UK - Call for ban on sale of gun magazines to children gets massive public support

[SecularMotion]

An overwhelming majority of people want gun magazines that show animals being killed for sport consigned to newsagents' top shelves alongside pornography, according to a new public opinion poll. An even higher proportion want the sale of such publications restricted to people over the age of 18.

Eight-four per cent of respondents to the NOP poll, which was commissioned by Animal Aid, favour a ban on the sale of gun magazines to children. Seventy-four per cent want them banished to top shelves.

The results come in the wake of the publication of a new Animal Aid report, called Gunning For Children: How the gun lobby recruits young blood. It describes the considerable resources Britain's gun lobby - composed of well-connected groups such as the British Association for Shooting and Conservation and the Countryside Alliance - devotes towards encouraging children to take up guns at a young age. Gun magazines, the report argues, serve as front-line propagandists for this recruitment effort.

Across the country, in high street newsagents such as WHSmith and on supermarket shelves, children have easy access to publications such as Shooting Times, Sporting Gun, Shooting Sports and Sporting Rifle - magazines that encourage and even celebrate the killing of animals for ‘sport'. Shooters are featured posing boastfully alongside animals they have just slaughtered. Grinning young children are shown holding up or standing over shot pheasants, rabbits, foxes and pigeons.

http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/73341/call-for-ban-on-sale-of-gun-magazines-to-children-gets-massive-public-support

[former-republican]

1. Good grief

UK wins the prize again

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

2. Maybe they have a gun porn law

[ileus]

3. why would the UK even have firearm publications?

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

4. for the same reason we do...

...they like them

[holdencaufield]

8. In fact ...

... there are a great number of shooters in the UK. Pretty much anyone can get a gun, they just have to provide proof of the need. Hunting and target shooting are the most acceptable needs, self-defence is specifically listed as NOT a valid reason to own a firearm. To prove need, you have to join and pay dues to a shooting association and local gun club.

Firearms in the UK are put into categories -- shotguns and BB guns are more simple to obtain than centre-fire rifles. Since 1997 Semi-automatics of any caliber and handguns being nearly impossible to obtain a permit. Olympic pistol-shooters are prohibited from training for their sport anywhere in the UK. Cowboy action shooting is increasingly popular in the UK because it gives citizens a valid reason to own handguns (cap and ball, single-action revolvers ONLY).

There are strict laws on how the weapons must be secured in the home (gun safe, physically attached to the building structure), ammunition in a separately locked container. Guns carried on the person (only to and from hunting or the range) must be locked, ammunition secured separately (in some cases, bolt removed and padlock through the breech). Police have lists of all firearms owned by citizens and can (and do) make unannounced spot-checks to verify that all firearms are secured.

Despite these draconian laws and restrictions - firearm crimes in the UK have been steadily on the increase (more than 11,000 in 2011)
The British Journal of Criminology report from 2011 show no reduction in gun-related deaths or crimes since the introduction of harsher gun laws in 1997.

[GreenStormCloud]

5. They would really freak out if they saw some of our magazine racks.

We have titles like "Combat Handguns Magazine", "SWAT Magazine"

[holdencaufield]

6. So ...

... to be clear

-- Kate Hudson's boobies on the front-page of the Daily Sun .... GOOD

... a picture of a Glock that a child might see .... BAD

[sylvi]

7. Are there really that many

Are there really that many UK children sneaking around the shops, furtively perusing Field & Stream (or whatever the Brits' version of that is) while they nervously glance back and forth down the aisle to check if Mum's coming? Are there secret troves of them hidden under pubescent boys' mattresses, their sticky pages ogled by torchlight after the folks have retired for the evening? My God, can the youth survive this onslaught of heathen, devilish firearm porn?

It starts out just magazines, sure. Next thing you know they've graduated to Duck Hunt at the local arcade. Before you know it they're standing on a street corner, trading their bodies for Airsoft pellets. Another tragic tale of societal decay.

[trouble.smith]

9. they have no right to own weapons & now they have no right to read about weapons. See how it works?

But it would be different here. sure it would.

[4th law of robotics]

11. Fanatics often are not content to merely ban some activity/object they dislike

they also don't want people talking about the offensive noun either.

[4th law of robotics]

10. Just one more law. That's all they need and finally they will all be safe forever

Not this one. The next one.

Always the next one.

[Atypical Liberal]

12. Hey, why not get rid of free speech, too? n/t

[friendly_iconoclast]

13. This reminds me of a half-joking remark I once read on Fark.com:

"In twenty years, I will invade Great Britain armed with a spork and a water pistol. In a week, I'll be King of England."

[ErikO]

14. Considering the source of typical violence, they are going after the wrong publications.

They should go after Knife World or Dog Fancy instead.

Oh yeah, I forgot; "For The Children!"