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.
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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.
Ohhh this shits me so much.
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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.
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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.
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That’s exactly how I feel. I don’t look forward to or fear any party, to me it’s just a question of “okay, how do I mitigate this party’s retarded new policy on X”. I’ve never felt that one or the other would be beneficial to me and reward me for doing the right thing. It’s only ever been a case of which one would do less harm. If Labor decided they’d go to the election with positive firearms policies for licensed firearms owners and dealers, yeah Id vote for them.
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Have a look at this, Ozzie Reviews with James Ryder & Graham Park from SU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7h20M8IldPQ
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