An annoying article
The article by Margherita D'Amico, published on 17 September on Without Newspapers, has truly exceeded all limits, especially those of journalistic ethics and common sense. And I don't know if reading him caused me more indignation and anger as a hunter, or more sadness as a reader and as an Italian citizen. The fact is that in the obscene soup of those lines I found everything and more: ignorance of what modern hunting is and what its scientific and technical value is, but also contempt for institutions; the superficiality and carelessness of the bar and, what is even more serious for those who work in public information, the absolute lack of respect for the truth. What I have read forces me, as president of the second largest Italian hunting association, to take a severe stance and to publicly denounce - only to then examine the possibility of taking legal action - the havoc that has been caused with that lump of lies and half-assed truths tied together by a prose full of banality and clichés and, sometimes, with a kind of out of place and completely unmotivated irony.
ANLC's position
But I want to go in order, anticipating that mine cannot be a few lines as I intend to respond point by point to each of the journalist's lapidary statements. Let's start with the title, which represents, first of all, a clear offense and condemnation for the "government" - every government and certainly not only the latter - guilty of having reduced this wonderful and wretched country to a sort of primitive Far West, completely devoid of laws, rules and controls regarding legislation regarding weapons, so much so that in comparison the United States appears like a kind of cloistered convent or earthly paradise. A completely gratuitous insult given that Italy has one of the strictest laws in the world regarding the purchase, possession and use of weapons, which would require, in my opinion, an adequate reaction from the Ministry of the Interior. Then the article (but I wonder if it is right to define it like this) begins its overview with the first lie contained in the description of the unfortunate killer of the Amarena bear who, since "in his free time he goes hunting", holds the shotgun and carries out the massacre. It's a shame that the diligent journalist didn't dutifully inquire about the fact that the guy in question perhaps plays trumps in his free time as he hasn't had a hunting license for over fifteen years! But this is evidently a detail of little importance for those in the frenzy of painting the hunters with the darkest colors possible.
The involvement of hunting
He then continues by reeling off three episodes that have as much to do with hunting as cabbages for a snack: a guy who voluntarily injures his neighbor with a shotgun (but he could very well have beaten him or hit him with a car); a woman who injures herself cleaning her rifle; and finally a boy who was killed with a speargun! At this point, and we are only at the ninth line of the minestrone, the direct attack begins on the hunters whose "rifles pay no attention to the calendar or the species and who in the last 14 years, in hunting periods alone, have caused the death of at least 383 people and the injury of 1,056". The diligent journalist immediately admits that these data are not official but are disclosed by an association calling itself the Hunting Victims Association which "counts the human accidents caused by hunters' weapons and accuses the institutions of protecting the declining category". Another very serious sin for someone who is a journalist by profession and who therefore should feel the duty to check (and it would be very easy) the data that she publishes. In fact, if she had wasted a few minutes of her time she would have realized that the count advertised by the AVC is macroscopically distorted by the improper addition of simple murders which are inserted among the hunting incidents through a bizarre and absurd dialectical game which defines them as "accidents of hunts that occurred outside of hunting".
Hunting accidents
In reality, in the last 11 years there have been 166 deaths caused by "real" hunting accidents, including 11 unrelated to hunting (an average of one every year but with no victims in the last three years) and 815 injured, including 130 non-hunters. (averaging around 11 per year). Obviously there are always many but, as shown by research carried out by the University of Urbino, the trend is continuously and constantly decreasing. Immediately after the false "bomb" on the (inflated and alarmist) number of dead and injured, the attack against the institutions starts again (and this time it is the Meloni government itself that is on the table of the accused) as. “Thanks to an amendment considered inadmissible today, it is possible to shoot in any season, place and time, at any animal species. These deregulations of hunting in times of climate change are attacks on nature, but also on public safety. Political maneuvers to favor interests other than those of citizens". Going into the detail of this "joke", both from a technical and above all political perspective, would mean writing a book and therefore I leave each reader the absolute freedom to make their own considerations. Then we move on to the "weapons" issue in general (at least that's what I understand) and their cheerful and superficial management with "the Ministry of the Interior and the Police departments who have never disclosed the data on the number of license holders and weapons in circulation." From the weapons issue we move with extreme ease to the ease with which the psycho-physical requirements are certified, so much so that - writes the informed journalist - "The doctor's certification is enough", only to then cite as convincing 2 (two) examples throughout Italy of easy and fraudulent certifications of medical examiners.
Hunting license
But the lady evidently does not know what and how many difficulties there are in obtaining a hunting license or periodic renewal, not to mention one for personal defence. And at this point, the article perhaps plays its most important card and addresses the issue that so distresses public opinion and legislators: "the crime rate of legal gun owners, especially regarding homicides and feminicides within the family". Just to clarify things a bit and to reassure the anguished journalist, it would be enough to take a look at the website “FemminicidioItalia.info” to avoid telling lies in the columns of a newspaper. Only from 1 January to 20 September 2023, and only by examining feminicides, does it turn out that 32 murders were committed and that these crimes were perpetrated with the following weapons and/or methods. 12 with the use of pistols: 2, by members of the police force with the service pistol; 2 with regularly held pistols; 8 with guns of illegal origin or illegally possessed without any license. 14 feminicides were committed with a knife; 4 by beating or beating; 1 for strangulation and 1 for hanging. Just to be even clearer, no femicide was committed with the infamous and deadly hunting rifle! Then the article returns to the number of total "victims" of hunting which, in the 2022-2023 season, according to the usual domesticated research, would amount to a total of 79: 13 deaths among hunters and 6 among ordinary people; and 60 wounded (44 hunters and 16 civilians). But the story is always the same: the dead hunters are indeed 13 but the six deaths among the so-called common people are simply the result of as many murders which with
hunting has nothing to do with it!
“Pleasure of killing”
At this point, the seraphic journalist focuses on the sadism of hunters and their pleasure in killing, including an endless series of domestic animals, and finds it abhorrent that in some regions "projects are even being attempted to propose hunters as environmental educators in schools"! Well, of course, this is really an obscene proposal, better to have environmental educators do it for those who do not distinguish a deer from a fallow deer or who cry hot tears for the death of a sacred ibis which is considered by world science to be a real plague for the biodiversity. Or, even better, we could promote environmental educators who, in the image of a small bird feeding a bird at least twice as big, see an alleged assistance to the elderly who are now unable to fly that we humans
we should imitate. Too bad, however, that it is a cuckoo chick being fed by an unsuspecting bird who believes he is feeding his own chick that has been thrown out of the nest without too many compliments. It is precisely these environmental educators that we need. Finally, an attack on the arms production and economic sector and on the large trade fairs sponsored by large groups and the main companies in the sector led by Anpam could not be missing. Well, I knew perfectly well that there was no way I could be concise and I apologize for it, but I believe that all Italian hunters - but also politicians, industrialists and artisans - deserved these clarifications (source: ANLC). Here the link of the article.