The PR industry loves nothing more than naming a day. Of late we've goneto naming weeks - I suspect in an effort to demonstrate that we can giveour campaign legs (though it's more likely about stretching the appealand publicity opportunities). Whippet Fettlers' Week would be my choice,if such a thing existed.

Happily, National Shooting Week exists and it kicks off on May 26th. You may not care for this but I do- and like many in the shooting fraternity, I'm delighted that our hobby is sufficiently street-wise to have dreamtit up, however unoriginal it may now be.

What such ruses do is give the originator the opportunity to showcasetheir subject matter and, in skilful hands, can provide the platform fora varied and intensive programme of events capable of engaging the mediaand the wider public in a myriad of ways.

In shooting's case, that's about encouraging people to try the sportwhilst pointing out the safety and responsibility of the shootingcommunity. It also enables us to talk about the huge amount ofconservation work shooters do, and the broader benefits of that in termsof bio-diversity (according to this government, no great ally ofshooting, land managed proactively for shooting sustains a bio-diversityfive times greater than land that isn't).

And if you think that anything involving flinging a lead projectile at3,000 feet per second cannot be safe, try this: more people arecommitted to hospital each year with injuries caused by cotton ear budsthan they are from injuries caused by legally held weapons.

As for the folly of giving people weapons in the first place, the HomeOffice told us recently that gun crimes committed with legally heldweapons were 'statistically insignificant'. To qualify for that you haveto be at or below 0.01% of the relevant crime category. Legal gunownership isn't the problem, then, it's the illegal ownership of illegalweapons.

Dougal Paver,
Managing Director,
Paver Smith & Co,
The Plaza,
100 Old Hall Street,
Liverpool,
L3 9QJ

TEL: 0151 239 5000
DIRECT: 0151 239 5001
MOBILE: 07817 29 62 62
EMAIL: paver@paversmith.co.uk
WEB: www.paversmith.co.uk

My business grows through referral. Do you know anyone who needs a freshapproach to PR?

Help us help some very needy children

Like fishing and networking ?