The loonies have always had more influence than they deserve in Australia, a fact that I blame on a media too intent on dredging up the opposing view and politicians who shy from confrontation. Right now they've been lured out of their caves by a police review of the minimum age for paintball, the military-style game in which players shoot each other with balls of paint. I've never played but from all accounts it's great fun, a quality that is almost guaranteed to have the loonies gasping to condemn.
Three years ago the minimum age for paintball in NSW was dropped from 18 to 16, and police are now reviewing that with, presumably, the paintball industry's call for another drop to age 12 in mind. The police recommendation will go to Police Minister Michael Daley.
It's too much fun for the loonies, of course. They're warning that dropping the minimum paintball age would be promoting a dangerous gun culture to children, that we'd be corrupting a generation to satisfy the greed of business. They've stopped short of predicting that in just a few years after 12-year-olds start playing paintball we'll be under siege from snipers queuing on the rooftops and mad teenagers spraying bullets instead of graffiti.
It doesn't suit their arguments that 12-year-olds are eligible for a firearms licence in NSW, albeit a minor's firearms licence, and that children from the age of seven can, and many do, shoot each other up with laser guns at Zone Empire. Indeed, in backyards throughout NSW boys of all ages have been rampaging with potato guns, monster water blaster rifles, plastic dart guns, cap guns and rubber-band guns for years.
Is there a good argument for 12-year-olds being barred from paintball? Apart, that is, from the risk that they'll have fun?
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