Guns Are Fun With Safety First

It’s not often I venture into the dangerous arena of firearms ownership and use, because invariably when I do someone who has little or no understanding of guns decides I am fair game and promptly puts me – and all those like me – in their sights.

This seems to happen to any of us who speak out on behalf of at least some the nation’s half-million or so gun-owners. Most of us prefer to keep our own counsel and to quietly let the sometimes ridiculous comment from those who dislike firearms flow right on past us and into the waste-disposal unit, unimpeded.

It’s a little like the pro- and anti-1080 poison factions – each side has its small clique of vehement supporters, and behind them are the thinkers and the doers and those who actually know what they’re talking about. But just now and then, I feel someone should say something in defence of those who gain enjoyment out of owning and using firearms.

I’m not holding myself up as a firearms expert by any means, but I have been a firearms owner and user for more than half a century, and in that time have gained some reasonable understanding of what firearms are, how the many different types work and what they were created for, how they should be kept safe, and how dangerous they can be in the hands of someone who doesn’t know about safety or who allows the safety rules to lapse for a moment. Along the way I’ve also gained a little knowledge about the wide variety of ammunition used in firearms.

And while the dreadful tragedy at Turangi some time ago highlighted a terrible lapse in a young man’s attention to the basic rule of Identify Your Target, he was one of 10,000 or 20,000 others who used a firearm that weekend, but who did so safely. To his credit, he has totally quit any and all association with firearms and hunting, though he knows all too agonizingly that there is nothing he can ever do to bring back the life of a vibrant young woman.

One injury or death from a firearm is one too many in anyone’s language, unless we are at war, and rarely if ever is there an excuse for that injury or death. But as happens with cars and quad-bikes and ski-slopes and yachts and mountains and chainsaws, if you mix human inventions and humans, there will – sometimes – be tragedy.

I can already hear the armchair ravers scrabbling frantically for pen and paper as they scrawl out yet another in their ceaseless string of letters to the editor. There are a few such perpetual writers whom the world has somehow unfortunately overlooked – they know unswervingly in their own minds that they are experts on a vast range of subjects and feel an overwhelming compunction to write yet another letter explaining exactly how the world should be.

You watch – they’ll have Kingsley for mutton stew within a couple of weeks, for sure, and be enormously proud of the fact that they have bested me, yet again. Have at it, guys – just know that there are others out there who think differently from you. Quite differently.

The New Zealand Deerstalkers Association is, of course, right in their assertion that better and more intensive education, including firearms training, should be given to hunters and other users of guns. And it’s true that much of the population is now urban, though there’s still most of a million rural dwellers around the country, and many of them use firearms as one of the work-a-day tools around their properties.

Others, including many urban dwellers, regularly attend rigidly formal – and very enjoyable – pistol and/or small-bore shooting evenings; there are thousands more in gun clubs around the country who monthly shoot clay targets or large-bore long-range targets. And there are thousands more who are often out possum or rabbit shooting, or hunting bigger game – goats, pigs, deer, chamois, tahr.

They do it because they love the sport, and they do it because they enjoy the feel and heft of a nice firearm. And they also do it because they like being out there doing it.

Sadly, one opponent to gun ownership recently contended that “currently, anyone can own and use guns unless there are good reasons why they should not…no-one should be allowed to own and use guns in public unless there are convincing reasons in the community’s interest, not private interest, why they should.”

With due respect, it’s called democracy, Sir, the compelling reason which caused my father and millions like him to take up arms several times during the last century. And it’s that democracy which they presented to you for safekeeping that affords you the absolute right to criticize as acerbically as you want those whose ideas are different from yours.

You may like to extend that same right to those who choose to do something you may not approve of but which is entirely legal. Just let them get on with it.

Yes, we do indeed need greater training in the safe use of firearms – and we also probably need to educate the media in the accuracy of their reporting on the use of firearms and what sort of firearm has been used in a particular incident.

One report last week on the Turangi shooting noted that the hunter’s “Remington .245 shot was believed to have been fired …” There is no such thing as a .245 calibre cartridge or weapon. The calibre used was probably a .243 Winchester, though it may have been fired in a Remington firearm, and while many may have missed the subtle difference, many others will have noticed the inaccuracy immediately, and the credibility of the story would have thus been reduced.

There was a time, up until the 1950s and even beyond, when many secondary schools around the country had a School Cadet Corps, usually boys only, where young teenagers were rigorously taught the fundamentals of firearms use and firearms safety, amongst a raft of other military skills. Former army sergeants, with voices like busted fog horns, frequently ran the weekly cadet training schools, and woe betide any boy who made even the slightest error with a firearm. But we seem to have gone soft on that sort of training, along with a lot of other outdoor activities.

Yep, we surely have scurried into the towns and cities in droves, largely forgetting and forsaking many of the skills and joys we had as rural dwellers.

Yet it hasn’t happened to all, and for those who choose to hunt and shoot for the pleasure of doing so, on their own or in the company of good mates, they should be given every opportunity and right to do so.

We just need to make sure that every one of us does so with total and absolute safety, all the time.

And now, I shall await the firing squad…

Kingsley Field is a writer who has published two volumes of these columns and is now working on a third. He can be contacted at kingsley(at)accuwrite.co.nz

Read more from Kingsley Field here