I've never been all that fussed on guns.

To be honest, I've never really had that much to do with guns, although I remember that when I was a kid, a fellow round our way by the name of Terry Love lost an eye to a stray shot from an air rifle - a sluggy as it was known then.

Naturally enough, Terry never received much in the way of sympathy from the lieges as a result of this unfortunate situation and in fact, at his subsequent engagement party some years later, a great whoop of merriment went up from his caring, sharing chums when his intended pledged her troth by sweetly telling her Cyclops-like sweetheart - 'Oh Terry, you're the one I love'.

For most people - and probably for Terry 'The-One-I' Love too, come to think of it, guns are by no means a laughing matter.

Having said that, isn't it unfair to blame a gun, given that a gun is an inanimate item utterly incapable of independent thought, movement or action? 

See, it's people who are the problem.  People who shoot guns.

Halfwitswho shoot guns, really.  I mean, shooters have always had a major public relations problem haven't they?  They've got a terrible image.

Think of all the shooter types you can immediately bring to mind and nearly every despised, reviled and/or ridiculed stereotype duly appears.

There's crooks of course, bad lads with shooters with nuffink to lose and everyfink to gain, guvnor. 

Then there's your upmarket, posh shooter - all tweeds, grouse, whisky cups, servility and people madly beating their bush because that's just what they're like.

Farmer Shootie - a blunderbuss shotgun is his firearm of choice, one he'll take great delight at blasting at your fundament as you disappear over the hill with a handful of Granny Smiths - and I don't mean his relatives.

Then there's the nutter.  And maybe the least said about him the better, since people in Scotland and Australia in particular have sad cause to remember the horrific consequences of huge weaponry and a dangerously unstable, deranged, deluded head the ball.

No, guns are very bad.  And the people who shoot them are badder still.

So given this irrevocable, lifetime standpoint, why have I recently obtained my gun license?

Because I'm a dyed-in-the-wool solid gold hypocrite? 

Yes, agreed - but why else have I done it?

To be honest, I'm not sure.  Maybe I need to tell you about it.

My town - the bucolic hamlet of Swifts Creek - is a town of barely 230 people.  But, as we residents found out one slow news day last summer, we proudly boast the record of having the most guns per capita in all of Australia - 6.3 per household apparently - which presumably means everybody's got a broken one.

Actually, truth is, nobody takes their gun lightly here.  They're locked up, treated with respect and seen very much as a tool of the trade. 

A necessity for farmers.  For anyone living on the land.

And why not?

You raise lambs, your only form of livelihood, a hard, relentless year's work every single day of the year.  It's unremitting hard yakka, but it's a living.

But then what happens?  A sly, murderous fox takes your lambs, at his leisure, 3 or 4 a night, blatantly, brutally. 

Steals your livelihood.  Robs you blind.

'What are you supposed to do', one old famer told me - 'f****** cuddle 'em?' 

You shoot.  You shoot to kill.  Or go bankrupt.  That's your choice.

And then there are rabbits.  It's a well-known fact - I remember seeing it on 'Animal Magic' - that rabbits provide no other natural function - with the possible exception of looking quite cute - than large-scale devastation of crops.

And they breed like - uh - rabbits and not only eat your harvest out but, because of their huge numbers, reduce your paddock to a succession of unstable underground burrows, as dangerous as they are unpredictable.

'What are you supposed to do - f***** cuddle 'em?'

Prejudice takes many forms.  But the one thing every single category of prejudice has in common is ignorance.  People make their mind up about stuff without thinking it through.  Without living it. 

Most of the time the stuff we think we believe has never really been put to the test.

Take racism as an example.  The biggest proportion of people who profess to hate anybody because of their colour - or come to that, their religion, favourite football team or sexual preference - almost inevitably have never really met anyone of that particular demographical ilk. 

They might have met them, but they've never connected with them, realised that, like most people, they're really just the same as them.  With the same hopes and dreams, the same perspectives and the same heavy bias toward good people over halfwits, no hopers and ratbags as there is anywhere else in the world. 

Prejudice doesn't hold up to examination.

See, I reckon I'm prejudiced against shooters. 

Not against guns per se because I've already had a go at the clay pigeon shoot - more inanimate objects incapable of independent thought, movement or action - but against the people who shoot. 

Especially those who shoot to kill.

Which is ridiculous because it seems I've formed a prejudicial view without every experiencing a shoot - a full on hunting session. 

I've never put my prejudice to the test. 

I'm going to.

I'm thinking it might be a bit like Bobby De Niro in 'The Deerhunter' where his war experiences in Vietnam made him appreciate the sanctity of life, but given that I'm going to be shooting rabbits, possibly not.

It's a reasonable proposal, isn't it?  Only fair? 

Before I subscribe to my initial prejudicial position - based on nothing more than assumption and bigotry I readily confess, I should open myself up to a personal experience, and then make my mind up, don't you think?

Is that a gun in my pocket?

No, I'm just kind of excited.