Thank you very much Don for this excellent article: so true and so depressing - curse on US!

So dreadfully true Don.

I had to get my old 22 out last week. A car had hit a cat in the road in front of my place. It was definitely a goner, was in dramatic pain but looked like lasting a while. Someone's attempt to move it obviously caused hugely increased pain. Putting it down was the only humane thing to do.

A group had formed with people from 5 of the 6 homes in the last couple of hundred meters of our little back road, as a neighbour searched for someone with a gun. It transpired I was the only one who owned a gun. I am licenced to own one to protect the foals I bread.

I need a gun to protect them, as we all must keep our dogs locked up making them useless in defending my stock from the packs of wild dogs coming from the larger properties, & the very misnamed national park.

The rifle was locked in its appointed steel box, bolted down most inconveniently to the floor in the shed, but where was the bolt & ammunition? It has been a while since I last cleaned the thing. I keep these separately as an extra safety precaution, but relocated them a couple of years ago in furniture upheaval. It took a couple of minutes to remember where.

At last we could put the cat out of it's misery, delayed 10 minutes by fool regulations.

Incidentally all this compares to when I bought it & the shotgun. I had never felt any need for guns in Sydney, but when I was about to head out into the wide Pacific ocean in my yacht, decided some defence might be a good idea. I walked into a K Mart, bought the guns, ammunition, cleaning equipment & oils, then carried them to the yacht on the back seat of my car, no problems at all.

Thank god Kokoda was before all this garbage, or a bunch of Ozzie kids would have been pretty useless up there. God help today's youth, WHEN shooting starts again.

Hasbeen is you don't see the sense in locking up firearms then there is no hope for you.

Cobber the Hound,

You are missing the whole point of the article. The only effective and robust management control is the firearms licence. Smarter to put the onus on the licensed person to maintain safe custody. They are not the ones responsible for crimes anyhow, or else they would not have qualified for, or retained a licence.

Put on your thinking hat.

We have armed services for training and gun familiarizations. It is not necessary to run around a house block with a gun, to know what one is.

Your opinion of youth is not exactly what it should be, everyone of them are in that same opinion of yours.

Is it necessary to get a gun to destroy a cat.

doog, "Is it necessary to get a gun to destroy a cat"

It is one of the Government and RSPCA recommended humane methods for euthanising animals, there and then. For good reasons too, not the least being that the animal is not subjected to more suffering through delay or having to be transported somewhere else.

What would you have done had you been in Hasbeen's situation? Strangle it or club it to death? It is assumed that you do not meet the standards for a firearms licence - most gun banners don't.