Are we victims?

[Christopher Graffius]

The recent discussions over lead and cages reminds me that about once every three months a story breaks in the shooting press that claims that shooting will be banned/ be impossible/severely damaged. Thinking back we had emtryl - without which game shooting would die because all pheasants would get diseases. Then we had the gamebird cost sharing levy - which was certain to be foisted on us which would make shooting unaffordable for many - but it hasn't been. Then there was the "after hunting you're next" which we haven't been. There was the we'll become like Holland story, the wildfowling is about to be banned by Natural England. Then there were the scares about the general licence - and we're still using it to shoot pigeons. Cages are the same - but I'm stone cold certain having looked at the facts that partridge production won't stop in the UK and that we'll still be shooting pheasants next season - I'm so confident I've already paid the shoot deposit.

 

At the root of all these stories is a small - often very small - grain of truth, but that gets exaggerated or twisted out of all proportion into a scare story.

 

Of course, there's a school of journalism that believes that conflict and controversy sells, there may be a view among some organisations that alarmism is an excellent recruiting sergeant - but you would have thought that crying "wolf" so often would have devalued the veracity of the messanger.

 

It still surprises me that so many people take an uncritical view of these stories, perhaps an argument for the bad effects of consuming lead.

 

I think that there's small group that indulges in a culture of victimisation, a pessimistic view of the sport where everyone's out to get us - and this flies in the face of the facts.

 

I'm not saying that we don't have problems and issues to deal with, we do, but the record suggests that British shooting is remarkably resiliant and successful.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Christopher

[groach1234]

i feel the problem s that we in the shooting community to feel vulnerable and it is very easy to be sent into a hype thinking our favourite hobby/pass time/way of life will be banned. I still have faith in basc as we stand but only time will tell if it is well or misplaced trust

 

George

[scolopax]

You forgot the banning of the release of chukar partridges and their hybrids. That was supposed to kill off driven partridge shooting overnight, put some game farmers out of business etc etc.

 

The overall effect was in fact very positive, pure redlegs fly much better than chukar hybrids and have actually led to a massive increase in driven partridge shooting.

[Christopher Graffius]

i feel the problem s that we in the shooting community to feel vulnerable and it is very easy to be sent into a hype thinking our favourite hobby/pass time/way of life will be banned. I still have faith in basc as we stand but only time will tell if it is well or misplaced trust

 

George

 

Thanks, - how's a hundred years of work when it comes to making up your mind?

 

But I don't want this to become an is BASC doing its job or not thread. The evidence is there for all to see - and it's interesting that the same question is rarely discussed when it comes to other organisations.

 

Here's a second thought. Who are we so frightened of? Take the antis. Their income has fallen through the floor. They've been cutting staff, their budgets are a mess and I'm reliably informed that they won't be mounting a campaign againt any repeal of the Hunting Act because they don't have the resources.

 

So who are we scared of?

 

Christopher

[toka_shigazu]

yup...i agree with both the above!!!

 

ATB

[anser2]

A lot of the problem is a shooting magazines trying scare tatics to increase circulation A quieter more rational reporting of the news would help calm down these stories and make a much more interesting read.

[mudpatten]

In my opinion a significant part of the problem is the Shooting Times.

 

The Shooting Times is registered as a newspaper and the sole task of the editor and staff is to sell magazines. Like any newspaper scandalous and lurid headlines sell more copy than those, as far as shooting is concerned, which might say "Apart from a couple of areas that need to be watched closely,shooting is actually doing quite well." No "shock, horror probe", and consequent increase in sales there then.

 

The ST is not responsible to any members nor does it have the ear of any political party. No one consults the ST. As with any newspaper, the price we pay for the freedom of speech is the complete lack of accountability of the editor.

 

The ST and its publishing house, which includes other shooting titles have, in my opinion, a clear bias towards the CA and as can be seen in any one of a number of recent topics, wastes no time in promoting the CA and undermining BASC.

 

Thumb through a few back copies and see what I mean.

 

Is there some other agenda at work here which involves undermining one shooting organisation whilst boosting the achievements, and membership numbers, of another?

[Blunderbuss]

I read shooting times, because I like to have an inject of shooting related stuff midweek, when work is grinding me down and the weekends shooting seems a long way off. But, I take a lot of what I read in it with a huge dose of salt. Its alarmist and scaremongering in the extreme, because they think that is what sells. Lets be honest, in a weekly magazine that's over a hundred years old, there are only so many articles about pigeon shooting, pheasant rearing or dog training you can write without starting to repeat yourself. So a bit of "we're all doomed" keeps the punters coming back. I don't have my head in the sand and know there are threats to shooting but its nowhere near as bad as ST and many on here would have you believe.

 

I honestly believe shooting is stronger, more popular and on a better footing now, than it has been in my lifetime (this from someone who handed in some treasured pistols post Dunblane).

 

It's not unique to shooting. I sometimes read MCN - Motorcycle News, another weekly. Known as more c**p then news by many bikers, it's filled to the brim with sensationalist bad news stories about Europe, the government and police persecuting innocent bikers and trying to get to get motorcycles banned. Most of it is complete made up tosh, designed to feed the victim culture, pad out a weekly paper and make it sell. I see a lot of parallels with some of the shooting press, and I'm sure its the same with other pastimes too.

Edited April 2, 2010 by Blunderbuss

[Wesman]

I just think it's because it always feels that the government are out to get us. Ban this, restrict that. When did the government interfere in football or fishing? We're always under the cosh, be it armed response police or bloody crazed antis. We're always on the defensive.

[Blunderbuss]

But how many armed police or blood crazed antis have you personally had to face?

[Christopher Graffius]

I just think it's because it always feels that the government are out to get us. Ban this, restrict that. When did the government interfere in football or fishing? We're always under the cosh, be it armed response police or bloody crazed antis. We're always on the defensive.

 

But why does it feel like that? Is it because that's what other people, pursuing their own agenda of boosting sales or signing up members, keep telling us that the government is out to get us?

 

My working life involves representing shooting to government for BASC and I can tell you that this is not the case. The government wants shooting to flourish, it's a useful earner, it's good for rural economies, it helps the environment - no government would willingly lose that.

 

Where governments in the past have failed shooting - pistols etc. - it's normally because public pressure is so great that they can't stand up to it. Remember that the Tory Home Secretary who started the pistol ban was himself a shooter - Michael Howard. Other cases normally involve sheer ignorance. Most civil servants and politicians don't shoot and don't know or understand the details. That's why it's so essential that BASC is a "key stakeholder", as they're called nowadays, and at the table and able to lift a phone to the key people. It's critical to ensuring that politicians can resist pressure and don't make mistakes that would damage shooting.

 

Currently all major political parties have been signed up to support shooting for years. A succession of government Ministers and Opposition spokesmen come to BASC's party conference events to praise the sport and their praise is reported in the press - albeit in rather less space than the scare stories. This all-party support means that the principle of whether or not we should shoot is not a matter of serious political debate . As a result we're left discussing the detail - and that's a good place to be.

 

Issues of detail will always be there. Government now has a system of annual, triennial and quinquennial reviews and consultations that will keep the shooting press in copy forever. But don't be misled; these are not attacks on the sport. If they ever are, you can expect BASC to be jumping up and down and calling for grass roots support to fight for shooting.

 

I'm not up on football but fishing is in a similar situation. They're better off than we are because more people fish but think back to the problems they've had with predator control, canoeing, a right to to roam on rivers, licences for sea anglers, water extraction, pollution - I could go on.

 

In the end we're not on the defensive, we're generally in explanatory mode. Over the past ten years we've even been on the offensive - think the abolition of game licences, the closed season for selling game and licences to deal in game, the extension of seasons for deer and the variation of calibres, winning court cases on firearms conditions and pistols, or placing a duty on Natural England to consider shooting interests for the coastal path. Of course the antis always suggest something which will damage us - and it gets blown out of all proportion by the shooting press. But the antis are in a box marked "extremist" and they're rarely taken seriously.

 

There's a school of thought that thinks shooting's worst enemy is our ability to talk ourselves down and shoot ourselves in the foot through bad behaviour or public insensitivity. Any thoughts?

 

Christopher

[Blunderbuss]

I agree Christopher, we are our own worse enemy sometimes. But what's the answer?

 

When I lived in Germany with the army, I did my Jagdshein tests and exams- German hunters licence. It involved shooting tests with rifle and shotgun, exams on quarry recognition, seasons etc. It was like a DSC1 but covered all legal quarry, and you couldn't shoot any live quarry without it. Conduct, safety, respect for quarry and tradition was hammered home, and I reckon as a result, German hunters have less issues with poor behaviour, etc.

 

Would it work here? The downside is its hugely expensive and would inevitably lead to a huge reduction in our numbers, as many people would view it as too daunting or expensive. With a smaller less influential rump of shooters, we would be far more vulnerable to urban MPs scoring quick points off us with bad legislation.

 

Its the same thing with licensing all air rifles, often advocated on here. In some ways it might prevent the real scrotes who shouldn't be allowed a pointy stick. But air rifles are and always have been a gateway into the shooting sports for thousands of kids. I bet most on here started with a air rifle? If they were licensed, most wouldn't bother and I predict mass participation in shooting would wither on the vine within a generation.

 

Raising standards through voluntary training and codes of practice like BASC young shots and DSC are the way ahead, but these should remain voluntary IMHO.

Edited April 3, 2010 by Blunderbuss

[Cranfield]

Like a lot of specialist subject magazines, shooting magazines have been dying a slow death for some years.

The main problem is that they have to regurgitate the same articles/items year after year.

So its the same old stuff, plus they are stuffed with adverts and articles that are really adverts.

Naturally they have to try to boost, or maintain, their circulation so out come the controversies, real, exaggerated, or imagined.

 

I stopped buying shooting magazines many years ago for all the above reasons.

[Christopher Graffius]

I agree Christopher, we are our own worse enemy sometimes. But what's the answer?

 

When I lived in Germany with the army, I did my Jagdshein tests and exams- German hunters licence. It involved shooting tests with rifle and shotgun, exams on quarry recognition, seasons etc. It was like a DSC1 but covered all legal quarry, and you couldn't shoot any live quarry without it. Conduct, safety, respect for quarry and tradition was hammered home, and I reckon as a result, German hunters have less issues with poor behaviour, etc.

 

Would it work here? The downside is its hugely expensive and would inevitably lead to a huge reduction in our numbers, as many people would view it as too daunting or expensive. With a smaller less influential rump of shooters, we would be far more vulnerable to urban MPs scoring quick points off us with bad legislation.

 

Its the same thing with licensing all air rifles, often advocated on here. In some ways it might prevent the real scrotes who shouldn't be allowed a pointy stick. But air rifles are and always have been a gateway into the shooting sports for thousands of kids. I bet most on here started with a air rifle? If they were licensed, most wouldn't bother and I predict mass participation in shooting would wither on the vine within a generation.

 

Raising standards through voluntary training and codes of practice like BASC young shots and DSC are the way ahead, but these should remain voluntary IMHO.

 

I agree with you about compulsory tests. At present the disadvantages - disincentive to take up the sport, expense, poor safety after testing - outweigh the advantages. I think I'm right in saying that one of the recent mass killings in Germany was committed by a person who'd just passed his hunting exams.

 

The answer lies in effective self-regulation and education forming a common shooting culture and values. I think we've made enormous strides here - just think of the values that operated in game shooting a hundred years ago where conspicuous consumption ruled the roost. We have the codes of practice, lots of voluntary training for those who wish to take it up and BASC has a disciplinary system to, in the first instance, help people comply with the codes and in the final resort to discipline members who persist in doing something dreadful. Any system of effective self-regulation must have teeth, but my problem is that BASC's disciplinary system is virtually the only one. Some other organisations won't do it, with one pleading that they couldn't afford to lose the membership fee of the offending member - he was keeping thousands of pheasants in pens for the whole year and then dribbling out a proportion to his commercial shoot just before the guns arrived.

 

The Shoot Assurance Scheme, which all the organisations agreed to, was intended to delegate the process to a commercial company, but that's been suspended because of lack of interest from the shoots - although the work done in compiling a set of standards may be of benefit in the long term. There are no proposals to replace it on the table.

 

I also agree with you about airguns. The current problem is the independent Calman Commission recommendation that powers over airguns should be devolved to Scotland. The good news is that nothing's going to happen for at least five years - which gives us time to campaign - and I've been told privately that whatever is said in public the legislative difficulties are so enormous that it will probably never happen. That won't stop BASC campaigning against it, just in case.

 

Perhaps what we need is a groundswell from members of all organisations who realise that effective self-regulation is a guarantee of our future. But I'm not holding my breath. One of the bizarre things about shooting is that important debates about issues like this - rather than scare stories - tend to be stifled. Except on Pigeon Watch!

 

Christopher

[Bombadil]

Look at how shooting has changed in the past 100 years. It seems every couple of years a new law is passed that restricts shooting. Our olympic team has to live abroad.

 

I think it is very fair to say that shooting is a sport under great threat. In the past i doubt i would get the looks i do to day when i say i enjoy hunting rabbits. I'm sure that labeling every new law the death of shooting is innacurate, however it does help to diminish the sport.

[Blunderbuss]

On the upside, mainstream TV programs such as countrywise, River Cottage, Jamie Oliver, "Kill it cook it eat it" all show shooting in a far more positive light than would have been common a decade ago. Venison and other game is common on the high street when it never used to be. I've seen a deer stalker on "come dine with me" and pigeons cooked on masterchef. All of this chips away at the negative perceptions of shooting and I think a renewed interest in ethically sourced local food can only be good for shooting. I've noticed a change in peoples attitudes where I work, they don't always recoil in horror (as they used to) when they find out what my hobby is, and some are actually interested.

 

I think stressing popular buzz words when describing game meat such as: locally sourced; low carbon footprint; sustainable; free range etc plugs into the Zeitgeist and often convinces people who would sneer otherwise. This is why I think BASC were right to grasp the nettle of intensive game rearing which has the potential to undue our ethical argument and turn the public against us.

[Christopher Graffius]

On the upside, mainstream TV programs such as countrywise, River Cottage, Jamie Oliver, "Kill it cook it eat it" all show shooting in a far more positive light than would have been common a decade ago. Venison and other game is common on the high street when it never used to be. I've seen a deer stalker on "come dine with me" and pigeons cooked on masterchef. All of this chips away at the negative perceptions of shooting and I think a renewed interest in ethically sourced local food can only be good for shooting. I've noticed a change in peoples attitudes where I work, they don't always recoil in horror (as they used to) when they find out what my hobby is, and some are actually interested.

 

I think stressing popular buzz words when describing game meat such as: locally sourced; low carbon footprint; sustainable; free range etc plugs into the Zeitgeist and often convinces people who would sneer otherwise. This is why I think BASC were right to grasp the nettle of intensive game rearing which has the potential to undue our ethical argument and turn the public against us.

 

I entirely agree with you.

 

I vividly remember, when I joined BASC a decade ago, that one of the first calls I took was from a 'fowling club chairman who was convinced that shooting would be banned within a decade. Nothing I could say -and I tried - could reassure him. A decade later I think I'd have more arguments to deploy but I'm not sure even that would convince him. My hope is that all shooters realise that they're doing something which is publicly beneficial, enormously enjoyable and produces good food. We are therefore at the centre of the debate not about to be chucked out of the balloon.

 

Christopher

[anser2]

Just to pick up on Bombdils point with the up and coming election ask which party has passed the most laws to restrict shooting - protection of birds act 1950- and later amendments , Countryside and wildlife Bill 1983 and later amendments Firearms bill that lead to the loss of pistols and tighter restrictions on firearms all came under Tory governments. Just the Crow Act ( which has turned out not to be a major problem yet and a few minor laws such as the banning of intensive pheasant breeding in battery cages have come in under a Labour government.

 

Look at what damage past governments have done to shooting before making your choice , I think you might be surprised that the party of freedom and choice has not such a good track record when it comes to shooting.

 

I think I should add I support nether Labour nor Tory parties.

Edited April 5, 2010 by anser2

[Blunderbuss]

Just to pick up on Bombdils point with the up and coming election ask which party has passed the most laws to restrict shooting - protection of birds act 1950- and later amendments , Countryside and wildlife Bill 1983 and later amendments Firearms bill that lead to the loss of pistols and tighter restrictions on firearms all came under Tory governments. Just the Crow Act ( which has turned out not to be a major problem yet and a few minor laws such as the banning of intensive pheasant breeding in battery cages have come in under a Labour government.

 

Look at what damage past governments have done to shooting before making your choice , I think you might be surprised that the party of freedom and choice has not such a good track record when it comes to shooting.

 

I think I should add I support nether Labour nor Tory parties.

 

No party could have withstood the wave of anti handgun sentiment that followed Dunblane and not legislated against them (I know, I gave evidence - briefly - at the Cullen Inquiry). You and I know it's done diddly squat to prevent gun crime, and I suspect the politicians knew it too, but the pressure to feed the baying tabloid fuelled mob was insurmountable. Yes the Tories instigated the legislation, but Labour brought it to fruition and went one further by banning .22 pistols and consigning our Olympic squad to train overseas, which at least the Tories would have left alone. The Tories have promised a free vote on the hunting act, strengthening the right to use force to defend yourself on your property and have even shown some softening of the stance on pistols.

 

Many of the current crop of Tories shoot, even Cameron though it's not a vote winner to shout about it. As opposed to Labours Notting Hill socialists who despise the countryside - even their agriculture minister was a veggie! I'm sure that endeared him to hard pressed hill farmers! On Saturday I saw my Standing Labour MP David Drew at an anti Field sports stand in the town centre. This is an MP in a rural constituency - the vast majority of Labour MPs represent urban constituencies and don't give a flying **** about the countryside and would vote for further restrictions if if endears them to their urban electorate.

 

I'm no lover of the mainstream parties, but insofar as shooting is concerned, I think the Tories are the best option

Edited April 5, 2010 by Blunderbuss