HYSTERICAL SHOOTING FRATERNITY ARE WAY OFF TARGET

THE hysterical response from the shooting fraternity following my recent blog calling for private ownership of guns to be banned was par for the course.

It is absolutely typical of people who think they have a right to gun down an innocent animal that they would be outraged at the suggestion that somebody might take their weapons away.

But no amount of incredulity from the bombastic participants in blood sports will change my view that their activities are immoral and their gun ownership is unnecessary.

Let’s strip this issue back to the bare bones.

Why might you want a gun? To me there are three possible reasons: (1) you may be a member of a rifle club, practising shooting at targets; (2) you enjoy killing animals and have convinced yourself that this is acceptable; or (3) you are criminal who wants to use a gun to kill, injure or frighten.

It is presumably a given that society would not wish to allow guns for the third category, so we need not explore that any further.

I have some sympathy for the people in the first category. I have no particular issue with their chosen pastime and I am not against them. But nor do I see any justification for them privately owning a gun and storing it in their own home to do it.

But it is the people in the second category who seem to have prompted the hysteria following my previous posting. They are the ones who believe it is their right to own a gun.

Why? If it’s not become obvious already I’ll state here and now that I personally find their pastime sickening. But even if you do not, even if you are in the camp that has been convinced that blood sports are acceptable, why do they need to privately own a gun and store it in their own home to do participate in their blood sport?

The answer is, of course, that they don’t. And if we are to make our society a safer place, then we should minimise any possibilities of allowing guns to fall into the wrong hands.

The problem is that our laws, at the moment, say it is okay to go out into a field and shoot a bird from the sky. And as long as society says that’s okay then the people who do it presume it’s also acceptable to own their gun and store it in their own home. They liken it to a golfer owning clubs or a tennis player owning a racket.

In reality, there is no similarity. Golf clubs and tennis rackets are designed for sport. Guns are designed to kill. The clue to the rights and wrongs is in the definition of blood sports, or as the blood sports euphemistically call them – “field sports”.

So what we really need is a step-change in society’s perception of what is and is not acceptable in terms of gun usage. Referring back to the three categories I mentioned earlier, only the first is neither illegal nor immoral.

And as long as shooting at animals is lawful, we need at the very least to protect children and young people from the horror of it as best we can.

That’s why I’ve been pleased to sign up to a campaign by Animal Aid calling for shooting magazines to become ‘top shelf’ publications.

If I had my way they’d be banned altogether along with the activities they promote, celebrate and glorify. But we certainly need to restrict unsupervised access to these magazines given the potentially distressing and damaging images they are likely to contain.

I dearly hope that Animal Aid will be successful in its campaign. If they are, society will have moved a step closer to recognising that killing animals for sport is nothing short of deplorable.