The question and answer between the world of hunting and "Future", the newspaper of the Italian bishops, continues. There control room of the hunting world sent the following letter to the editor of the newspaper, Marco Tarquinio: "We are writing to you in reference toarticle by Maurizio Fiasco, published on Friday 29 March 2019 in his newspaper and dedicated to the topic of self-defense. As the control room of the hunting world, representing over 600 thousand hunters, far from wanting to evaluate or judge your opinions and your editorial line with regard to these issues, however, we would like to highlight both the seriousness of the tones used and the inaccuracies contained in the article itself. The mocking statement cannot be considered acceptable "Inebriated hunters of grappa already at dawn, ingested to counter the cold of the forest mists".
But what is important to us is the clarity on the hunting accidents that have been exploited, using the data of the Hunting Victims Association, repeatedly denied and refuted over the years because they are almost always "inflated" with cases that have nothing to do with the hunting activity. To clarify, we are attaching the press release that we issued at the close of the hunting season just ended. There are 12 confirmed deaths during the 2018-19 season (from 1 September 2018 to 30 January 2019), with a decrease of 33% compared to the previous one. There were 10 fatal accidents involving hunters (83% of the total), while those involving non-hunters were 2 (17% of the total). During the same time frame 50 were injured, with a decrease of 17% compared to 2017-18.
The injuries of the last season involved hunters for 74% of cases (37 injured) and for the remaining 26% of non-hunters cases (13 injured). Even a single death while hunting remains unacceptable, we are the first to say, but perhaps it is good to remember that any human activity, even the apparently safer one, involves a percentage of risk that can be lowered, but not completely eliminated. Hunting involves thousands and thousands of women and men engaged in the countryside, in the direct management of wildlife, in the control of protected areas, in surveillance anti-poaching. A constant and attentive presence on the territory that no police force or other forms of volunteering can even remotely think of equaling. Thanking you for your attention, we send our best regards ”.
Avvenire's response was not long in coming: "I appreciate the tone of your reply and for this very reason I would like to immediately underline a crucial point: you have interpreted the parallelism between the cases of killing by theft or robbery and those due to fatal errors in target shooting by hunters, as a controversy against the art of hunting. I would like to advise you to reread my article carefully, apologizing if the light tone of an engraving has hurt the sensitivity of correct and sensible people, to grasp that the criticism moved, instead, to the manipulation of the social alarm, beyond the numbers. Certainly there are corollaries, such as the opportunity - and I know well that there is talk of urgency from many quarters - of greater controls on the hunting field by the specialized police forces. Maybe even with the alcohol test, hitherto reserved for motorists, in random checks along the roads. I gladly acknowledge, however, the recent decrease in the number of accidents (which the Association of Victims of Hunting, which I have cited, does well to note carefully when they appear in the news), in line with the general decline in violence in Italy. (minus 75 percent from the XNUMXs to today).
But, I insist, the focus of my article was on the unfortunate consequences of the legislator's "double message" in terms of safety: the primacy of the State obscured by the solicitation of a private response "always legitimate". Giving you another note of the extent with which you addressed the Director of "Avvenire" (who invited me to respond), I must add another consideration: the comments hosted by an online magazine of hunters - in unrepeatable words to my address and the newspaper with which I collaborate - are nevertheless disturbing. The holders in any capacity of deadly firearms, including shotguns, are in fact among the natural recipients of the metamessage of those who wanted the new rule on "legitimate defense" and he put into circulation the idea that from now on we no longer have to worry about evaluating the proportionality between the danger - the real or potential offense - and the way to defend oneself. This is why I say that the incredible aggressiveness I found in those messages, so far from your tone and your arguments, is really scary: even those people (I guess) have the license to go around armed.
The names of the intemperate for the verification of the psychic balance requirements. The law prescribes it as absolute, and this is what the public security authority must evaluate before issuing the license to carry a weapon. Both for sport and for self-defense. I add two brief considerations, although starting in my turn from both the basic misunderstanding and the right measure that characterize the replication of the hunting associations and which has already been well underlined by Professor Fiasco. 1) To affirm one's own reasons, one cannot and must never attempt to delegitimize other voices: the Association of Hunting Victims is not made up of ghosts and visionaries. 2) The crossroads defenses and the threatening ones (the more serious ones, later removed) of the usual "keyboard lions", this time, however, also with the shotgun, were also excited by those who transformed a parallelism into a question to be faced with the parabellum of a frontal controversy that had never been on our part. It is a free choice, but a dangerous one. Better to be aware of it ”.