“We need to keep our eye on the worst-case scenario with this type of technology, and in the wrong hands suppressors make a dangerous weapon even more dangerous.”
“It is important our community is aware of firearm activity in their area and, more specifically, that law enforcement are able to identify and locate firearm activity quickly,”
“Silencers are about selling more equipment and are pushed more by industry than shooter groups.”
“would not support anything that increases the risk of criminal gun activity”.
It’s good to see that if we ban silencers the criminals won’t use them. These people need a reality check big time.
That’s why we’re pursuing the court option by supporting the farmer fighting the Government in QCAT etc. - if they rule he is allowed a suppressor, then it doesn’t really matter what the Government thinks about the subject.
Also: Make a note of the comments in that story and remember them when election time rolls around later this year. Both the majors dislike (or even hate) shooters, so we - all of us, working together - need to put them last on the ballot.
As will always be the case, there are skeptics who go as far as denigrating actions which they believe will not have an outcome that will improve their lot, or that politicians “will never entertain such an idea”.
Of course, if one chooses to take no affirmative action, then it must follow that nothing will ever happen, one way or the other.
So far, a lowly 2,700 Queenslanders have signed this electronic petition https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/work-of-assembly/petitions/petition-details?id=3282
It’s possibly are fair bet that some of those will not even have a firearms licence, so the number is really quite pathetic.
The petition does not close until March 6th, so even if you still want to be a skeptic, there really is no reason not to add your name. Let’s see a few tens of thousands more petitioners on the list, or are there only a couple of thousand shooters who value their hearing?
My guess would be that a lot of people don’t even know the petition exists. This is where EVERY shooting club/group like SU and SSAA (to name a couple) should be emailing this petition and ones like it out to every member on their books. To really get results you NEED to spread the word.
We need to stick together and the ones with the databases of all our contact details are the only ones capable of spreading the word & making it happen.
Both sides of Government are on record as saying they will not support the petition, so no matter how many people sign it, it’s not going to achieve anything at all, unfortunately.
To the best of our knowledge there are almost no examples of a petition in Queensland in the last decade or so actually bringing about legislative change.
A list of closed e-petitions is here: https://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/work-of-assembly/petitions/closed-epetitions and you can read the official responses to them, which in pretty much every case on the first page - including to a petition with 109,000 signatures calling for a reduction in vehicle registration cost increases - is some variation of “No” or “Oh well”.
If that’s the case then it’s a shame. But if you think of it they way a pollie would then 50,000 VOTERS saying something by signing a petition compared to 2500 will stick in their minds a little more. I wonder just how many combined members all the clubs like SU and SSAA have who could be group emailed at the touch of a button??? Even if it does nothing it still can’t hurt.
As a member i can tell you i wouldn’t mind getting an email when it’s time to sign a petition or stand together in some way.
Yep, i mean we all get emailed the agm newsletter and things like that so how hard could it be. Add a little comment saying “even if the particular issue isn’t relevant to you personally, as a shooter lets stand together and sign.”
Look how well the posting of these things work on a small scale by being brought up on forums like this one, but i’d guess only a small percentage of shooters would be on forums so the word only gets so far.
We can and do e-mail everyone in a certain state or all members about issues, but didn’t do it on this one because by the time we’d got a handle on the whole thing (including establishing who the petitioner actually was), both major parliamentary parties were on record as saying they weren’t having a bar of it, so it simply wouldn’t have been a good use of our limited resources.
I understand what you’re saying, there’s only so much you can do, and we do appreciate what you try to accomplish. But even though they said they wouldn’t have a bar of it i’m sure it would have made someone do a double take if it had a couple more zeros added to the number of people who signed it, because we all know they say one thing then do another and what vote chasing self serving pricks they are.
I was just going to say what @JSS said… So I’ll rephrase a little. Politics someone told me is negotiation through subtle signals. I’m with you, @ShootersUnion, petitions are a feel good action. I’ve never seen one succeed. Gun or otherwise. However, sending a list of 100,000+ voters to a politician who just acted against them, does send a subtle signal.
While we’re very much in favour of ensuring politicians get the message that law-abiding shooters are a political entity they need to listen to, it’s much better achieved by individual letters or delegations having meetings with MPs.
We’ve had that conversation before and we all know that it’s just not going to happen in any significant numbers.
I’m pretty sure a signed list of (as @juststarting said) 100,000+ voters saying “you’ve lost our vote for xyz reason”, or even better “you’ll get our vote for xyz reason” it will give them more to think about than the 20 people who will actually write an individual letter.
The short version is that petitions are, unfortunately, a total waste of everyone’s time and energy and can even prove counterproductive in some cases too. There was a petition in QLD that got well over 100,000 signatures (calling for the Government to reverse massive car rego hikes) and they still said “Lol no”.
There were also petitions with tens of thousands of signatures opposing changes to Queensland’s abortion laws. Government response? “We’re changing the laws anyway”.
They don’t work, and even huge numbers of people signing them doesn’t seem to affect anything.
The elephant in the room is that shooters are a divided bunch who haven’t worked out that throwing others under the bus won’t help them out. Even with the suppressor issues I’ve seen far too many comments on the “I don’t need one, therefore you should be able to manage without one too” spectrum.
They don’t work, and even huge numbers of people signing them doesn’t seem to affect anything.
Well, most people in any community aren’t single issue voters.
I think safe to say, for a lot of LAFOs, firearms are important, but they aren’t the single driving issue that we vote on. It also doesn’t help that none of the majors are particularly sympathetic.
Interesting you say that. I am firmly of an opinion that if you are employed, tax payer, you will not do well in any election with any party at the helm. You will either pay too much tax and lose all government subsidies or have to work until old age or lose your job due industry X downsizing, assets being sold off or leased for (at least) your lifetime, etc. There is pretty much nothing (major issue wise) that any political party has solved. We have been living by selling natural resources for so long, Australia as a whole has forgotten how to take risk and innovate. Just look at any ‘Australian’ success story. The moment it’s a success story, they pack up and move o/s, including the business domicile. This is because, rather than investing, nurturing and innovating, both parties try to skin the business via taxation laws, by f’king their investors and the business in general. What about housing, pension, public transport, industry growths, everything has moved down over the years. I think you have to be legally retarded or very, very stupid not to be a single small issue voter these days, because small issues are the only issues that can be resolved by our government. Everything else is BAU.