Yep, thats so true, I always found it a little unnerving every time I had visit a couple of our Atomic Weapons Establishments
The firearms or the radiation ?
Radiation would bother me more.
The firearms I imagine. The Civil Nuclear Constabulary (better known as the Nuclear Police) were the only regularly armed police in the UK until the Met decided to go for the "armed bully boys with shaved heads" look on a regular basis.
Yeah well I just don't get how some can be not scared of electricity yet they are of firearms.
Arse about IMHO.
Well, the express purpose of firearms is to kill, either for hunting or warfare. That folks like you and me use them as long distance paper punches as a form of peaceful sport has itself evolved from the need to train people to use them in warfare. The British government used to promote target shooting as a sport to have a ready supply of proficient rifleman handy in case of hostilities. Everybody is aware that a firearm is a weapon, and a weapon that one is unlikely to defend oneself from without having one oneself and being proficient in its use. One has an innate understanding that a firearm is more dangerous than a fist, rock, stick, knife or sword.
You have to put this into a context.
You do.
Despite your well written piece with some of it now snipped, to us your view and that of many more including legislating Gubbermints to far to simplistic and to a large degree influenced by all the bad press about firearms and what some nutters get up to with them.
To us they are just tools, nothing more nothing less and like with any tool some of them will give a bad result if used incorrectly.
They let us solve problems in a safe and efficient manner such as the dispatch of some poor injured beast when use of a knife or spear would be dangerous
and inhumane.
Dealing with large critters takes somewhat more than a pea shooter such as mercy dispatch of stranded whales where only the larger bores able to be used by man can do such tasks efficiently.
A very good friend wrote a white paper on such dealings decades ago which is still the reference document in use here today.
Such are the decades of bad press we have set up a quite nice private facility where we and
invited guests can scratch our itchy forefingers and polish our abilities
and expose the community to safe and controlled use of tools used in all manner of legitimate sporting pursuits.
It truly saddens us that firearms get such a bad wrap .............