WH Smiths ban the sale of shooting magazines to children

Sparks

Unreal.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9606557/WH-Smith-bans-children-from-buying-shooting-magazines.html

The country's biggest newsagent WH Smith has banned children from buying shooting magazines, even though it is legal for them to hold a shotgun licence.

I know they're mostly in the UK, but they're in NI and the ROI as well (in Arnotts, in Dublin and Shannon airports and so on). People are rather angry about this...

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/whsmiths-retract-policy-on-sale-of-shooting-magazines

Perhaps a few messages on their facebook page will get noticed...
...but if not, I think the boycotting of the chain by pretty much everyone who shoots in the UK will wind up doing their bottom line enough damage to cause them to reverse it.

rowa

Google have also showed an anti-gun attitude, they have blocked some websites as not family friendly.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminiter/2012/07/05/google-sadly-joins-the-anti-gun-brigade/

cavan shooter

I think this is terrible you can buy Porn mags that make me blush, and I am a wisen old aman but not shooting times????

serious3

i was in the UK this weekend and it seems that WHSmiths, kinda like easons on steroids:D, will no longer sell shooting times and magazines of that ilk to under 14's.......

tac foley

...but they they continue to sell magazines promoting tri-sexual necrophiliac lifestyle similar stuff...sheeesh.

tac

rowa

More nanny state bullplop for which the uk is becoming famous. The magazines should head to court, its discrimination surely ?

Tommy87

cavan shooter wrote: »

I think this is terrible you can buy Porn mags that make me blush, and I am a wisen old aman but not shooting times????

I'm sure they wouldn't sell porn mags to kids either!!

In all fairness though it is serious discrimination against a legitimate sport?? Surely??

rowa

tac foley wrote: »

...but they they continue to sell magazines promoting tri-sexual necrophiliac lifestyle similar stuff...sheeesh.

tac

Ah whats wrong tac , do ya have difficulty reaching the top shelf now . But seriously whats in the magazine's that smiths object to ? pictures of gralloching or something ? Do they think the kids are going to head to richmond park in london and eviscerate a deer or something ? rubbish the lot of it.

tac foley

rowa wrote: »

Ah whats wrong tac , do ya have difficulty reaching the top shelf now . But seriously whats in the magazine's that smiths object to ? pictures of gralloching or something ? Do they think the kids are going to head to richmond park in london and eviscerate a deer or something ? rubbish the lot of it.

Well, I'm happy to relate that 'International Newt Fondler Weekly' and 'Home Egg-stretcher' are still freely available on the shelves that I can reach easily.

The point is that here in yUK, where there are a good many youngsters aged fourteen and under who have shotgun licenses - our current junior clay champion girl started when she was nine. So a fourteen-year-old shooter can be a fully paid-up upright and responsible citizen with a fully-developed sense of right and wrong and with a maturity well beyond their years from having been taught how to handle firearms safely and responsibly.

Learning to shoot properly, regardless of what type of shooting you do, develops a sense of responsibility, respect for other human beings and for the animals that you take as game, a deep understanding of the environment and what makes it all work in harmony with us, and a real life skill that you, in turn, can pass on to YOUR children, the way my dad did to me, starting at age six when I first fired a gun of any kind.

It is hoped that ANY youngster picking up any of our shooting magazines would see that there is a need to be mature and responsible, and not to play the yahoo, as so many seem to do - either from sheer ignorance, or from sheer bloody malice because they have not been taught how or just plain ignored.

It's not as though the law is not there - nobody under the age of 14 canlegally shoot ANY kind of firearm or airgun without adult supervision, and nobody under 18 can actually buy one of the legal airguns here in UK. Even then, they are required to provide a home address, even though no license is needed here for <12ft lbs air rifles.

So all joshing and p*ss-taking aside, Smiths have really scored an own goal here, IMO.

tac