Banned wagon
A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit
A BAN on hunting, the Prime Minister has long sought to assure us, would not be followed by bans on other country sports; but many Labour MPs have other ideas. Stephen McCabe, MP for Birmingham Hall Green, is outraged that children are being exposed to the ways of the shoot at an age when they ought to be tucked up in their beds with their bunnies. Shooting magazines, he complains, have been publishing 'celebratory articles featuring children as young as three posing with dead animals, and child-shooters as young as ten carrying shotguns'. In at least one reported instance, he goes on, a child of nine has been granted a shooting certificate in his own name by police. Mr McCabe has now tabled a Commons motion to ban children beneath the age of 12 or 14 from partaking in shoots.
No doubt child shooters are very much a matter of grave concern round Mr McCabe's way, but that is more to do with the failure of the police and courts to enforce existing criminal law to bring drugs gangs to heel. But is it really fair to equate gun crime with organised game shoots, where children are properly supervised at all times and are taught responsible use of weapons from an early age?
The fact is that gun crime has risen since the government outlawed pistolshooting. Forcing children from the shooting field will merely spoil somebody else's sport without going one bit towards reducing gun crime. But there is something more sinister to Mr McCabe's plan. He subscribes to an increasingly common view that children must be protected from all mention of dead animals. If you turn to the back page of modern children's books, you can be sure that the wolf will make friends with the pig and the rabbits will escape the gun. There is an army of propagandists preparing our children for the great day when veganism rules and the very idea of killing an animal is abhorrent to all.
Ross Clark
Previous page
