THE ADLER HERESY

Unlike the titles of so many of my blog posts and articles, this one holds no obscure esoteric subtext to entertain or task the reader.

The opinions I will express below, will appear, to many, to be nothing short of a betrayal of those I have formerly sought to defend; an expression of heresies worthy of a bonfire in the Campo de' Fiori.

What follows is not a betrayal, of course. Rather, it is an attempt to look beyond our anger and disappointment at the looming prospect of being denied a new toy, with a view to exploring how the whole sorry affair might have been managed with some strategic foresight, returning real benefits to the shooters’ cause.

There is much I could say about the Adler controversy, but will not. I will not because, frankly, I am both amazed and very grateful the Australian media’s collective mind is not as devious as my own. If it were, if the media focused on the various emotive angles that have occurred to me, there would be absolutely no way the Adler’s action would ever glint under the Australian sun.

It is as much for the reasons I will not outline here, that I believe we would have been better served as an interest group, to have taken an altogether different and thus far largely unexplored strategic approach, to the Adler’s importation.

And now, prologue complete, I’ll will get on with the sombre business of detailing my radical views. Which, just quietly, I suspect I do not hold in isolation.

The Adler a110 lever action

In the current Australian political climate, to have marketed a gun as “a game-changer”, as seen on at least one firearms merchant's site,  was something of a game-changer in itself, having pretty-much redefined the human capacity for cloth-eared stupidity. 

How we can promote a gun as a “game-changer” while simultaneously attempting to convince the media to swallow the claim that it’s no different to any other gun, absolutely eludes me. 

And as we now know, it also eluded the media.

As if that weren’t ill-conceived marketing decision enough, Adler promoters have decided to throttle even more catch-phrases out of their certifiably insane muse, among them the claim that it is “Tailor made for fast and furious pig shooting from the bike, quad or ATV".

In the parlance of the great majority of Australians, this description translates as follows, “You can pump much more lead into the air than ever before, while engaging in gang-related drive-by shootings!” Or perhaps, “Why not hang off the back of the ute with your red-neck mates while letting rip with this little beauty!”

Exactly how many units of product the importer expected to move in the 10 seconds prior to the media swooping on these claims, investigating them and setting new standards of sensationalism, remains unclear, but one presumes the importer is wishing the retailer had tried more subtle sales-pitches.

There should never have been any doubt that journalists, anti-gunners, politicians, or for that matter the community, would vehemently oppose the introduction of any technology that promoted itself on claims of increased speed, capacity and potency.

The arrogant folly of taking a wild punt that the Adler would slip into the system without raising a regulatory eyebrow has resulted not only in doubt being cast over the future availability of the Adler, but also a potential for tighter restrictions or perhaps even the abolition of lever-actions already in the community.

So how do I believe we should have approached the importation of the Adler?

Here is where you should start collecting wood for that bonfire I mentioned at the outset, because I believe that as an interest group, shooters, via their various agencies, should have moved pro-actively to recommend the Adler be assigned the tightest possible licensing category, if not banned entirely for recreational purposes.

Despite the hype, the Adler is not a “game-changer”.  There is no evidence to indicate that it is more accurate than shotguns currently available and both hunters and target shooters are doing very well in their chosen activities without the benefit of Adler’s boasted speed and 8-shot capacity.

If a hunter feels he’s likely to be bailed-up by 8 homicidal porkers, there are plenty of other efficient calibres with adequate magazine capacities that have served the hunter to date. Despite the marketing spin, most pig hunters do not use shotguns and I suspect the number of duck and skeet shooters who feel the Adler’s fast 8 shot capacity will improve their game in real terms.

Let’s be upfront. We want the Adler because it’s cool and we are angry about the controversy surrounding it because we want one of these cool new toys. 

If denied access to the Adler, Australian shooters will not be disadvantaged in any way, whatsoever. We are simply expressing indignation at the State’s suggestion we cannot be trusted and we are angered by what some perceive as a further erosion of our ‘rights’.

Hollywood has already ensured the thug-appeal of the shotgun and as much as we may resent the stereotypes and being nannied by the State, only an invertebrate intellect could genuinely believe the lever-action would not swiftly become the weapon of choice among underworld figures and gang member. 

This was bound to fill police ranks with concern about being outgunned and as we know, it was police who raised initial concerns.

The Alder has brought much angst and unwanted scrutiny to firearms regulation and the lever-action in particular, at a time when Howard’s mini-me is at the Nation’s helm, but we needed only to show a little maturity to harness the inevitable public outcry to our advantage.

The moment the Adler promotions surfaced, we should have been capable of seeing the inevitable looming large on the horizon and resolved to lead the push to reject the Adler.

Yes, that’s right, reject it!

In so doing we would have lost nothing tangible or demonstrably beneficial to shooters and hunters. However, we would have demonstrated very clearly that the anti-gunners’ portrayal of shooters as fanatical rednecks, who lack any responsibility for considerations of public safety, self-control and moderation, is demonstrably false.

By leading the push for moderation in a very public way, we’d have made a clear statement, “we are not committed to owning firearms at any cost.”

We’d have put on the record, our willingness to work cooperatively with agencies such as the police, for the public good, rather than proving ourselves committed to domestic heavy arms proliferation, as the Greens and others will portray us.

We’d have demonstrated our maturity, our foresight and our commitment to working in partnership with agencies and the community, to ensure responsible firearms ownership, instead of simply talking about it.

By making one well publicised ‘sacrifice’ we’d have stripped our opponents of their main weapon against us, the perception that we will never be satisfied and that no-matter how outrageous the proposition, we will always strive to justify ownership of any and all firearms.

The greatest hurdle we face in the battle to keep our firearms and retain our shooting and hunting cultures, is the public’s perception of who we are and what we’re about. Had we adopted the strategy above, we’ve have done immeasurable damage to the stereotypes promulgated by our opponents.

More importantly, we’d have been well placed for future lobbying on other issues of genuine significance, because we’d have proved ourselves capable of objective analytical thought and decision making, that, in the public’s eyes, would have shown us to be responsible participants in the policy making process.

Instead, we continue our attempts to defend the Adler, with half-baked claims about its benefits to the control of the feral menace and even on the grounds of ‘humaneness’, which absolutely no-one, including a great many hunters and shooters, is swallowing.

And now our lack of strategic foresight and restraint, coupled with flawed perceptions of what we wrongly persist in calling our “rights as firearms owners”, seem set to jeopardise our relatively easy access to other lever-action calibres.

If we hope to retain our firearms into the future, our advocates need to get much better at this strategic planning and risk management lark!

So send hither thy Dominicans, I fear them not. For I'll get outaya way now...

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PROFILE OF A VIRTUOUS PET OWNER

If, like me, you have from time-to-time attempted with patience and courtesy to correct the most cherished erroneous beliefs of the avid anti-hunter, you have been accused of all manner of crimes against the animal kingdom and common decency. 

It goes without saying you’ve been called 'cruel', of course, despite the fact that cruelty is a measure of intent rather than action, and you have doubtless copped the anti-hunters’ ultimate put-down, to wit, “You have no empathy!”

It is the claim that hunters lack empathy that I’d like to explore a little, or perhaps, more correctly, the associated inference that anti-hunters have a superior concept of empathy. 

But first, what is empathy? 

Empathy is defined as "psychological identification with, or vicarious experiencing of, the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another", in the case of hunting, another species. 

It may also be described as "the imaginative ascribing to an object e.g. a natural object or work of art, of feelings or attitudes present in oneself."

In a nutshell, it is about putting yourself in the shoes of another and imagining how you might feel in their place – the other’s place that is, not their shoes'.  

This may be all well and good when the ‘other’ is a member of the same species, however trying to imagine the fit of another species’ footwear is liable to result in little more than an emotionally speculative form of intellectual tinea. 

It requires a staggering level of arrogant superiority to presume humans are capable of accurately processing experience, without possessing even a rudimentary capacity to consult the subject of our empathy with regard to accuracy.

We might certainly extrapolate our responses to basic sensations such as heat, cold or even a broken limb, but when it comes to other species and responses of an emotional nature, all attempts to empathise are pure guesswork.

Worse, the emotional responses we choose to acknowledge, along with how we choose to interpret them, are invariably conveniently blinkered when it comes to those among us who claim to be empathetic adepts. 

Social media - especially Facebook - is the vehicle of choice for those seeking an opportunity to tell hunters just what detestable examples of inhumanity they are and more oft than not, the hunters’ assailant will lurk behind a profile picture displaying their much loved pooch or puss, as if to emphasise their superior empathy, compassion and general virtue.

But zealotry has degrees and little does the hunters’ critic realise there are hundreds of thousands of even more dedicated animal advocates who consider the virtuous pet owner to be no better than the very hunters they loathe.

The growing ranks of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), for instance, consider the ownership of pets to be a form of slavery and exploitation not far removed from hunting. 

And why not?

When viewed through the same prism of non-sequitur logic and perverse cynicism with which hunting’s opponents scrutinise, stereotype and condemn hunters, the compassionate pet owner doesn’t fare so well in the empathy and enlightenment stakes.

After all, what is pet ownership if not a declaration of superiority and subservience, master and slave? 

Oh sure, a pet owner may claim lightheartedly that s/he is owned by Rover, but the fact remains all pets, even those with few if any restrictions placed upon them by their human owners, are, nonetheless, owned. 

They are not free souls treated with equality. They are property, kept to fulfil some desire of the owner to adore or be adored by another living creature.

Turning my mind to pet ownership with the sort of imaginative malice so often exhibited by the ignorant yet highly opinionated anti-hunter, Bonzo’s and Mr Tinkle’s new “mummy” tends not to look so kindly and empathetic as they might wish to be perceived.

Take the case of Pam and Bella the Maltese Terrier for instance.

A puppy is torn away from her mother and her seven brothers and sisters at the moment she shows signs of weaning so’s to ensure she’ll develop the maximum level of dependency on her new human “mummy”, Pam. 

Thus deprived of her true family, this little 'orphan' cannot communicate the name given her by her birth mother and so she is renamed ‘Bella’, in accordance with Pam’s language, culture and personal preferences. 

Bella will be loved and cuddled, carried and fawned over as suits Pam’s emotional needs and busy schedule.  When Bella pees on the carpet, she will be chastised for her failure to immediately adopt human toiletry etiquette. 

Her belligerent refusal to master fluency of the English language at 6 weeks of age by going “wee-wees outside” will result in her being labelled “a bad girl!” in a harsh voice guaranteed to diminish self-esteem, frighten and confuse, thus nurturing the desired dependency.

Bella will be told where to sleep and when, and if missing her birth-family causes her to whimper in distress through the night, she will be chastised for not respecting the human predilection for absolute silence during long periods of darkness.

As she is now weaned (whether she likes it or not) Bella will be fed in accordance with human preferences and perceptions of what dog food should taste like e.g. Mince & Chicken with Rice, or perhaps Home-style Beef with Pasta and Vegies, or whatever else Pam thinks she should eat on any and every given day. 

This practice will continue for the rest of Bella’s life.

Despite the fact that it is completely alien for dogs to be either clean or smell fresh, Bella will need to be bathed regularly so Pam’s lounge doesn’t get dirty. This will be accomplished with a variety of shampoos and washes, all of which have perfumes pleasing to humans.

The fact that the K9 olfactory system may process the concept of ‘pleasant’ in a completely different manner is as irrelevant as the fact that to Bella, “sandalwood” will be shooting into her brain at roughly 400-times the potency Pam is able to detect, effectively sabotaging the main sense Bella relies on for important information about her world.

There will be visits to the vet for injections in order to ensure Bella neither disappoints Pam by dying of one of the many doggy maladies, nor costs her a fortune in vet bills should she fall seriously ill.

Desexing and micro-chipping will be next and no-doubt Bella will understand why her abdomen must be opened surgically, her ovaries and uterus exposed and a spay hook used to remove them, thus denying her the capacity to bear children or engage in fulfilling sexual congress for life. 

After all, if Pam thinks it best, who is Bella to object? She can hardly understand English, let alone speak a protest.

Home Bella will go, to begin her new life as a responsibly owned and compliant member of the K9 Stolen Generation. 

If she is lucky, Bella may have the run of the backyard and even the family home. Pam may attach Bella to three-metres of cord and take her for a daily walk along a trail Pam finds even and soothing to traverse and perhaps she’ll even permit Bella to stop and smell every fourth or fifth thing she actually wants to sniff.

After 45 minutes or so of something that's not quite liberty, Bella will be returned to the backyard of Pam’s inner-Melbourne terrace where she can laze in the sun all day long, alone, waiting for Pam’s return.

When Bella’s coat begins to look a wee bit unkempt, she can look forward to a trip to the Pet Parlour, where she will be trimmed-up in a style that Pam thinks positively adorable. If she looks cold afterward, Pam will put a little coat on Bella, which she will be forced to wear until Pam feels warm.

Bella will be forced to wear an irritating collar or two – one for her cheery little  message like, “My name is Bella. If I somehow manage to tunnel out of this hell, please return me against my will to Pam, at.....”, the other to control any parasites she might collect. 

Bella’s efforts to find a comfortable location and position in which to recline will be hampered by Pam’s preference to have her lay on the rug provided, here, there or anywhere other than where Bella would choose to lay. 

This will also be the case in the yard, where Bella’s efforts to dig a depression that affords her comfortable back support, like the digging she undertakes to keep her nails under control, will be viewed by Pam as belligerent acts of horticultural vandalism.

If Bella is really lucky, she may be able to master a variety of tricks, like begging, rolling over on command, or even walking and turning little doggy pirouettes on her hind legs in that special way that's guaranteed to lead to hip dysplasia and arthritic complaints in later life.    

Thanks to the marvels of modern veterinary science, Bella can look forward to this anthropomorphic existence for the next 20 years and as Pam will attest on Bella’s behalf, she will be as happy as the angels in their heaven, wanting for nothing, treated like a Queen!

Yet strangely, despite all the 'empathy', 'love' and 'respect' she has shown, if Pam neglects to close the side gate securely, the Queen will go on progress ‘round the neighbourhood in search of members of her own species to join in shared cultural practices, such as digging holes, rolling in dead things and eating traditional foods without peas, carrots or even the merest soupcon of scientifically formulated, targeted nutrition.

While I believe PETA’s animal liberation philosophy to be darkly messianic, I must admit I take some solace in the fact that for every Pam in the world who thinks I’m a monster, there is a vegan PETAphile who sees Pam as nothing less than a 21st Century combination of P.T. Barnum and Dr. Josef Mengele.

Or put another way,

Big fleas have little fleas,

Upon their backs to bite 'em, 

And little fleas have lesser fleas, 

And so, ad infinitum.

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now....

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PETA'S FLAWED PHILOSOPHY

I dare consider myself a rational, objective thinker. An opinionated, sarcastic and often acerbic thinker, to be sure, but seldom one who fails to give due and proper consideration to the relative de/merits of the venerable bovine he sallies forth, on occasion, to bitchslap. 

It was earlier this fine evening, having just read a statement from those noble crusaders for sentient equality - PETA - and having judged it, at face value, to be as mad as a hat-full of spoons, that I decided to apply my ‘mind’ to that creative document that passes as the PETA Manifesto, in the aforementioned objective, pre-disciplinary, mode. 

I confess I failed, miserably. By all reasonably accepted definitions of failure, that is, in fact, what I succeeded in.

For those readers who've been living beneath non-sentient geological structures, PETA stands for "People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals".

Here’s the thing. PETAphiles believe all creatures are equal, with equal status in creation, equal emotions and responses to pain and so on.

They believe that while we human creatures may not be equipped to perceive the personal satisfaction a common house fly may derive from a job well done, or even as a result of humping some buxom floozy fly behind da missus’ back, atop a bemused 5 year-old’s ice-cream, that is no reason to assume he doesn’t shudder at the end and roll off feeling ‘complete’ just like any self-respecting, underachieving, human creature might.

With me so far? Good!...  

Now don’t get me wrong. I admire flies, especially for the way they can shag unobtrusively in public spaces, while hanging upside-down from the ceiling for instance – that is a superpower the fool dismisses out of sheer envy, rather than reason – but I find it more than a little challenging to accept the premise that flies are our ‘equals’.

My skepticism has many facets, but to apply the PETAphiles’ own logic, wouldn’t the designation ‘equal’ be rather dependent upon first establishing a consensus view among flies that they do not, in fact, believe they are superior, which they doubtless believe they are, if only because, unlike us, they can get sheilas to come-across even though they vomit all over their dinner.  I know I can’t!

Sexualising image inserted to attract your attention to this article
by exploiting and objectifying women.

The equality that PETAphiles magnanimously bestow upon all creation is thus revealed to be somewhat arrogant. In fact, it as an arrogance in every respect equal to the arrogance PETAphiles attribute to those among us who do not believe all creatures are equal. Or more accurately perhaps, those who hold that it is neither important, nor our place, to acknowledge them as equals.

I must admit that in concluding that PETA is peopled by folk who, for the sake of the future of the human race, I am really quite pleased to see conscientiously depriving their offspring of animal protein, I have assumed a PETA-embraced premise or two, which I have absolutely no doubt, whatsoever, the ardent PETAphile has more than one  cunningly fibonacci-esque, if syphilitically insane, rebuttal for. To wit:

    1. All creatures are equal

    2. Murdering a fellow equal creature is wrong

Therefore ergo and thus, is it not wrong for brother Lion and sister Spider, to murder sister Elan and brother Fly respectively?

Also too and as well, isn’t it reasonable to conclude that given humanity has existed on earth for a fraction of the time brother Crocodile has been scoffing sister Anyfeckingthing that wanders poolside, it is really rather arrogant to claim 99.9999% of all life on earth has been evolving on completely the wrong diet for a couple of billion years?

I mean, we’re not talking flippin’ gluten here!

Finally, is it not reasonable to postulate that it’s the height of egomaniacal hubris for one group among equals (Them) to assume they have the authority and indeed the obligation to judge another group among equals (Us) in error, simply for adopting the same principles of ‘inequality’ (to wit eating other equals) as practiced by the vast majority of life on Earth?

Or in other words, does the equality of a fellow equal preclude it from serving its function as food, or indeed, preclude humans serving in their roll as food for another equals?  

I think not!

In closing, I cannot readily call to mind another group of humans that cleaves to a philosophy as fundamentally flawed in logic and as gobsmackingly egocentric as the PETAphile, with the possible exception of the Extreme Greens and their associated propeller-headed brethren.

What about them flies, ‘ey?

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

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INNOCENCE EMPATHY AND SMALL GODS

The hunter is often very angrily assailed with allegations of gross cruelty and profound absence of empathy for the “innocent animals" he deprives of life.

The prima facie case for animal innocence appears to lay in the absence of the mens rea (in law, the ‘guilty mind’) necessary to establish criminal intent or knowledge that an act – murdering a fellow innocent for instance – is wrong. 

Thus the criminal legitimacy of the actus reus (guilty act) e.g. pursuing and ripping the throat out of an unarmed victim a fraction of one’s size and strength and then devouring it, is mitigated by the assailant’s inability to grasp the nature and consequences of his/her actions. 

In short, animals are not ‘innocent’ because they’d never dream of committing acts that may be considered heinous by human standards, but rather because they lack the mental competency required to establish the malice aforethought necessary to hold them accountable for their actions.

They are deemed unaccountable and thus ‘innocent’ by virtue of diminished capacity – the "insanity plea". 

Humans, on the other hand, are seldom deemed unaccountable, even though our reasons for pursuing and killing a deer may be identical to those that drive the lioness to pursue and kill the wildebeest i.e. for food or to provide for a growing family.

The crux of the apparent double standard appears to lie in the perception that the human hunter enjoys the hunt and takes some pride in a successful outcome, while the lioness, we are assured, does not. Though I would draw the jury's attention to the fact that the prosecution has thus far proven incapable of producing expert leonine testimony to this effect. 

In a world in which so many people are committed to imbuing creatures with all manner of human emotional attributes, it seems oddly self-serving that we cherry-pick those behaviours and ‘emotions’ we seek to anthropomorphise. 

We’re assured the lioness feels ‘love’ for her cubs just as human mothers feel love for their children, but they apparently derive no sense of pride, joy or fulfilment from providing for their children responsibly as human mothers do.

Elephants, in particular, are cited as glowing examples of maternal commitment. Should an elephant calf meet with an untimely end, we know its mother may prove reluctant to leave her offspring. She may even encourage it to respond and stand, with the repeated gentle nudging of her trunk. 

This, we are assured, is evidence of 'love' and even 'grief'. 

And well it might be, but surely when comparing human ‘ethics’ and ‘empathy’ to non-human species it is irrational to claim an elephant is superior based on its responses to its own offspring?

Surely for the example to have intellectual credence we should assess the elephant’s empathy for another species as we do when we judge the human hunter lacking for not empathising with his quarry?

There seems scant evidence to suggest that elephants will step over egg-filled nests on the ground rather than crush them to oblivion, or that they’re of a mind to walk around anything non-elephantine they might just as easily walk on, or indeed, through, should it fail to yield the path.

And of course there’s an abundance of documented evidence portraying the elephants’ response to humans who encroach on their comfort zones, or object to the destruction of crops. 

Animals may, on the whole, be 'nice' to others of their kind, but so, on the whole, are humans. 

I often hear it said, “Animals are much nicer than humans” and I can’t help but wonder upon what evidence this claim is based.  It seems to me a great many people associate utter indifference with niceness...which doubtless explains the voting habits of many.

I have seen humans help a single infirm or disabled member of their herd across the street, but in the animal kingdom such infirmity is ignored and even relied upon to divert a predator’s attention while the rest of the community makes a quick getaway. And when the danger is past, life resumes with no apparent acknowledgement of the disemboweled  community members' sacrifice for the greater good.

And thank the gods of your choice for that, I say! For few things would impact so negatively on the unspoiled splendor of the African savanna as millions of bereaved Elan erecting concrete monuments, festooned with brightly coloured plastic geraniums to commemorate each fallen comrade.   

It is undeniable that some humans are capable of heinous acts of self-serving violence and intentional cruelty upon other species, but other species are likewise capable of inflicting great pain and injury upon what they might deem subordinate species (or food) and have done for millennia, with absolutely no signs of remorse. 

Yet they remain ‘innocent’, simply because they lack the intellectual wherewithal to be found guilty of murderous intent.

The fact is, perceptions of animal innocence are born of the same dark place in the human mind that gives rise to so many of humanity’s ills – the ego. 

“Humans have evolved, but you have not”, the hunter is told. “You have no empathy for other creatures” the hunters’ accusers claim, in the flawed belief that their unique capacity for empathy is the ultimate evidence of humanity’s superiority over all creation. 

This is the deific view of humanity’s place on earth. We have ‘evolved’ to a superior state of enlightenment, which removes us from the role of participants in nature’s eternal struggle, elevating us instead to the awesome responsibility of stewards and masters over all we survey. 

There is also a much darker, seldom acknowledged side to the deific view of humanity’s stewardship role on earth – a profound undercurrent of white supremacist bigotry. 

European hunters are expected to abandon their carnivorous ways, adopting instead a diet of that modern day Ambrosia – soy – which facilitates enlightenment about humanity’s true nature and responsibility.

Black folks living in remote third-world locations are not expected to strive for, much less achieve enlightenment, because of course the poor things don’t know any better. 

They are, in fact, as ‘innocents’, incapable of understanding the error of their under-evolved ways and the ramifications of their profound lack of empathy towards other creatures inhabiting a planet presided over by white folks whose vastly superior enlightenment and wisdom must be acknowledged and obeyed without question.

Alas, it seems there will always be evolutionary laggards; men and women who, like me, seek closeness to nature by engaging in the eternal struggle directly, as humble participants, content to leave the deification of the human species to more egocentric aspirants. 

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...   


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