I keep on hearing a lot of people saying SSAA what have they done for shooters, nothing nothing we hate ssaa…All I can say is I reguLarly use their ranges… infact their ranges are the only ranges available to public to shoot in Melbourne… which are open reasonable hours. Also their magazine has a few interesting articles.so I suppose I am happy with some of what they doing.
Now if they only could pull their fingers outta their bum and fix the range 1 roof a lot of people will be very happy this summer… chances of that are close to zero
The primary charter of ssaa is to fight for shooter’s rights. It is the primary purpose of ssaa, according to their charter. They are a commercial organisation per state and in vic I’ll be the first to admit that I think the ranges are great. But I’m not talking about small scale. When people ask what has the organisation done, the question is rights and lobbying. Not range and insurance.
To support farmers, particularly in the protection of native flora and fauna, and advocate game management in the Australian environment.
To act as an effective and credible voice, representing members to the public, community leaders and authorities.
They do have a whole department that does nothing but constantly monitor the media, authorities and government for anything firearm related. The association then addresses any issues that affect members and firearms users as a whole. The SSAA have to be very careful in just what they do when it comes to the political landscape. They are first and foremost, a sporting organisation NOT a political lobby group, despite the medias’ take on them.
The National President is the only remunerated role, all others are honorary. Office and full-time range staff are of course paid as full time employees.
State branches are set up as incorporated bodies and are subject to their own incorporation rules and regulations.
I know that the SSAA was working in the back ground in the fight to keep Ella Valla Station open.
A quote from the lawyer,
Absolutely crucial was the financial support of SSAA (WA) and induvial shooters. Without SSAA this result simply would have been impossible. Ron Bryant, the President, and his team took a risk backing this case. Thankfully it was a winner. Without SSAA life would be much tougher for shooters.
@danmac like I said, nothing against the operational side of SSAA, at least the VIC one. I personally like the ranges, although some ROs need a lesson in bedside manners, but all in all I enjoy the ranges. That’s entirely not what I am referring to however.
To promote and improve the role of the sporting shooter in Australia.
What have they done to promote outside of the shooter’s echo chamber?
To act as an effective and credible voice, representing members to the public, community leaders and authorities.
Again, what voice? Who do they represent? They make ludicrous statement’s and I think are out of touch with new shooters, coming into the sport.
For example, a suggestion that there needs to be another category for firearms, based on Verney Carron rifle.
Those 2 points are 40% of what they stand for according to that cut-and-paste… 40% That’s a big number.
As for non-paid vs paid, I fully support paid positions, they certainly have the money to do that and hire experienced, polished and seasoned experts who understand firearms, well equiped to deal with media, PR and marketing. Perhaps that’s what’s needed.
And transparency, lots and lots of transparency to it’s members.
There’s a lot of potential, but not a lot of action on association level (not state).
Okay, I’m not going to start a pissing competition over this.
The National body is a “not-for-profit”, sporting organisation, most of the membership money is returned to the states and then to the branches on a per member basis.
As for transparency, most of the information you seek is readily available and considering your profession, I would have thought, not hard to find.
I know that there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes lobbying for our rights that doesn’t get headlines and isn’t shouted from the roof-tops. In this age of instant broadcast and social media, people who live their lives by that crap seem to think that if it’s not on face-fuck, buzz-cock, insta-crap, or whatever your taste may be, that nothing is happening. Your opinion may be that, that is what is required, personally, I don’t subscribe to any of that shit, call me a “Luddite”, I don’t give a crap.
I’m on a couple of forums, like this one, that is my extent of “social-media” and in fact any on-line exposure. I like having a very, very low profile online, anything about me on social media has been uploaded by someone without my consent.
I’ve seen and worked with people who’s lives revolve around that other crap and quite frankly, God help us!
I’ll go back to my life of being as isolated as possible from those “trend” followers and just getting on with it.
Have a nice day.
G’day danmac mate I somewhat agree with you but don’t you think that if SSAA put more info out there for people to get the facts rather than the idiot media having the last say I for one still haven’t heard the full facts causing the law to shut the bloke down that this go fund me page is for I do understand that all the behind scenes things can’t be catered for in the media but rarely I see SSAA stand up and put the record straight for the media the media seems to be crash tackling the gun issue all the time but I don’t see the SSAA coming back at them on issues I for one would not like their job as I was in a ranking position for many years with the SES in my area and I found that you can’t please everybody but you have to make BS reporting go away by putting the facts out there for all to see not leaving them to make up their own minds so in saying that I would like to see the SSAA counter act with the facts on any misleading reporting and the incidents like the bloke being shut down for supposedly training snipers as I hear it there is too much rubbish out there and misleading talk and not enough facts its no wonder people rattle of on a totally misguided rampage but there is only one way to stop this and that is for the ssaa to stand up and set the facts straight on those cases I know they are somewhat restricted in some cases but I just don’t think they are being public enough on some matters and yes sometimes it may not be what the shooter wants to hear but if he is not operating within the law then he has to cop the kick in the nut sack but if the facts are made public then he doesn’t have a case until he cleans up his act so in doing this there is no avenue for gossip around the matter and the facts coming from the SSAA would be believable
These guys at 365 Precision Training have their own face book page so can get there side of the story out for people to read. Of course it will be from their prospective but we would expect that. They have been a bit cryptic and kept a lot of the details to themselves.
The skeptic I am makes me think that they may be worried that people will say well you knew it was wrong but went for the bucks anyway. By their own admission they have sold over 300 training packages in the last two years at about 1K each. Good on them everyone has a right to make as much money as possible. But if you cut some corners on the way and then cry you may not get the sympathy you were looking for.
That’s true sungazer but by hiding the facts you are leaving yourself wide open for outlandish claims toward you no matter what if people think you are hiding something for that sort of money seems to me they saw $ signs rather than common sense and stepped under a few hurdles on the way if so it won’t do them any favors in future dealings with the law
I’m somewhat intrigued by how you think SSAA are meant to more regularly counter the BS that makes daylight on mainstream media? The editors get the last say on what goes to air/print. You can put a great story to the reporters but if the editors don’t think the truth makes the story interesting to their audience, good luck getting it out there on mainstream news platforms…we all know that the “news” isn’t really the news.
Yeah Bent_Arrow point taken but it gets ya goat up seeing bugger all being done to counter this rot or at least I don’t see much others may disagree so here’s hoping
Our little club gets an hour a week on the local rural radio station. It takes a special person to be able to do that sort of stuff our President is one of those a passionate old school shooter. Trouble is he has more cancer in his body than not. I dont know how he has done it but he has lived for three more years so far than they gave him.
There are people that ring up and complain when he is not on the radio or there is not his weekly piece for the Mansfield times. Unfortunately this is one of those time he is away getting radio treatment himself. But true to his form still positive he can beat it and emailing away.
Rural media is very different to “big city” and “national”. Things that are important to a rural community aren’t “interesting” to most city peeps. I say that with direct personal experience with the media in both rural towns and capital cities. I lived in Mildura for 5 years and had a lot of great contact with the local radio, TV and print. They would regularly come to us looking for interesting content and we could pitch them stories. In my personal experience, it’s much harder to build trust with media in the city.
Totally agree it is two things the papers are desperate for stories. they are so lazy they very rarely edit a word that is sent in.
The shooting team is seen as part of the local peoples sporting teams. We actually won the Mansfield Sports team of the year last year. I have to keep bringing a few egos back down to earth and tell them it really should be sports writer of the year award. This old guy has not been to the range too many times in the last few years but can still turn out a story as if he was there just by what a few of us tell happened on the day. Sometime even when we haven’t shot he can still make up a story for the papers rather than loose our spot on the page.
It is publicity like this at city “main Stream” media that is needed to change the image. If it was shooting rather than football the landscape would be very different.
I didn’t re-join, all my interactions with representatives of the SSAA have been negative, pretty much just an old boys club looking to line their pockets, but thats just how a 25 year old sees it
