Eley article on attitudes to shooting sports.

GooseB

Just read this and thought I'd mention it here to fellow shooters if they want to read it.

https://eley.co.uk/shooting-stigmas-how-shooting-sports-are-perceived-in-the-public-eye/

https://eley.co.uk/shooting-stigmas-how-shooting-sports-are-perceived-in-the-public-eye/

badaj0z

Good article.

JP22

Yes, very good article, read it a few days ago.

If professionals are having difficulty with people understanding their sport and accepting it as a legitimate pastime/sport, then what chance for the man and his dog.

Rural pursuits are being slowly chipped away, bit by bit. Mark my words, there will come a day when your grandkids will be in court for fishing with a rod and line.

Cass

@JP22 Rod and line - Its already here.

There are many reasons we don't get many youngsters into the sport. Lack of interest, changing wants, attention span, etc. are all personal reasons which come and go, but the ones we need to tackle are, as said in the article, the impression of the general public of firearms and shooting sports.

We're facing a much larger counter organisation known as Government. While laws are written to combat criminal activity it has a negative and devastating impact on shooting sports. Now anyone not familiar with shooting sports should NOT take that to mean that the law curtails our sport. What it means is simple. The Government's inability to properly deal with criminality is to introduce such broad sweeping and largely ineffective laws that will devastate a legal and licensed sport by way of "collateral damage" in an attempt to prevent criminality.

The pistol ban of 2009. The mos ineffective piece of legislation aimed at penalising criminals with firearms. Newsflash, criminals don't care about laws so a million more won't help. However that single act destroyed centrefire pistol shooing in this country and done nothing to combat illegal firearm possession/criminality.

Back to the theme of the thread, the public view anyone with a firearm exactly as the article describes. A nutter. They don't see the dedication, money, time, intelligence, and sacrfice that goes into sports shooting.By curtailing shooting sports with more and more restrictive gun laws they block more and more youngsters from entering the sport, as well as those that are not so young, as the effort seems too much or too troublesome. This goes back to the topic of a "death by a thousand cuts". IOW we lose such a small ammount each year that we don't notice it until its too late.

The Government, through legislation, make some allowances for Plympic sports but realsitically non Olympic sports account for a much greater number of sport shooting people so why is it ignored or vilified?

As the Government have a larger microphone than us and can legislate their way to victory its a tough challenge, but one we must be prepared to meet if the sport is to survive in its current climate otherwise, as said above, out grandchildren will ask us about what used to be while looking at pictures.

Grizzly 45

As one of the DOJ heads said to me in a meeting a few years ago."We are not interested in criminal ownership of firearms.Jiust in civilian ownership,as it is easier to control."

QED.