Thanks Chris for your feedback.

I do not retract anything I wrote in that article, and have had all kinds of feedback about it – some using language I never heard in the Army, to reasoned responses like yours.

Rowland.
  wrote:

Date & Time: Thu Nov 25 09:48:45 EST 1999<P> 

Guest’s Name: Chris Allen <>

I have read the article ‘Sporting Shooter – an Oxymoron’. I find it rather interesting that the Church is promoting animal liberation dogma. As a Christian I am well aware of the fallen nature of people, and call to your attention how this article uses the fact that most shooters are male to somehow imply that they are unworthy of equality in our society, that their values are somehow ‘low’. The suggestion that such rednecks, the so-called gun lobby, must be actively suppressed, should be examined with some care. 

You will find that the people who shoot for a hobby are far less criminal than the run of society; that they are overwhelmingly the most ordinary decent people. Their values are usually more along the lines of individualism and self-reliance, some of the better aspects of traditional Australian character. 

On the other hand, you should examine their opponents carefully too. Their motives are cloaked in worthiness, but in fact they assign evil motives to a
very large, decent group of people. They perpetrate false statistics, a feature of extremist behaviour that speaks volumes for their dedication to truth. 

Pastors everywhere should understand that joining extremist, populist groupthink attitudes such as the anti-gun lobby is the same as joining the institutionalised oppression of
Jews, aborigines and migrants. Unworthy of the disciples of our Lord.