Knowing pretty well what Animal Aid stands for, I very much doubt if crime is really on their agenda. The sort of people who use guns for criminal activity are not the readership of gun magazines. As I see it those readers fall into two groups:

- people interested in hunting. Which is exactly Animal Aid's concern, but not just directly. Unlike the US, very few of the animals targeted for hunting in the UK are endangered, and the number killed by hunters are far lower. But the destructive effects of hunting go well beyond what gets shot: lead shotgun pellets poison the environment, and the landlords of shooting estates trap and poison large numbers of critically endangered predators (notably eagles). However: not many men take up recreational killing under the age of 18, so the ban doesn't really make sense for that reason. What boy looks at shotgun ads when they're 12 and wanks over the fantasy that they might one day dress up in plus fours and blow small birds away? How would top-shelving these mags achieve anything? Which brings us to the group I think most Animal Aid activists are really concerned about:

- boys who might read these mags, wank over fantasies about killing Arabs, and go on to join the army so they can do it for real with the hardware those mags describe. Animal Aid's membership is pretty much entirely radical pacifists, but at a time when worship of the army is de facto the state religion, they can't very well say that opposing military recruitment propaganda is their concern.

I don't think AA are being entirely honest with the public, but I think I see what they're up to and I support it.

(this is a reworking of something I posted earlier today and which disappeared).