AT the forum on “Your Children and Guns” held on Saturday, August 9, the few hunters in attendance interrupted angrily when any speaker quoted the American gun culture as an example that we do not want to follow.
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This was in spite of the fact that the Narooma HuntFest, licensed by the Eurobodalla Shire Council to be held in the main street of Narooma every year for five years, has been specifically designed with American hunt festivals in mind.
“We have tighter regulations” the local hunters may justifiably claim, and yet Australian parents, who are legally responsible for children using guns or bows and arrows, are no more reliable, vigilant, skilful or educated than their American counterparts. Any relaxation of gun laws, such as proposed by the Shooters and Fishers party, would only be a retrograde step.
Evidence from America is overwhelming. No wonder the hunters didn’t want to listen to it.
Although most parents instinctively feel it can’t be good to expose their offspring to traumatic events it has been difficult to prove scientifically until recently when brain scans on children exposed to violent images over a lengthy time reveal lack of development of the frontal lobes of their brains, the parts responsible for impulse control and limiting aggression (reference: Australian Council on Children and the Media conference October 4, 2013).
If watching a video of true or make-believe violence is traumatic and de-sensitising how much more so is seeing or even helping daddy to kill a deer or a feral dog with a gun and a knife?
Young brains are still developing. Give our kids a chance to grow up and then make up their own more mature minds as to whether they want to take part in recreational hunting or not.
Susan Cruttenden
Dalmeny