I’m not unsympathetic to those who lost loved ones in mass murders. I’ve been there myself, and while it was a friend versus a family member, I can extrapolate what it’s like from what I’ve experienced to know it’s not something I’d wish on anyone.
But on the same token, I refuse to just bend the knee to everyone who lost someone to a madman who wants to demean the things that matter.
The UK took a hard turn on guns after the Dunblane massacre, and it hasn’t really helped. They’ve had plenty of mass shootings since then, as well as terrorist attacks aplenty, all while having a largely disarmed populace.
Yet the truth is that there are still guns out there, and the way we get to use them here in the United States is just cool. It’s so cool that there are gun clubs in the UK that try to replicate some of our shooting matches.
And that bothers some people, including at least one person who lost a loved one at Dunblane.
The brother of a five-year-old girl killed in the Dunblane massacre has said US-style shooting clubs are glamourising firearms – 30 years after the tragedy.
Jack Crozier, whose sister Emma was one of 16 kids killed with their teacher, has demanded gun laws be kept up to date to combat a spike in “practical shooting” clubs, which sees people fire at targets against the clock.
Within days of the March 13 1996 tragedy, the Snowdrop petition – which called for tighter gun controls – was launched and gathered more than one million signatures, including 450,000 from Sunday Mail readers.
In 1997 the then Tory government agreed to a partial ban but it was Tony Blair’s Labour government that finally made all handguns illegal.
But a Sunday Mail investigation has previously uncovered a growing craze of American combat-style shooting clubs in Scotland which, due to a loophole in firearms laws, don’t fall under the strict licensing requirements.
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“It’s incredibly important that as time moves on, our gun laws do too and are kept up to date due to the emergence of American-style practical shooting which is dangerous, and I don’t think it has any place in Scotland.
“These clubs are trivialising the use of dangerous weapons while trying to make shooting more accessible.
“All they are doing is glamourising shooting and weapons. This is an Americanised sport and it’s everything we want to get away from in the UK.
I hate to break it to Crozier, but guns are cool.
If they weren’t, there’d be no market for this sort of thing in the UK, and yet, there is. Why? Because guns are cool. Shooting is cool. Shooting like you’re John Wick is even cooler.
Under the laws in the UK, these people can’t take these guns home. They can’t do anything at all with them away from the club, as I understand things, which means no matter how much these clubs proliferate, there’s absolutely no way these clubs could make anyone less safe.
Instead, Crozier is like many other anti-gunners who seem to think his own discomfort should impact the actions of others.
None of these people is hurting anyone. If it glamorizes guns and shooting, so what? If the gun laws in the UK work as advertised, then nothing bad can come of it.
If they don’t, then the question is whether the clubs are somehow responsible or if the laws just straight out don’t work.
These are people who are just trying to have some fun, or maybe learn a little bit about something they couldn’t learn about elsewhere. For writers, as an example, these clubs give them an opportunity to experience what some of their characters might experience, giving them an opportunity to be better writers as a result.
Or video game developers who learn that no, you can’t shoot a .50 caliber rifle one-handed. At least, not with any accuracy or wrist bones remaining.
The number of people who can benefit from this is immeasurable, but what we’ve got is someone who is using their status as someone who lost a sister to a horrific event to try and take a shot at what other people do for fun, all without hurting a soul.
It’s no different than our own anti-gunners who want to end ownership of things like AR-15s or all semi-auto rifles. Most of us who own them do so for our own enjoyment, among other reasons, and that doesn’t matter to them because it’s all about their trauma. Their history trumps our own, in their minds, and who cares if we’ve ever needed such a weapon to protect ourselves? They had something bad happen, and that gives them legitimacy or something.
Never mind people like our own Ryan Petty or me, who have also been there and aren’t anti-gun. Our feelings don’t matter in the least.
I’m fine with someone dismissing mine, to some extent–just to some, though, because some people take it too damn far–but Ryan’s? Sit down and shut up.
The truth is that these clubs thrive in Scotland because shooting is cool. Guns are cool. They don’t need glamorizing because they’re cool on their own, and if you can’t handle that, well…learn to deal with disappointment.
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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