Letter:Ban weapons but save shooting

Sir: Your editorial (14 August) does you no credit, and your suggestion that the shooting community has any less sympathy than the public at large for the Dunblane parents, let alone considers them a "screaming mob", is beneath contempt.

The "gun culture" you refer to exists largely in the imaginings of the media and politicians. Most sporting shooters are no more fanatical about guns than golfers are about golf clubs, viewing them solely as equipment with which to enjoy a skilled, satisfying, and above all safe, sport, and the vast majority of handguns used for sporting purposes are not, contrary to your leader, designed "primarily to shoot people".

You state that, with legally held guns under lock and key, "only when kept and traded illegally would they pose a problem" - or, to put it another way, by savagely curtailing the innocent pastimes of one of the most law- abiding communities in the land, 99 per cent or more of firearm-related crime will remain wholly unaffected.

To demand new legislation, without even claiming or expecting it will achieve anything positive, simply because "nothing less will satisfy the public", is a shallow use of a major newspaper's leader page.

D T ARGENT

Horsham,

West Sussex