FirearmsUK - Unity 2015

[safetyfirst]

Yeah, I pretty much agree with you.

[IsleShoot]

Social media is simply a tool, it allows us as a much maligned community to establish a presence where we would normally be denyed access due to intolerance or just plain ignorance. Some of you will remember how in 96/97 no ad agency, paper or non shooting magazine would run any pro-shooting ad.
With social media we are no longer constrained by the media barons or editorial opinions of a select few, it gives us a voice like never before. What people do with the information we give them we have no control over but we would be mistaken to ignore the power that twitter, fb and even forums like this give us, after all its all 'social media'!

Anybody who hasn't already done so, chuck a stone in the twitter pool and see how far the ripples go...

[DaveFirearmsUK]

I have yet to see its "power", before social media there were other methods of contact each one a "wonder" in its day none of which made any difference on its own, the power of the printing press would have been impotent without the intellectual drive of the renaissance and the enlightenment.

I put today's selfish and morally bankrupt society down to lack of intellectual rigour and so it will be with social media, like television, dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. That is what populates this medium as that is what populates peoples hearts and minds. You get the message to them but are they intellectually equipped to make anything of it, it seems to me it is only a case of the loudest noise wins, volume has more value than content.

It can be very hard to get through to people with objective arguments and facts when many will be swayed by emotive arguments. I think social media does help the issue as their can be ways to get images such as memes/infographics that show the inclusive nature of shooting and a quick visual of facts.


As IsleShoot said above it does give us a chance to at least get messages out that others might not want to print.

[dromia]

Social media is simply a tool, it allows us as a much maligned community to establish a presence where we would normally be denyed access due to intolerance or just plain ignorance. Some of you will remember how in 96/97 no ad agency, paper or non shooting magazine would run any pro-shooting ad.
With social media we are no longer constrained by the media barons or editorial opinions of a select few, it gives us a voice like never before. What people do with the information we give them we have no control over but we would be mistaken to ignore the power that twitter, fb and even forums like this give us, after all its all 'social media'!

Anybody who hasn't already done so, chuck a stone in the twitter pool and see how far the ripples go...

I read what you write but point me to some evidence where this use of "social media" has helped gunowners and improved our legislative lot.

Notwithstanding the "power" of the media the last petition only got 20 odd thousand signatures.

After Dunblane the Snowdrop bigots got 100s of thousands of signatures without "social media".

I still say that it is more about the people than the communication method and we need something with more clout than the likes of an ephemeral communication chimera like tw@tter.

[the running man]

I have yet to see its "power", before social media there were other methods of contact each one a "wonder" in its day none of which made any difference on its own, the power of the printing press would have been impotent without the intellectual drive of the renaissance and the enlightenment.

I put today's selfish and morally bankrupt society down to lack of intellectual rigour and so it will be with social media, like television, dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. That is what populates this medium as that is what populates peoples hearts and minds. You get the message to them but are they intellectually equipped to make anything of it, it seems to me it is only a case of the loudest noise wins, volume has more value than content.

I have to agree with dromia on this, I and some of my freinds in shooting feel there is a definite program to dumb down the people of the uk, people are programed not to be able to think for themselves.......evidence? Well endless soaps on tv are turning folks brains to mush, no university places anymore to all, and buzz words like "clearly" and "obviously" used by politicians and public figures to somehow make us sub consciously beleive what they say is automatically fact without the need to question.....where will it lead? The new world order? Illuminati? Engineered disease to cull the populace of the world? Who knows...and yes I realise this sounds a little paranoid or conspiracy theory ish!!!

But as a caveat to the above I will mention then the educated are also now prone to media programming and to certain causes the deem "right" Iknow a couple both with degrees and private schooling both highly educated who are green party supporters, and the crap they come out with is comical.....but they would swallow an anchor if the green party told them it was true.....

So where does this leave us?

Nowhere.....if we keep quiet....

[dromia]

An education or degree nowadays is no indicator of intelligence or intellectual ability.

Tw@tter and the like are about saying what we need is doing.

[the running man]

Need.....another consumer driven word,consumerism culture that's been forced on us just like "snacks" did u as a kid Adam have "snacks"? Or was it as I had breakfast dinner and tea.....chocolate or sweets only after teas been eaten.....the snack industry literally created a gap in the market....result? We're all fat as f***...

Consumerism,multiculturalism, products having built in redundancies or lifetimes.....it's all crap we never wanted...

[safetyfirst]

An education or degree nowadays is no indicator of intelligence or intellectual ability.

Tw@tter and the like are about saying what we need is doing.

Yep. I've got a degree and look at some of this nonsense I come out with.

[dromia]

I rest my case.

[Thorney]

tbh it doesnt matter if we harness social media or not as long as groups of shooters take pieces out of each other we've no hope.