[QUOTE 4225609, member: 9609"]I know many many people who are totally obsessed with birds and wildlife, people who often devote most of their spare time to helping and improving habitat, people who are fantastically knowledgeable about nature and the countryside . I am yet to hear any of them ever discussing the need or wish to own a gun, in fact quite the opposite, like me they utterly despair at the shooting fraternity and the damage they do.
And yet time and time again you will hear from those who love killing things with guns that they are in fact doing good and helping nature, for instance, if they didn't shoot the Magpies there would be no song birds left, (i wonder how they think the song birds survived in such massive numbers for the 50 million years before guns were invented) The truth is people have guns because they love killing things, they love guns, I guess it makes them feel all rugged and manly or something.
Sadly gun ownership in society is something we just have to put up with, but I do object when the gun obsessed make out they are doing good.[/QUOTE]
As good an example of confirmation bias as you will ever read, and you describe a complete polarity of opinion. I know of many shooters who work very hard to create ethical and diverse habitats for wildlife. Although that includes quarry species, the diversity of wildlife on a sustainable, managed shoot is testament to the hard work done by keepers and managers to work with wildlife. I'll give you a little example. I was speaking to a gamekeeper who had lost a number of partridge chicks to a stoat or a weasel. I asked whether he would set traps but his response surprised me. No, the loss of the birds was his fault. The weasel was as entitled to feed his family, and the partridge were a bonus. It was up to him to make the pens weasel proof, not to kill the weasel as a knee jerk reaction.
I suspect that a lot of the information you have at your fingertips is agenda driven by people who only ever see the gun ownership as the driving ambition, but in my personal experience you are very wide of the mark. Many, if not all of the shooters I know have the utmost respect for wildlife in all its forms, and are far more knowledgeable about biodiversity than many who would simply rail against "cruel gun toting toffs".
There are exceptions to the rule, but again, all the shooters I know express disgust and dismay at excessive predator control and the illegal killing of raptors etc. Personally I am very uncomfortable with the ethos of large commercialised shoots which give rise to questionable, unethical and frankly obscene practices. However much I try to distance myself from that sort of practice, I cannot even start to present my case if folk like you tar us all with the same brush.
