dilbert is a pure fantasist.
heavily editing your original post is a sure sign you’ve lost the grounds of an argument. the relation between britain’s military prowess and civilian shooting clubs is tenuous at best. the clubs you link were set up a hundred years ago and have had no effect on major conflicts or britain’s preparedness for war whatsoever, let alone fucking ‘defense of the realm’ and ‘centuries of global pre-eminence’.
the best you can do is mention medieval kings’ edicts to train the peasantry during times of encroaching war. really? medieval statecraft and longbowmen is the best evidence you’ve got for ‘centuries of history’ of your derpy hobby. you then link to the wikipedia of your beloved small bore association which states
it was set up to counter the very low levels of firearms ability in the civilian population. so much for the proud history of amateur shooting, carrying the empire through its glory days. furthermore, the tone of the wiki history is very much one of it being a ‘well-meaning gentlemen’s scheme intended for the working class’. a scheme which was blown to smithereens in the great war, in a style of warfare totally unforeseen by boer war vets, and has been a niche pursuit since.
my favourite part is where it says they founded it in the spirit of ‘ancient practices’. because nothing speaks for a living, active pursuit like talk of revivals of things acknowledged as ‘ancient’. the start of the 20th century was full of crackpot english gentlemen looking to ‘ancient’ traditions — the druidic orders, for instance. i suppose by that reasoning the people gathering at stonehenge to hug the circles and read bad poetry represent ‘centuries of britain’s religious beliefs’ and a major contribution to our spiritual life (and the link between you target shooting at university and fucking henry VIII's longbowmen is about the same as that between glastonbury druids and fucking Merlin: pure fantasy).
from this description it sounds almost indistinguishable from pursuits like golf, which were similarly revived by gentlemen and aristocrats and had ‘medieval’ or ‘ancient’ links gussied up to add to the pageantry. you remind me of those pimply nerds who think that by joining their university fencing society, they're directly adopting the mantle of the Duc de Gourmand and becoming properly noble by getting whipped in the gourd.
and you keep going on about charitable status and close interplay with the army. yes, well done, like girl scouts again as i said. that land (public or private, it's not as if a bunch of old generals couldn't get a few parcels of land from the gentry for any old harebrained scheme) is given over to something doesn’t mean it’s in recognition of its immense contributions. the number of things given charitable status in the 20th century, to accord with and encouraging the changing nature of civic life, is HUGE. there were charitable friendly societies for knitting, women's cycling, bible reading groups, yoghurt weaving, etc, etc. in profusion in the victorian era.
yet again you’re massively over claiming something for yourself because, hey, you like it. the dilbert way of reasoning: me likey good, everything else bad. that you went to imperial college doesn’t seem to have done much for your growth as a person, as your approach to the world is still that of a baby at its mom’s teet. tennis is silly! just victorians flouncing around! bigger more successful sports are phoney! look mummy aren’t i good when i shoot!
Last edited by uziq (2020-01-20 03:23:27)
