It’s much more personal this way, more honorable. “Shhh! Shhhh!” You should see the light go out of their eyes.
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An old lady with quick enough reflexes to grab a pigeon seems a lot more fascinating than a movie, museum and a keyboard…
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As soon as they make a handheld personal version of this, it’s good bye pigeons in my city:
Verse, if you want some BB love for Hawking, just paste this into Google: “stephen hawking” site:boingboing.net
After a certain point, the ol’ sunlight-through-a-magnifying-glass-on-the-ants trick just isn’t enough anymore. On a less lethal but equally hilarious note, I picked up one of these babies for Halloween one year: the Airzooka. As the ad says, “Blasts harmless ball of air up to 20 feet.” I’ve seen it work at distances considerably in excess of 20 feet, too.
I like to use it on the neighbor’s roosters and trespassing cats. And my kids.
A shotgun loaded with rocksalt shells isn’t going to hurt people or infrastructure, but it’ll kill fragile pigeons dead.
Also, presumably the people you hire to shoot pigeons would be doing so on rooftops and in places where the pigeons nest, not just blasting flocks in the park or in the middle of the street. Also, presumably the people you hire to shoot pigeons would not be shooting if people are in front of their guns. 
Will rocksalt shell shotguns break skin though? At what range? Hmm.
http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot33.htm
At 20 yards, you might scare a dog or some other animal, but you sure wouldn’t break the skin.
At 10 yards, you might break the skin with a couple of grains, but nothing very serious.
At 12 feet, you might get the desired effect, if the desired effect is to “burn” the target with the rock salt.
At 4 feet, you might cause a wound requiring a visit to a hospital for a human, or maybe death to a small animal.
You’re not trying to bleed the pigeons to death. You’re trying to concuss them. Remember, birds are fragile.
And if not rocksalt, some other “frangible” round that breaks up on impact. The idea is to deliver just enough force to kill the bird, but not blow parts off of buildings.
The Box O Truth answers a lot of practical questions about the capabilities of firearms.
But a suitable predator has been introduced.
Cambridge isn’t New York.
New York has its falcons,
Manchester has Shaun Ryder,
and Cambridge has the Pigeon Strangler.
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They have been breed and imported to the states as a food source for humans. Maybe the ultimate predator needs to step up his game.
All is possible in the best of all possible worlds.
Pigeons are definitely not fragile. At 15 meters an old-fashioned “Red Rider” style BB gun will kill sparrows, robins, grackles or blackbirds but will harmlessly bounce off a pigeon. An air rifle at full power will do them in though, but that’s definitely also enough power to penetrate human skin at 20 yards. One must be careful.
Coming this fall, Soylent Purple! Now with 100% more pigeon in every bite!
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I like your style, Cambridge. Where I live, elderly ladies usually feed them.
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I love this comment so much, I’d marry it if I could. Thanks for making me laugh on a day that started out quite crappy.
So, you want to deprive the old lady of her only pleasure? How heartless!
I’m not sure if it was actually put up by David Shrigley or if it was someone else, but last time I was in Manchester (2011) I saw a sign with pretty much the same wording as this:
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Risk none the less.
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