My Lee-Enfield and Why you should get non shooters out for range day.

I have very recently acquired a Lee Enfield Rifle  like the one below, and it has proved to be of interest to a much wider circle of friends than just my fellow firearms enthusiasts.


If you are desperate enough to follow my twitter account ramblings you will have seen that I tweeted about a couple of folks who wanted to have a look at a real Lee Enfield. Well Sunday afternoon we did a bit of show an tell.

The folks came round for a cuppa and a look at this historic rifle. Their interest was purely historical, grandfathers and fathers had carried one during WWI and WWII and this was a chance to make a physical connection with that personal family history.

The rifle I have was built in 1908 and from the markings had the stock replaced in 1942.
So it is not much of a stretch to suggest that it might have been held by two generations of soldiers.

Anyway, after a everyone had a good look at the rifle I asked if they would like to see how you load the magazine.  I removed the bolt and made it clear that the rifle was now unable to fire and so the loading of the magazine would not present any danger and then grabbed a couple of 5 round charging clips.

The first clip loaded easily, but I admit the second required a little more practice on my part.

"So there you go, your 10 rounds are loaded which gave you 2 more rounds than the guys shooting at you"

Then came the q&a  I was not expecting:

Q: 10 rounds?  is that legal?

A: yes I have 10 round mags for all my rifles.

Q: So how many did that adler thing hold

A: 7

Q: So what is all the fuss about a 7 rounds if 10 round magazines are legal?

 A; that is what hunters have been saying....

This was a great example of how the general public with no other information than the press can be so confused about why we (sporting shooters and hunters) have been making such a fuss about 5 or  7 rounds.

In the course of a quick look at a historical artifact over a cuppa I was able to demonstrate safe handling, safe storage and answer a few questions which delivered a small antidote to media hype and misinformation.

Activists who want to ban something, seem to very capable of getting the press to publish a one sided view. I wonder if it is because the media writers are as clueless as my non shooting friends?

It is important to remind myself that I know as little about my friends wood turning and fly fishing pastimes as they know about my target shooting and hunting.

I think that the Greens and Gun Control Zealots (that want more restrictions and more bans) who push to prevent Shot Show, Hunt Fest and any sort of access to "try shooting" know that a little first had experience is deadly to the agenda.

As much as I want to yell and scream about the injustice of media ignorance and the stupidity of the laws as they stand and the lies that are being pumped out by opponents of hunting and shooting it seems that the quiet conversations over a coffee actually achieves more.

Well that's how things seem to have worked for me......

20 Years on the Road Toll is where it would have been if we did nothing.......

An unlicensed driver in unregistered car causes of large number of fatalities in a road rage incident.

Some how, despite regular and frequent police efforts to stop this sort of thing, this time it is on a scale never seen in Australia before.

The Government responds almost instantly, as if they had the solution pre packed ready to go:

To prevent future events like this they pass laws that mean licenced insured drivers of registered motor vehicles :

• are now subject to additional speed restrictions.
• vehicles will be subject to restriction on engine, fuel and passenger capacity that are even tighter than current requirements
• purchase of first and subsequent cars will require an appropriate approval from the licensing branch.
• Driving record, current number and type of vehicles, insurance claim history etc will be considered prior to approval
• owners will now be subject to regular police inspection of their homes and business to ensure that vehicles are stored securely in accordance with regulations (as interpreted by the inspecting officer regardless of that officers familiarity with the regulations or motor vehicles in general)
• New penalties & immediate suspension of license will be in place for drivers who have their vehicles stolen or commit some other breach of any number of laws and regulations that may or may not be relevant to driving history.

The Driving Public are up in Arms:

"Now see here that seems the wrong end of the stick!" they decry
"I ve done nothing wrong."
"Why  why am I being forced to submit to more laws, when the actions of the reckless driver already broke the existing?"

The NRMA come out in favor of the new rules as it required compulsory membership of a motoring association as a condition of being issued a licence.

You as the motorist speak out about this outrageous situation.

The response:

 DO YOU Know anyone who as been injured in a motor vehicle accident?
Well you do now so suck it up.

But wait

NOW 20yrs on - we find that Accidents caused by unlicensed drivers with unregistered cars have not diminished.

The news every second day has stories of some drug gang or other defy the laws about illegal drugs and unlicensed driving. We read of caches of cars being found, of cars illegally imported  through Australia Post, the price of unregistered cars apparently at historic lows due to a glut in supply.

We find that 20 years latter the laws did not save anyone.

We find that 20 years on our neighbor across the ditch & cousins on the other side of the  Pacific did panic and implement the same level of "driver safety laws" we swallowed.
We learn that they have seen the same trend in accidents as we did.
We learn that vastly different solutions, that did not require us to let the government steal our property have had the same results as our draconian  solutions.


So we ask if it might be possible to move toward the laws in NZ or Canada that have proven successful,

We are met with vitriol and loathing as if we had tried to take the "precious" from gollum,  the gnashing of teeth and the wailing and screeching begins as they seek to silence us and distract the public transport crowd from the facts.......


Asking a #GunControl #Australia serf to debate the facts around Howard Gun Laws:

SBS:

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/article/2016/03/30/port-arthur-survivor-confronts-pro-gun-fishers-and-shooters-politician

Why do Vegans seem so unrealistic in their understanding about how Cereal Crops are cultivated....

South West Queensland in Early 2016 After 40+ mm of Rain - Showing either side of Roo Proof Fence (source Twitter)

Before we go to the start of my collection of articles,  lets just put this out there.

If you farm cereal crops, if you know people who farm cereal crops, you will know that the soy bean and wheat and rice crops are very tasty and that roos pigs, deer, rabbits, mice, ducks, etc. will happily munch their way through a paddock or two if you let them. You also know that farmers generally don’t let that happen.

 

Researcher: Vegetarian Diet Kills Animals Too

Steven Davis says he didn't set out to start a fight, but found one when he began attacking one of the most sacred beliefs of the vegetarian community.

One of the reasons most commonly cited by vegetarians for giving up meat is the conviction that other animals have a right to life as well as humans. But when Davis began setting up a course on animal ethics for the animal science department at Oregon State University four years ago, he reached a rather surprising conclusion.

Nobody's hands are free from the blood of other animals, not even vegetarians, he concluded. Millions of animals are killed every year, Davis says, to prepare land for growing crops, "like corn, soybean, wheat and barley, the staples of a vegan diet."

Smaller Victims ...... read the full article

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=97836&page=1

 

Ordering the vegetarian meal? There’s more animal blood on your hands

 

The ethics of eating red meat have been grilled recently by critics who question its consequences for environmental health and animal welfare. But if you want to minimise animal suffering and promote more sustainable agriculture, adopting a vegetarian diet might be the worst possible thing you could do.

Renowned ethicist Peter Singer says if there is a range of ways of feeding ourselves, we should choose the way that causes the least unnecessary harm to animals. Most animal rights advocates say this means we should eat plants rather than animals.

It takes somewhere between two to ten kilos of plants, depending on the type of plants involved, to produce one kilo of animal. Given the limited amount of productive land in the world, it would seem to some to make more sense to focus our culinary attentions on plants, because we would arguably get more energy per hectare for human consumption. Theoretically this should also mean fewer sentient animals would be killed to feed the ravenous appetites of ever more humans.

But before scratching rangelands-produced red meat off the “good to eat” list for ethical or environmental reasons, let’s test these presumptions.

read on....

https://theconversation.com/ordering-the-vegetarian-meal-theres-more-animal-blood-on-your-hands-4659

 

I will add further links in the comments section (maybe)

Photo: South West Queens Land after 40mm of Rain Showing effect of Kangaroo Proof Fence. (16/01/2016 Source Twitter)