Strange attitude to guns (From Oxford Mail)

Strange attitude to guns

10:00am Tuesday 12th April 2011 in Letters

WHAT a strange letter from Steve Chandler (Oxford Mail, March 31) regarding children having shotgun licences.

“Why all the concern?” he asks, and “has anyone known of a death because of this?”

In the same issue of the paper was reported a recent shooting incident involving youths, which resulted in accidental but appalling, and possibly fatal, injuries to two innocent people.

Guns are lethal weapons which, in civilian locations, are generally intended to maim or kill wildlife, for the pleasure of the gunholder.

It makes them feel superior, I presume, but really they are simply revealing their base nature and cruelty.

Our Prime Minister favours stalking magnificent stags, apparently, and members of the Royal Family are renowned for their penchant for blasting away at game.

Are these all good examples for young people to emulate? I think not.

Presumably, when Mr Chandler asks whether anyone has known of a death caused by a child with a gun, he can somehow discount the taking of any non-human life as a non-death.

Why should other forms of life be so disregarded and discarded?

Do they have no rights whatsoever to their lives, however base they may seem to humans?

BEA BRADLEY, Cuxham Road, Watlington