Monday 29 August 2011

I feel an attack of Tourette's coming on

It's a year off, and I'm already hating the Olympics, and I can feel my spleen throbbing when I read this story:
Children will be banned from watching shooting events under Boris Johnson's Olympic ticket giveaway.

London schoolchildren are eligible for 125,000 Olympic tickets but these will not include any featuring guns, as Games organisers and City Hall fear a backlash from the anti-gun lobby.

Giving children tickets to the events, at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, could have appeared at odds with Mayor Boris Johnson's bid to quell teenage gun and knife crime.

A source said: "We decided it would not be appropriate. It's the only sport children will not be able to go to as part of the Ticketshare scheme."
I won't bother to elaborate my views.

Hat tip: Samizdata

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Presumably the fencing is okay, because it's not like there is a problem with sharp stabbing weapons among certain sections of London's youth....

Anonymous said...

They mustn't see guns. They might get the idea of how to use them to rebel against the vile and wicked political class which likes to keep everything in cheque. And if there was a new Hitler this time around, the children mustn't be taught the use of guns or else they'd possibly defeat him. Oh no, mustn't have that says our political class in charge.

Longrider said...

They aren't being banned though. It's a misleading headline. Boris isn't including them in the give-away. Bad enough, of course and it does illustrate magnificent fuckwittery on a grand scale, but there is no ban.

Bucko said...

They fear a backlash from the anti gun lobby?
In the US it's the pro gun lobby that's feared. We live in a silly country.

Trooper Thompson said...

LR,

what you say is correct, but it's enough to annoy the hell out of me.

Longrider said...

And rightly so - it is annoying. So far they haven't started on archery, but give 'em time.

Trooper Thompson said...

Aye, so many things to ban, so little time.

Anonymous said...

Way, way OT but the archery thing got me going. A friend of mine reckons modern body armour (presumably sans trauma plate) will stop a pistol shot, but would struggle with an arrow which still had a lot of the initial velocity due to the extra mass of the arrow.

Is he right or an idiot?

Longrider said...

That would depend on the poundage of the bow and the type of arrow head used. Medieval bows had a poundage of anything from 80lbs draw weight to 150lbs. Combined with some pretty wicked arrowheads they could easily pierce armour. A modern target bow will have a draw weight of around 40 - 50lbs.

Trooper Thompson said...

Good man, LR.