Italy: War Against the Population with Hunting Rifles

What the figures reveal: recreational hunting in Italy is not only a massacre of wildlife — it is also an underestimated safety risk for the population.

AVC is a citizens’ organisation of those affected and their relatives, which has for years systematically collected media reports and local police bulletins on hunting accidents, because the state itself keeps no complete official statistics. The organisation has made its dossiers publicly available since 2007 and explicitly permits the reuse of the data, provided the source is cited.

The first bulletin of the 2024/2025 season already documents several deaths and injuries within the first two weeks of the so-called «Preaperture»:

• Two hobby hunters who lost their lives in the course of pursuing their hobby
• Further hobby hunters who were seriously injured
• Two women who were killed by their own father or husband respectively using a hunting weapon — in a domestic setting, but with the same weapon that is supposed to be «sporting equipment» at the weekend

This pattern runs through all years of the AVC dossiers: it is not only the shooters themselves who die or are maimed, but also people who have nothing whatsoever to do with recreational hunting, except that they happen to be nearby or live with someone who has access to a hunting rifle.

68 victims in one season, over 800 in a decade

The 2023/2024 season gives an impression of the scale. According to AVC, 68 people were hit by hunting weapons in that single hunting year: 12 died, 56 were injured.

A breakdown reveals the full extent of the impact on the general public:

• 28 victims were not hobby hunters, including 6 fatalities and 22 injured, 7 of them children and young people
• 40 victims were hobby hunters, including likewise 6 fatalities and 34 injured

Hobby hunting therefore kills not only those who participate voluntarily, but regularly strikes walkers, farmers, mountain bikers, local residents and children on their way to school.

A report on the work of the monitoring center «Vittime della Caccia» summarises the long-term data: over the past ten years, 630 people were injured and 204 killed in Italy, in direct connection with hunting activities or hunting weapons.

Added to this are seasonal figures that have the character of a permanent state of emergency: between 1 September 2024 and 5 January 2025 alone, AVC recorded 53 people killed or injured by hunting weapons, among them 13 minors.

These are not “tragic isolated incidents”. This is a structural problem.

A walk in the woods as a safety risk

Animal welfare organisations such as OIPA now speak openly of a «public safety problem» and call on the government and parliament to act. In a joint assessment with AVC, OIPA points to the same finding: year after year, people who are «simply in the wrong place at the wrong time» are also affected — for instance while taking a walk in the woods or on the farm track in front of their own home.

The case examples in the reports read like a horror log of everyday normality:

• An elderly man standing in his garden is struck by a ricochet
• A family travelling by car is shot at near a driven hunt
• Children playing outdoors end up in the line of fire

Many of these cases make it only into local news columns, not into national awareness. That is precisely why the activists speak of «bollettini della guerra»: they seek to make the diffuse, invisible violence visible.

The invisible dead within the system

Particularly explosive: Italy has to this day kept no comprehensive, official statistics on hunting accidents involving human casualties. Environmental lawyers have been pointing out for years that no centrally maintained government figures exist, despite people being regularly killed or seriously injured.

What is known comes almost exclusively from civil society, from painstakingly compiled overviews such as those produced by AVC. The organisation analyzes press reports, police bulletins and local media. What goes unreported does not appear in the statistics either.

One must therefore assume that the actual number of incidents is higher. Some years ago, a major Italian daily newspaper reported that between 2011 and 2021 alone, hunting accidents claimed more than 200 lives and left nearly 700 people injured.

How the hunting lobby minimises the danger

While AVC and animal protection organisations warn of an ongoing “human tragedy,” the hunting lobby tells a different story.

Associations such as the «Cabina di regia del mondo venatorio» and pro-hunting magazines publish their own analyzes, readily citing declining figures and “ever-greater safety.” In a joint report on the 2024/2025 season, they note that the number of injured persons in 2024 stood at 34, significantly below the previous year. At the same time, however, they concede that in the period from 1 September 2024 to 30 January 2025 there were a total of 62 hunting accidents resulting in 14 deaths.

On the pro-hunting side, these figures are frequently put into perspective by offsetting them against the number of hunting licences issued or “hunting days logged,” creating the impression that hobby hunting is practically as safe as a Sunday outing.

What is consistently ignored in this framing:

• The risk involved is not a voluntarily assumed one, as in climbing or alpinism, but affects people who are involuntarily exposed to it
• There are no protected areas in the countryside that are free from hunting
• The risk is borne by the general public, not by the hunting community alone

The hunting lobby's message is: everything is under control. The reality reflected in the “war bulletins” says otherwise.

Hunting weapons in the home: from a “hobby” to domestic violence

The AVC's balance sheet covers not only classic hunting accidents in the field, but also fatal incidents in domestic settings where hunting weapons are used. Already in the first bulletin of the 2024/2025 season, two women appear who were shot by a family member with a hunting rifle.

Here, too, the pattern is clear: every additional firearm in a household increases the risk of deadly violence. Studies from other countries have shown for years that legally available weapons play a central role in rampage killings, suicides, and domestic violence. The Italian situation confirms this on a smaller scale.

Anyone who legitimizes recreational hunting legitimizes in practice not only the killing of animals, but also creates easier access to lethal weapons that can become a “solution” at any time in a family conflict or during a mental health crisis.

Europe's blind spot: hunting as a security problem

The Italian example is not an exotic special case. In Switzerland, an average of around four hobby hunters die each year in the pursuit of their hobby, and serious accidents involving third parties also occur here on a regular basis.

What is particularly striking in Italy:

• The density of hunters in certain regions
• The long hunting season with pre- and post-season openings
• The proximity between residential areas, agricultural land, and hunting grounds

Added to this is a close entanglement between hunting associations and politics, which critics have been documenting for years.

The result is a security regime in which the right of a minority to recreational ballistics is weighted more heavily than the right of the majority to move outdoors without fear of rifle bullets.

What this means for policy

When a civil society organization calls its accident statistics «Bollettini della guerra», that is not an exaggeration but a sober description of the record. The figures speak a clear language:

• Dozens of deaths and injuries every season
• Hundreds of victims in a decade
• Children, women, and bystanders among those hit
• No comprehensive official statistics, no serious political debate about drastically restricting recreational hunting

As long as politicians ignore this reality, they bear co-responsibility for every further bullet that strikes a pedestrian, for every child hit by a shotgun blast, for every woman shot with a “sports weapon” in her own living room.

Hunting is not a “hobby” — it is a risk for everyone

The first war bulletin of the 2024/2025 season from the Associazione Vittime della Caccia is more than a press release — it is a distress call. It makes unmistakably clear: recreational hunting in Italy is not a harmless traditional sport, but an ongoing safety problem that affects society as a whole.

Anyone who continues to claim that hunting affects “only” animals ignores the fact that every year people die because somewhere someone feels the urge to shoot at living targets in their spare time.

As long as governments in Rome, Bern or Brussels dismiss this violence as an inevitable side effect of a “nature-friendly hobby,” the war bulletins of victims’ associations will grow thicker.

The only responsible response would be to do precisely what OIPA, AVC and many others have been calling for years: recognize recreational hunting as a safety risk, drastically curtail hunting weapons, and actually protect nature instead of declaring it a shooting range.