabbinical authority developed. The exiles were enslaved and those who survived found that investing in higher education, which the captors esteemed, to the point where it takes on a religious quality, enabled them to survive and even prosper. Those who thought like this were "remnants."
It violates a prohibition with origins in a law that states that the taking of a limb from a living creature and eating it is unlawful. (Eyver Min Ha'Chai) Also from the learnings that Esau used to enjoy hunting not only for food but just for the kill making him a Rasha or evil man.
I don't hunt, but that should pose another question, if your life is in danger, you are starving and you need food, would it be ok to hunt to get food? We can't survive off grass after all.
Also most hunting "organizations" aren't really pro-gun at all, they are what we refer to as "Fudd's", Fudd's believe that the right to bear arms only applies to hunting and not so called "evil black rifles" or "handguns". There are a few pro gun hunting groups but not many.