Congratulations on not killing anyone through your misfortunes.

You are a modern day hero.

Going over old ground here. As I have said before, where I live travel trailers don't hold up the roads and there are millions of kms of ATV trails in the mountainous back country that surrounds us and the dead thing in my picture is food we harvested instead of popping into safeway for some neatly shrinkwrapped antibiotic infested meat. Which reminds me....is this you in the picture? And you said you didn't approve of these kind of pictures

Your argument holds no water Mate. Firstly Guns don't kill people - people do. Have you ever heard of root cause analysis? If you have a bunch of phsychos running around the USA and you remove guns from the equation then guess what...you still have a bunch of phsychos running around because you haven't addressed the root cause of the problem. Now what? They will probably google how to manufacture a nail bomb or something even more deadly. And as far as hunting deer, as I have said before, if more people hunted then less animals would die. Deer die due to overpopulation so if more people hunted for their meat then less cows would die and people would harvest some of the deer that would have died due to overpopulation. The meat you buy at Safeway has been killed BTW in case you weren't aware and prior to that it had a way shittier life than the deer that hunters harvest. You are a product of the brainwashed society that now dominates the UK. Just because someone else kills an animal so you can eat meat doesn't make you a better person than the outdoorsman / woman that gets out there and harvests his or her own meat.

Wow you are a modern day 'rhymes with banker' mate!
Why is it embarrassing or disgusting to teach kids how to shoot?Because that's your opinion?
Also like throwing a fish back in water,target shooting is harmless also!

Here's some reading for those of you too lazy to google things for yourselves:

http://jpfo.org/articles-assd03/gun-...erspective.htm

There's plenty more out there that you can find yourselves faster than posting your opinions on firearms owners and what you think of us teaching our children how to shoot,and safely handle firearms.
Just for another coal on the fire I started teaching my oldest how to shoot a .22 when she was 8,her 7,& 6 year old sisters also know firearms safety,no finger on the trigger,always point only at the target,don't touch anything,etc..

Education is always better than Ignorance!

Look we’ve all heard the gun don’t kill people rhetoric… usually by the NRA
We’ll lets be fair where there are guns homicide rates are generally higher… why ??
Well yes there is somebody behind the gun, yes they've decided to kill, but having a gun makes the kill easier and much more likely to be successful…

That’s why so many countries like them controlled

To pick a nit in the above. I don't think hunting is a rural activity conducted by the "rural community", whatever that is. It's something done by people who drive out from the suburbs then zoom around shooting at things from their ATVs and trucks, chucking stuff out of the windows as they go. scootb is, I suspect, a typical hunter in terms of where he lives; he mentioned there being some large number of F150s on his street, that's not a manner of description appropriate to a rural location. People who live in the country have other things to do than hunt; for example, in the Autumn they have to paint "COW" on each of their cows and wrap their horses in day-glo blankets.

Well I can see your point…

And I would agree that education is better than ignorance… however I would liken your case to learning about steam engines and then insisting that the child learn practically to build, maintain and operate a working steam driven device

It’s a nice idea but out of touch with currently reality, maybe useful in some niche way or possibly if the apocalypse came

but other than that more likely a form of self-justification for your own personal choices

Oh. Here's an unlicensed child plinking London Pride cans in a semi-public place with a .22 (cans rather than bottles as we're environmentally friendly in the country).

I can almost understand people who've been born into the hunting culture... but these expat types who buy into it wholesale and then become evangelists for it...? There's a need about them. something not quite right, something missing.

What's not to approve in that picture?

Oh FFS...."We shouldn't take the guns away from the psycho's (your word) because, well, they might go out and find something more dangerous to be pyscopathic with". As an argument, that's as specious as the old "guns don't kill, people do" chestnut.

I don't have a problem with hunting and controlled (should be more controlled IMHO) firearm ownership for that purpose. Loves a bit of moose and all that. However, the US populace has more than adequately demonstrated that they are not responsible enough to be allowed to bear arms, arm bears or whatever the hell they believe is their constitutional right.

I advocate taking a leaf from the George W "War on Terror" book as an approach to gun control. If you decide, because you think it's your constitutional right that you need guns perhaps to protect yourself from the government then you should be considered a terrorist. Employing the "you are either with us or against us" approach that means that the US authorities should conduct anti-terrorism operations against you as they do other terrorist organisations such as, well, Al Quaeda. So own guns and expect a drone overhead and a hellfire missile through the door momentarily. That'd discourage gun ownership. Which would be a good thing.

Id rather that my kids grew up and filled their leasure time with the responsible use of guns at a range than say, racing sports bikes on the street, or razzing around on an ATV. Certainly safer and a more controlled environment.

Guns in the wrong hands are undoubtedly a problem, but legislation isnt going to change that and tens of milllions of guns out there are not going to magically disappear if made illegal, so society needs to deal with the people that are the problem, not the guns.

As for all this about guns being symbolic of power over other people? I call bullshit on that. How can they be if everyone else has them anyway. Is a carving knife symbolic of power over other people? After all, if I corner you with a knife its the same difference.

I find someones choice of gun no more sybolic than chosing to drive a 5.0 Mustang or a Subaru WRX. My friend chooses to collect guns in much the same way as my Dad chooses to collect stamps, the history and technology interest him, killing things with them does not.

Many catch and release fish die soon after as a result of the trauma. A minimum of 10%, averaging about 20%

Paper targets just get recyled.

I'm afraid I disagree, Iain. Guns were invented as an instrument of death - an instrument more efficient than swords and battleaxes. Some modern guns have found more specialised uses in shooting at non-living targets, but the gun, as a concept, remains a tool rooted in the idea that it is a more effective way of despatching enemies than poking holes in them or cutting bits off them.

As it happens, I quite enjoy shooting. I've shot for game birds (in the UK, not here), I've taken part in competitive shooting with rifles and handguns, and a good day out blasting clays is excellent fun. But, in every instance, the instructor/organizer/rules etc are very, very clear. Don't point a gun anywhere other than down the range or at the ground; certainly don't point it at anybody or anything unless you intend to do it harm. To do so is foolish and dangerous, even with a .22 target pistol.

Guns, even target-shooting guns, are designed to wound, maim or kill. If it is the intent of an unbalanced, or just fundamentally unpleasant, person to wound, maim or kill others, then a gun is one of the most efficient ways of achieving that.

I am in a pretty rural area. Many of my neighbors hunt. The ones that come out from the city to their cottages by the river generally dont.

I dont think there are any hard and fast rules regarding who hunts. Many of the members of the local "fish and game club" (shooting range) hunt, and many of those are actively involved in conservation efforts to ensure that there are still things for them to shoot in seasons to come.

Many of the members of the club have no interest in killing anything and shoot only targets. One thing they all seem to have in common is a desire to see weapons used responsibly.

You just cant paint everyone the same in this debate.

And no one yet has addressed the very simple point that you can pass as many laws as you like, it wont make much difference to someone who has decided they are going to kill someone else. After all, that is already pretty illegal, the gun law aspect is kind of like doing a mafia boss for tax evasion.

There are a lot of guns out there, and a lot of people use them for pleasure. Passing laws is not going to change either of those facts or stop guns getting into the hands of the very tiny proportion of the population that we should be concerned about. The gun genie is out of its bottle in north america and no amount of hand wringing is going to put it back Im afraid. Deal with the people that should not have guns more effectively, rather than criminalizing the responsible majority.