TargetTalk

The IOC controls a tremendous amount of money thru television rights, if you don't abide no slice of the cash for you. The Chinese government controls access to a billion plus consumer market. Multinationals are in their palm.

Plus in the USA you have operation Gold with reasonable cash for Olympic medals. Many athletes aren't getting paid to shoot, it can help defray the costs associated with shooting and travelling.

Hi

Didn't think much of using a target pistol to put one in the back of that prisoner's head, BUT I'd sure buy a T-shirt with the 5 barbed wire rings in the Olympic pattern and Bejing 2008 in the lower right one. THAT would be a great statement on China and the Olympics.

I REALLY REALLY hope that there isn't a big correlation between Hitler's 1936 Olympics and China's in 2008, but the Chinese and Russians are both getting more and more hard to get along with lately.

Later

Mike
Wichita KS

Any .22LR pistol can kill people, including Pardini SP and the famous "Beretta P22". It would look like this ad comes from anti-gun group if you replace the nation with US. This is definitely harmful to our shooting sports. As a sport we cannot connect pistol with killing.

We can't connect pistols with killing? Who, besides yourself, are you trying to kid? Pistols are weapons, and if you look at the original Olympic events every one of them is derived from some sort of military discipline. We need to be adults about this, acknowledge the reality of what we do (remember the original RF pistol targets and the "duel" stage in center-fire), and then to advocate for responsible gun ownership/use.

I would like to offer my observation about this video.

Amnesty International is a organization oppose to death penalty, in China, a person can face death penalty if found guilty of a host of crimes, not just murder, such as rape, drug trafficking, embezzlement of public fund, accepting/offering bribe...etc, its a fairly long list. coupling with the fact the country does not have an impartial justice system, that makes the pratice of excute over 1,000s (by some estimation) with the prefer method of pistol shot to the back of the condems head per year highly questionable. Also, whoever produce this video, know something about the shooting sport, hence the target pistol, with the actor outfited as a competing pistol shooter and so on.

However I don't see it as an attack on the shooting sport or the Olympic Game, rather the target in this instance is China's dismal human right record, especially the indiscriminate use of death penalty for a host of social ills. Its not my intention to turn this thread into a dicussion of death penalty or China's human right policy, as some other poster has mentioned, the purpose of the video is to provoke reaction; debate, etc, on this level, it suceeded.

Tony

I "get it", but I hate any part of my legal/law abiding life used in such a perverted way to make someone elses point.

AI wants outrage and they've enlisted us, certainly without our consent.

RG

Another video of AI: http://www.dailymotion.com/related/5628 ... bullet_ads

I find this second one very well made.

P.S. you must look at it till the end to understand the message.

Ours is the only sport were the misuse of of a piece of sporting equipment brings an attack on the whole sport.

Baseball bats are all too often used as a lethal weapons, but I've never heard a ball player have to defend his sport. Baseball coaches are never accused of teaching little kids how to bash in someone's head.

I have to disagree with a previous poster. Pistols are not weapons any more then a kitchen table knife. Yes both can be misused or legitimately used as a weapon.

I have not seen the afore mentioned video (nor do I care to). I don't believe everything I see or hear.

The sad reality is that people do buy into this propaganda.

Ray

A baseball bat is originally made for swinging during a baseball match. A pistol i originally made for war and hurting people really bad. We just took the pistol shooting a step further and made a civil sport out of it that we all can enjoy (and we do).

I consider my CM84E as leathal as my 1911 .45ACP.

The latest school massacre in Finland was obviously acted out with a .22lr

A club is originally made for war and hurting people real bad.

We just took the club further and made a civil sport out of it that we can all enjoy.

Steve Swartz

Marathon is originally made for war and delivering the message to hurting people real bad.
We just took the running further and made a civil sport out of it that we can all enjoy.

cxiaoga

Speak for yourself when you mention a Marathon as something "we" all can enjoy :)

I remember my high school English lit teacher fustration with people using words incorrectly. One of her "pet peeves" was using the word "exhausted". As In " After a hard days work, I'm exhausted."

Those who are are exhausted are dead. (a reference to me running a Marathon)

"Leathal" is also an absolute. Much of our everday objects are leathal. They can be used to assault or to defend the innocent. A CM84, table knife, bat, golf club, rock, fist, etc are all lethal. It's not the item but our attitude and motivation in using any of these inanimate objects. None of these items are "weapons" until they are used as such.

As with any tool it's wise to understand it's proper function and learn from other's mistakes the tool's safe handling technigues.

Ray Odle

Having taken part in the boycott of Moscow in 1980, I see a similar trend starting up for Beijing. The boycott in 80 took steam in late January, and ended with a lot of very hardworking, dedicated athletes paying the price of a political agenda, we had no control over. I hope we do not take the easy way out again and punish our athletes, when our governments (I'm Canadian), apply pressure for political change. Chinas human rights disasters need to be addressed, but lets not use the olympic boycott as a bargaining tool.

cxiaoga wrote: China is a great country although it has some issues need to improve.

Master of understatement, are we?

It's a shame what the amnesty international did.

I always HATED the human rights organizations here in Brazil cause they always try to make the life of the target shooter even harder and with the amnesty international, it doesn't seem to be so diferent.

This video made me remember when Galvão Bueno, a very famous sports narrator here in Brazil, at the 2004 olympics opening ceremony, sad for all the country that he agreed that ALL the shooting events should be taken out of the olympics, cause it's "a very violent sport".

Because of things like this, here, a TOP quality target rifle costs about R$8000, ~US$4000, and it's almost one year of waiting to buy a gun here.

Jose Rossy wrote:

cxiaoga wrote: China is a great country although it has some issues need to improve.

Master of understatement, are we?

All countries does not have simultaneous development and I am sure nearly all countries have things in their past that does not look good if brought to surface. It is amazing how fast we tend to throw stones some times.
If your neighbor is a pain in the ass, a barbeque may ease things up. Or does anyone think that a boycott and nose in the air will make things better? It is better to speak many times than to be angry and only speak once. It is a very coward thing to send the athletes to do the barking on your behalf. Keep the sport free from politics!

The ad in question is well made from an AI point of view, but I had rather seen that it had not used a member of our sport to make their point. WE know the nature of our sport and can make a distinction between our sport and politics, I hope, but what about all the rest of the population for whom a gun spells murder and destruction?
This ad will not give our sport a push forward!

Kent

Kent couldn't agree with you more. More changes have been brought about by increased contact with other nations than isolation. Isolating a country only seems to drive their mistrust deeper and proves the politcal masters point to his populace.

Well, may be some clarifications:
- The campaign of AI is not against China and the Chinese people but against the Chinese rulers and political system. Chinese people are the first victims of these rulers and system. The Chinese athletes are also the victims because they must win, the pressure put on them is enormous. If they fail, the consequences for their future life can be dramatic. This only would already be a good reason to not have the Olympics in China.
- Why making a campaign against the Olympic Games: this is because the Chinese rulers uses the Olympics as a way to promote their political system just as it was done two times previoulsy in the history: Berlin 1936 and everybody kinows what happened a couple of years later and in Moscow in 1980. This is not acceptable and I find a shame that for huge money reasons the Olympic Commity decided to have the Olympics in China, by doing this choice they violate the Olympic rules.
- Finally, I know quite a lot of people not involved in and not interrested by shooting sports that have seen the video of AI. None of them saw it as a campaign against the shooting sport and/or in favor of gun ban laws. The only ones who made saw it like that were shooters acustomed to all the campaigns/laws against guns and the shooting sports.

My country is one of those which still employs capital punishment. Crimes which are punished with execution includes drug trafficking involving more than 15g of class A drugs like Heroine, attempted robery using a firearm, 1st degree murder, and kidnapping.

When an australian of Vietnamese origin was executed while enroute to melbourne transiting through Singapore trafficking drugs, it created a huge fiasco. Not only were people who were against the death penalty protested (peacefully) outside of our embassies and any of our foreign agencies or schools, thugs and hooligans also took advantage of the situation to make life difficult for those of us who were in Australia at that time. And AI was also around to make themselves heard, but for a drug trafficker? Where's the justice in that? What kind of message are they trying to spread? Any lawyers here?

I make no excuses here. If your activites bring untold harm to families and individuals, and you are warned again and again that we will execute you if you so choose to go ahead with your criminal activities which has no other reason but to benefit yourself financially by bringing harm upon others, then in the face of the executioner, what can you say in your defence?

If you murder someone, and in return you have to pay with your own life, do you feel any injustice?

If we allow kidnappers to get away every single time, you know how many cases of kidnapping you will have on your hands everyday to handle? How many innocent victims will die? Just look at Mexico. Sorry if you're from mexico, but its a fact.

At the end of the day, I know I am safe. If amnesty international wishes to remain relevant to the fight against injustice then as an organisation it must examine their actions and for who they are really fighting for instead of indiscriminately criticising laws of the land and painting an obviously inaccurate picture which stirrs up emotions. Olympic shooters do not execute people. You do not use a competition weapon to shoot point blank into someone's head while wearing your competition gear and shooting glasses. That does no good to a shooter's score, and I'll be damned if any coach allows his/her shooter to go through with that.

AI could have been a beacon of hope for countless people being oppressed, but of late it seems to have lost its direction.

Out of interest, if it hadn't been discussed on shooting websites, how many of us would have been aware of this AI video.

I know that I have never seen it anywhere else.