HIGH-POWERED HOGWASH

It was inevitable and we've all been waiting for it to happen. 

On December 28th 2014 it was reported that an elderly man lay critically ill in hospital after having been shot with a "high-powered bow" in an attack at his home in Dandenong. Of course every syllable of "high-powered bow" was emphasised for dramatic effect.

To date archers and bowhunters have been largely spared the sensationalist attentions of Antis such as the Greens and their adoring fans, the media.

Mention the bow & arrow and the public thinks of The Hobbit, Brave, Avatar, the Hunger Games and of course Robin Hood and his band of merry men gallantly stealing from the rich to give to the poor; no easy job when you’re dressed in unflattering green tights.

Archery is looked upon as a sport requiring great skill and discipline and because bows seldom figure large in criminal activity, the public has always viewed them with a certain benign ambivalence.

The Greens, the RSPCA and the National Parks Association have each striven in turn to promote an alternative view of archery and indeed archers themselves.

Carefully contrived campaigns depicting native wildlife carrying arrow injuries are fed to an eager media, accompanied of course by demands to ban or at least heavily regulate the sale of archery equipment.

Happily the community has so far failed to succumb to the allure of rampant hoplophobia (a morbid fear of weapons) and this has resulted in a change of tactics employed by the likes of NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge. 

That which you and I may call compound bows, David Shoebridge has taken to calling “high-powered hunting bows”, the better to terrorise the public and justify his demands for regulation.

And his comrades at the RSPCA and the National Parks Association have likewise picked-up the torch, albeit to a lesser extent to date.

As George Orwell demonstrated in his novel, 1984, when the objective is to control the public through fear, the manipulation of language is all important.

Thus in order to make the pedestrian seem terrifying the anti-archer introduces terminology never used by expert archers and bowhunters.

So what are the simple facts the public is seldom told about compound bows?  I’m glad you asked...

Compound bows are not hunting bows. They may certainly be used for hunting, but throughout the many millenniums bows have been used to hunt game, the vast majority was brought down long before Holless Wilbur Allen patented the first compound bow in 1969. 

The term “hunting bow” refers to a bow’s application by the individual and not its inherent design.

The majority of compound bows purchased in Australia today will be used solely on target ranges and they will be configured with sights, stabilisers, arrows & tips etc for this application.

A bow identical in design may be used for hunting and it will be configured with different sights, different stabilisers, different arrows & tips and perhaps a camouflage finish suited to this purpose.

The same can be said of the modern recurve bow as used in Olympic competition.

In fact if any bow deserves the title “hunting bow” it is the more traditional recurve bow and longbow of antiquity.

The longbow singled out England as a formidable power in Europe for many centuries and the recurve bow enabled the Mongols to conquer and rule over the largest contiguous land empire in history.

The allure of the modern compound bow lays in two main characteristics - the capacity to hold the bow at full draw for long periods with comparative ease and its unparalleled accuracy, the one being largely responsible for the other.

The cams fitted to the tips of the bow’s limbs distribute energy equally and store it within the bow with great efficiency. When the bow is tuned as it should be the result is a far more efficient release of energy resulting in a very flat trajectory.

Additionally, the design of the cams is such that when the bow is at full draw the archer is holding only a fraction of the bow’s stored energy.

Some compound bows boast as much as 80% “let-off”, which in simple terms means that a bow that might otherwise require, say, 50lbs of strength to draw fully and hold, will suddenly lighten-up as the cams engage, leaving the archer with a mere 10lbs or 15lbs of force to resist.

This means not only that archers are able to hold a compound bow longer and far more steadily while taking aim, they are also able to draw their bows more frequently, with less fatigue during competition.

Few people are aware that compound bows have perhaps demonstrated their greatest value in competition, where they have served to level the playing field between male and female competitors, or that the compound bow has opened the sport of archery to thousands of people with disabilities who lack the upper-body-strength to draw the more traditional bows.

Unfortunately the public knows little about archery, other than what can be absorbed watching reruns of Robin Hood or Rambo on late-night tele, where, thanks to the fantasy world concocted by Hollywood special effects, all things are possible, up to and including grenade tipped arrows and  13th century British outlaws with American accents.

The anti-archers’ use of the term “high-powered hunting bows” is nothing more than a linguistic ruse designed to manipulate and deceive the public and of course the man most quoted using the term is Greens’ spokesperson on all matters ‘weapons’ related, Mr David Shoebridge MLC, himself a barrister by profession and thus no stranger to the business of using emotive terminology to twist facts and manipulate an argument.

But if the compound mechanics briefly outlined above are too complex for the average Aussie to process, perhaps the following comparisons will put the power of the modern compound bow into some perspective.

A high-powered hunting rifle, such as the common .308 calibre deer rifle, can propel a projectile in excess of 3,000 feet per second (fps).

The average .177 calibre air-riffle of the type once so popular among children, can propel a projectile at around 1,200fps.

The average compound bow of the type impressively ignorant Greens politicians and their trained media circus will invariably refer to as "high-powered” (oooh, boogy!-boogy!) can shoot a projectile at a dizzying 370fps – that's three-hundred & seventy feet per second – a speed seldom achieved anywhere but in the laboratory.

Speeds of 320fps are far more common and in terms of cheap, over the counter stock-jobs you can bring that down to around 280fps.

Or in terms so simple as to defy even Greens ultra-thickiness, your so-called "high-powered" bows are in excess of 3 times less powerful than the average slug gun and more than 8 times less powerful than a deer rifle.

Put like that, it kinda takes all the puff out of the need for immediate action don't it? 

Which is precisely why they never put it like that!

Anyway, I'll get outaya way now....

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WHAT THE MARTIN PLACE SIEGE RESPONSE REALLY SAYS ABOUT SYDNEY

Well it's the night before Christmas and all through the CBD, not a creature is mourning, and that includes me!

I think it’s fair to say (or at least to hope) that Sydney’s pseudo Floriade has about drawn to a close. Oh sure, the media will continue to milk it for what it’s worth and no doubt Kochie & Sam and the gang will continue to reign as undisputed saviours of a city that would have been lost without their moral guidance and encouragement in our nation’s “loss of innocence”, but for the most part the Big Bang of solidarity has made way for a solemn fizz of righteousness as people return to 'normal' daily life.

As no one can have failed to notice, I was neither a participant nor a supporter of the "Great Outpouring", but I was a very interested observer.

Having given some considerable thought to the events in Martin Place after Monis took the lives of two out of 23.13 million Australians, it suddenly dawned on me what the flowers, the tearful farewells for total strangers and the “unprecedented outpouring of grief” in general actually signified.

Was it about the deaths of two “totally innocent people”? No!

Was it shock that something like this could possibly happen in Australia? It may have been about that a tad, but just a tad.

Was it about Australians coming together to demonstrate with one voice (or enormous compost heap) that “this nation shall not be overcome!” Not a bit of it.

Sydney does not represent Australia, nor are its denizens representative of the world renown "Aussie spirit".

As anyone who listened to the chatter in even the trendiest non-metropolitan, whole-grain, organic, freeman/woman-picked, small-holding, fair day's pay for a fair day's work coffee nook outside Sydvegas will tell you, the reaction of rural folk was much rolling of eyes, shaking of heads and asking "whatthe???"

And it was this response that gave me my first hint of what all the flowers and wailing actually signified.

It signified that we in Australia, and dare I say particularly those in our state capitals, enjoy an incredibly prosperous, safe, protected; even sanitised way of life.

So much so that we actually enjoy the very great privilege of having enough time on our hands and so few true crises day to day to occupy it, that we can indulge ourselves with over-the-top responses when two complete strangers die far from our gaze.

We know nothing of waking in the morning after a fitful night’s sleep, relieved that our home is still standing. 

We don’t send our kids to school in the morning knowing they will walk past corpses that lay rotting in the streets awaiting burial because folks are too busy carting water or firewood for miles through sniper fire to bury them.

We never have to fear being told a 10 year old son or daughter died after stepping on a mine left over from some half forgotten war, that lay in the rice field they'd been working in since 6am. 

We know little or nothing of watching a loved-one die for want of a few dollars worth of antibiotics. 

Hell, we even pack our elderly off to die in institutions rather than have to deal with all the mess, inconvenience, frustration and social isolation that goes with looking after a parent who has become as dependent as we once were when they brought us into the world and spent the ensuing years wiping our bums, our noses and cleaning up our projectile vomit.

If a couple has 2.4 children in Australia they expect 2.4 to survive to draw the old age pension, yet in much of the world the exchange rate is more like 7 for 2.

In fact in mush of the world there is no pension!

Even the animals we eat die out of sight to be wondrously transformed into specialist French and European cuts on Styrofoam trays, and the animals we keep as companions magically “go to sleep” when they’re too old and too ill to have "quality of life". Or when we tire of them we can give them to ‘shelters’ where of course all the animals find wonderful new homes with harbour views where they eat off silver plates.

What the Martin Place Floriade signified more than anything else is our enormous privilege!

It was a symbol of our profound softness and naivety...an emerging hothouse flower culture that enjoys the freedom of self-indulgence that’s the product of an increasingly controlled rarefied environment.

And perhaps the saddest part of this sorry tale of woe lies in the fact that having made their tributes to the dead they never knew but for Kochie and Sam and sundry other opportunists telling them they should mourn, these same people will have little time for the Salvos, the Smith Family, Oxfam or UNICEF when next they come a-callin'.

After all, they've already given generously to the cause of infotainment journalism, and of course to impoverished florists all across the Sydney CBD.

God bless them, every one!

Anyway, I'll get outaya way now....


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ENOUGH WITH THE FAUX GRIEF ALREADY

I hope someday there will be a detailed scientific analysis and report on Sydney’s water supply. I've always wanted to know what makes folk up there so shallow and self-indulgent and the problem's so widespread I’m convinced it’s in the water.

Two complete strangers die in tragic circumstances and all Sydney has to buy a chunk of the grief by rushing into town to donate $25 worth of flowers to the hot pavement.

That’s $25 they wouldn't have had for the Smith Family at Christmas, mind you, or the Red Cross, sundry homeless shelters and other not-for-profits struggling to minister to the living during the “festive season” and so on.

Oh no...that's about helping one's fellow man. The Martin Place phenomenon is all about me-me-me-me-me!

I mean, there are cameras everywhere aren't there. I might get on the tele! Koshie might interview me - swoon!!

These folk propelled by an abiding need to be a part of something, anything special, are the same folk who’d raise merry hell at the idea of being hit an extra $1 a week in taxes to provide affordable housing for those in need.

Where’s the opportunity for immortality and being portrayed as a member of the enlightened sensitive elite in that?

Now of course we have the predictable call to ban guns so this can never happen again.

That’s a brilliant idea! Why didn't someone think of that before? And why stop there?

Let’s ban cocaine, ecstasy and Meth too!

Just for the record, if initial reports are correct, the gun used in the Lindt Cafe seige is illegal to own in Australia.

And as we now know for certain, the gunman never owned the firearms licence that one must own before police will issue an authority to purchase any gun, even legal ones.

Of course the solution to these dreadful events is simple. We should ban city folk!

Honestly, we country folk don’t have social problems to anywhere near the degree they flourish in the city environment.

Whenever there’s a drive-by shooting, an horrific gang rape, a massacre, a massive drug hall, biker wars or terrorist seiges etc etc ad nauseam, it’s invariably city based, so let’s get rid of them!

Someone recently told me the "outpouring of grief" symbolised by the floral tributes in Martin Place was one of "Australia’s defining moments”. If such moments are defined by shallow displays of “me too” self-indulgence whipped-up and promoted by the gang at “Sunrise” and associated media manipulators, leave me out of it.

The only "defining moment" to have occurred in Martin Place in the past week was the one where a good looking young Aussie bloke named Tori Johnson rekindled, if only for one tragic moment, the true spirit of selflessness Australians were once admired for the world over.

Those laying flowers in Martin Place today are not paying homage to his spirit of bravery and self-sacrifice. They are swept up in a fashion statement contrived by the media to ensure emotive fodder for their reports and endless cross-overs.

Anyway, I'll get outaya way now....

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