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Animal Rights Group Calls Sport Hunting Magazines 'Shooting Porn' and Wants to Ban Kids from Seeing Them

Animal Rights Group Calls Sport Hunting Magazines 'Shooting Porn' and Wants to Ban Kids from Seeing Them

"lurid, pro-violence content"

An animal rights group in the U.K. came out with a report Monday saying gun magazines are "shooting porn" that should be banned from sale to minors.

In its report "Gunning For Children: How the gun lobby recruits young blood," Animal Aid says that such "lurid, pro-violence content could have a corrosive, long-lasting effect on impressionable young minds."

The group believes these magazines should be considered "top shelf" and banned from sale to customers younger than 18. Animal Aid says this action"could deal a serious blow to a gun lobby that is desperate to recruit youngsters to counter a declining constituency." In England and Wales, the group notes, licenses for shotguns have been declining for the last two decades.

University of Brighton criminology and public policy professor Peter Squires likens the magazines to "shooting porn" in the report.

‘The aim of Animal Aid’s top shelf campaign is to restrict the blood supply to a gun lobby that sees its core constituency slipping away and is desperate for young recruits," Animal Aid Director Andrew Tyler said in a statement. "It knows that if children are not captured young, the chances of them picking up a weapon in later years rapidly decrease."

Tyler goes on to say youth who engage in sport hunting in urban areas are "considered dysfunctional and a social menace."

The report specifically calls out Shooting Times and Sporting Gun for showing "grinning young children" holding their latest kill. It includes psychotherapist Jeffrey Masson saying it is "completely insane" to encourage children to shoot animals for sport.

"How can anyone believe that there is no link between cruelty to animals in childhood and cruelty to others later in life," Masson said.

Gun advocates are dismissive of the report and its claims. The Daily Telegraph reports Simon Clarke of the British Association of Shooting and Conservation saying the magazines only promote responsible use of the firearms and that the animal's death is not inappropriately glorified.

“Shooting is carried out for a number of reasons," Clarke told the Telegraph. "It is either just pest control or shooting game. There is no glorification of the shooting itself, it is a means to an end."

David Taylor with the Countryside Alliance told the Telegraph the magazines also show how hunting is a vital part of the rural economy.

Check out the full Animal Aid report here.

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