Plecotus wrote:and the more this happens, the more the public will cry out for a ban on all firearms ownership. We are supposed to be the most law-abiding sector of society. All this kind of behaviour suggests is that the vetting processes for firearms and shotgun licences doesn't work.
Totally agree. This is unacceptable behaviour whatever the arguments and passions. We're supposed to be the 'good guys' in this argument. (Although without a lot of reasoned explanation as to why culling is done and why it's essential for the good of farming businesses and the countryside via the media - which we're very unlikely to see given journalistic attitudes and priorities - we'll be seen as blood spattered sadists by a large section of the public come what may, even if we only shoot paper.)
I suspect where the real passion and hence anger arises is that this isn't only, or even primarily, about recreational pursuits. A combination of EU obsessive regulatory drive, probably none too good parliamentary draftmanship when directives became British law, NE incompetence, and actions by dedicated 'antis' determined to seek out every possible loophole to get their way irrespective of the wider consequences has put people's incomes and livelihoods at risk.
People get really worked up when this happens though a deliberate policy and course of action by one-issue 'activists' as here. Just imagine if the Greenpeace activists found a similar legal loophole and forced a shutdown of any form of transport using an internal combustion engine. Before you could say 'lynching party' they'd have a greater need to go underground and have police protection than Salman Rushdie ever did after the publication of the 'The Satanic Verses'. These factors don't make threats right or decent, but that's the way of the world. In many countries even in Europe, never mind the middle and far east, something like this would see mobs on the streets and farmers blocking roads and railway lines. Go back to the 18th and 19th century riots in this country and we'd have seen something like this too.
