252 FIELD SHOOTING. 



guns for fear of accidents, but there is no ground 

 for apprehension on this point. The handling of 

 the gun prevents accidents with guns, instead of 

 causing them. In those cases we hear of in which 

 thoughtless persons shoot their friends accidentally, 

 it will be found in nineteen cases out of twenty 

 that the gun was not in the hands of a boy or 

 young man who shoots in the field, but in those 

 of one who only knows a gun by sight, and is 

 wholly unacquainted with the proper management 

 of it. It is a million to one that a boy who shoots, 

 or is learning to shoot, will never shoot one of his 

 sisters or friends. Such things are only done by 

 those who have nothing to do with firearms in 

 their proper places. The latter have an idea that 

 they will kill, but they hardly know how. On 

 the other hand, the shooter sees execution done by 

 his gun on birds, and, knowing that there is death 

 in the barrel, never fools about with it, letting the 

 muzzle cover people. Therefore I say that wher- 

 ever there is convenience for it parents should 

 let their sons learn to shoot, and they need not 

 be afraid to do so because their boys are com- 

 paratively young. There is no more danger of a 

 gun, to himself or other persons, in the hands of 

 a boy of fourteen years of age, than there is of 



