Londoners what has happened to your MANHOOD?

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23…

Children will be banned from watching shooting events under Boris Johnson's Olympic ticket giveaway.

London schoolchildren are eligible for 125,000 Olympic tickets but these will not include any featuring guns, as Games organisers and City Hall fear a backlash from the anti-gun lobby.

Giving children tickets to the events, at the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, could have appeared at odds with Mayor Boris Johnson's bid to quell teenage gun and knife crime.

A source said: "We decided it would not be appropriate. It's the only sport children will not be able to go to as part of the Ticketshare scheme."

The youth ban will anger some elements of the British Olympic shooting establishment which already feels marginalised by Games organiser Locog.

Georgina Geikie, 26, a Commonwealth Games bronze medallist and Olympic pistol hopeful, said she was "horrified", adding: "This is a chance for children to look at guns in a different way. They are taking away the opportunity for the sport to blossom. How do we educate people that it is a sport if they cannot watch it?"

David Penn, secretary of the British Shooting Sports Council, said: "There is no link between Olympic-level shooting and crime. It's like saying that a thief would use a Formula One car as a getaway car."

Christopher Graffius, of the British Association for Shooting and Conservation, said: "The Olympics represent the international peak of safe and responsible shooting. Children can see far worse on their TV screens and interact with far worse on their computers."

Many in the sport wanted the 2012 event staged at the national centre in Bisley, Surrey, so it would leave a legacy in the form of new rifle ranges. Britain's pistol shooters complain they are at a disadvantage because gun laws since the Dunblane massacre mean they have to train abroad.

Olympic shooters say theirs is a highly skilled disciplined and regulated sport, and reject any notion that it encourages gun crime.

But Danny Bryan, founder of Communities Against Gun and Knife Crime said: "I agree with Boris. It is good kids should enjoy the Games but there's no way we should glorify guns."

One in eight London schoolchildren will get a free ticket to the Games under Ticketshare. The seats are funded from a £25 per ticket levy on corporate packages. Schools have until the end of the year to sign up to the "Get Set" Olympic syllabus.

Apart from the London schools tickets, 50,000 tickets will be distributed to schools and 25,000 by the British Olympic Association, British Paralympic Association, Sport England and Tickets for Troops. City Hall's allocation is in return for the extra £625 million London council taxpayers contribute to the Games.