WA Gun Rally (February 8, 2025)

Law & Politics
22

I’m sure some non WA people watching on are assuming this rally is happening in isolation and in response to no action taken by other groups.

Caveat, i don’t support the rally personally, but don’t begrudge others that want to do it. At the end of the day, the only people we should be slinging shit at is labor.

In any case i just wanted to put it out there to try and put perspective on the hesitancy of this rally held by some in the WA firearms community.

I am personally happy with the main efforts tried below, no the current gov didn’t roll over to these actions, but in the same way i feel, they won’t roll over with the rally.

Live media interviews on both tv and radio. And not just one or two, every time Papalia or cook or the commissioner gave a Media release, Wafca secured a spot or two to counter them on commercial media.

Print media they ran full page ad in the paper and two or three opinion pieces in the farm weekly and such. This one was funny to me as a regional person because it forced Papalia to run his own article in the farm weekly to counter which he would not have done otherwise since he doesn’t give two shits about the farmers.

Also need to say SU have been very good with media as well over our issues here.

Meetings were held with wapol fairly regularly but about as productive as you get with bureaucrats but at least dialogue occured.

Firearms Forums held in nearly every electorate giving the shooting community direct opportunity for dialogue with the respective lib, nat members.

Lobbying political parties, this is a big one i feel that may prove beneficial but won’t have any immediate effects. Unfortunately, politics is no longer about listening to the will of the people. It’s about special interest groups that either positively impact polling or just contribute to political fundraising. Very shit in my eyes, but it is what it is. A good example is the alana and madeline Foundation, a tiny group but a big political sway, all because of positive polling.

Anyway, I just wanted to air this for some perspective given that there are far fewer WA crew on here than East Coast.

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23

Having been very heavily involved in trying to prevent the recently imposed ban on bowhunting in SA, the one thing that politicians care about everything else is voting numbers. If you cant demonstrate meaningful voting numbers you are in serious trouble. I had multilpe MPs and MLCs ask me “how many voting members of the public are opposed to this change”. Once they knew the numbers were low, those that were supportive of/pushing for the ban were emboldened, and those that were on the fence stayed quiet. You absolutely have to find a way to unite the different groups and publicly stand as a united voting block.

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24

totally agree. voteing is only way to sort this anti gun mob running wa. i believe nationals are more friendly from talking to wa firearm holders. good luck. :worried:

25

Your right but I would add we need to go further than “more friendly” than the other guy to actually getting some MP that support shooting there are a few currently not that I know of them off the top of my head but I think there is a female shotgun ace in politics.

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The “firearm” friendly polies (we have a couple in SA) still need to have enough influence within their respective houses to make a difference when legislation is being considered/debated. We have one very supportive poli in opposition, but the in-power deputy Premier used a backdoor method that avoided debate in either house by using a Governor’s proclamation. All that required was a letter of direction from Cabinet to the Governor.

A problem with Labor is the long entrenched culture of voting on party lines. Even if a MP/MLC strongly disagrees with a policy, if they vote against it, they can expect to be dis-endorsed by their party. Most of cabinet couldn’t give a shit about a few hundred bowhunters, so they just went along with the deputy premiers demand for a ban.

You need to get the fence sitting politicians to realise that there is a very real possibility that they might lose their seats at the next election. That comes down to one thing, being able to demonstrate that you have a united voting block.

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27

A big part of the issue, from my perspective over in QLD, is that WAFCA actively told SU to clear off when they asked to be part of WAFCA when it formed. I’ve heard from several people WAFCA didn’t reply to SU’s e-mails and made narky comments on social media when anyone asked why SU (and some other groups) were frozen out.

I could understand it if the two groups had had a discussion but been unable to come to an agreement on what working together might look like, but I gather that didn’t happen - WAFCA decided they didn’t want SU involved, and that was the end of it. As far as I know they never even asked SU what help they were offering.

WAFCA keep carrying on like they “own” shooting in WA (which they don’t - the overwhelming majority of licenceholders in WA are hunters and not part of a shooting club), and frankly it’s incredibly suspicious to me that they reacted to such hostility towards a group well known for working with other people and giving other organisations credit for success too.

It also hasn’t helped that WAFCA have done a completely shit job of communicating with people about what they’re doing. I’ve seen very, very few “We have done this/we are doing this” posts from them, but lots of people claiming inside knowledge on Facebook saying there’s big things afoot. I’ve also seen people essentially telling others to stop asking questions about what WAFCA/SSAA WA are actually doing because it’s all super secret and they don’t want to tip their hand or something equally asinine.

Lobbying political parties is extremely important but right now the best available information is that the ALP will get back in (so the gun laws will go through, and possibly have some extra unpleasantness added as a “screw you”). Even if the Liberals manage to form Government (unlikely but not impossible, from what I understand), they’ve said they won’t repeal the laws and will “review” them - with no information on what that “review” looks like or when it might happen. They might well schedule the review for December 2028, which isn’t going to help all the people who had to hand their guns or licences in in 2025 - and even that assumes the review doesn’t come back with “It’s fine, no major changes”, or “fiddling around the edges” changes that don’t address the real issues.

WAFCA and SSAA WA’s entire strategy appears to be “Vote ALP out”, and they also appear to have pretty much nothing as a backup or alternative plan for when that doesn’t work (or doesn’t work the way they hoped it would) - or if they do have a backup plan, they haven’t communicated it officially as far as I’m aware.

28

Don’t stress dude, lady liberty is going to save everyone with lawyers and blackjack and… Just donate lmao

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29

I don’t know, feels incredibly transparent to me. Let the dust settle, present a business case for farmers to have more. It’s exactly what ssaa does, hangs shit on everyone in the background and most likely pushing the government for shooting proficiency to be included in a safety test, to corner the market, because they run the ranges. And then rip the dollars while crying wolf. It’s not rocket science. And WAFCA is probably doing similar, based on their reaction, maybe?

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30

They’re actively shutting down ranges in WA, i don’t know the whole story, it’s alot of he said she said and i’m on the fringe of the WA shooting community politics at the moment but i know for instance some butt hurt members at SSAA Jarrahdale mentioned to WAPol that an ’ unofficial ’ walking track was included within the range trace :roll_eyes: been shut for a while now

31

It’s interesting that WAFCA’s spokesman is also the SSAA WA president.

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Ssaa don’t have public ranges over here so no profit to be made. Only money comes from club memberships.

33

I wasn’t talking about wa

34

The wa farmers federation were the ones that went off and made a separate deal with the cops to get more numbers for them. Trevor thought he wasn’t going to get done over by Papalia but he eventually found out you can’t trust a word that pollie says.

To be honest i strongly believe both wafca and su have shooters best interests at heart and no malicious activity either way, even if we agree or not in their actions.

35

This is probably true. The problem is pollies absolutely love it when there are multiple representative groups all trying to get their own opinion across. The little conflicting differences in what they ask for tells the politicians they dont need to listen to anty of them because the "group"under pressure cant even agree on what we want. Coversely, the antis all want the same thing… make it very difficult for joe public to own a firearm.

Maximus: “Whatever comes out of these gates, we’ve got a better chance of survival if we work together. Do you understand? If we stay together we survive”

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36

I agree both WAFCA and SU want the best thing for shooters in WA. Which is why I don’t understand why WAFCA are attacking SU so openly, when SU have said “We want to work with you and help you”

I mean, WAFCA have said “SU just want to use this rally as a membership drive” and I’m like “OK… so? Why would that worry you? SU have always said they encourage membership of multiple organisations. Do you think lots of your members would leave your club or something? If so, might be time to reflect on a few things.”

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37

Things have got so bad in WA that even the Elephants are leaving the state and heading east. :smiley: