I think this is a solid strategy. Just asking as Ballarat in Victoria does not have a proper range, their rifle club has to move a few years ago and so is now limited to .22 at 50 metres. I’m hoping someone will get one going.
You could also do affiliations with gun shops. SUA membership gets you 10% off or whatever.
@ShootersUnion Might even be worthwhile starting a thread with a bit of info and a list of all your affiliated ranges.
I think it wise to stick to your core and original Aims. To be a lobby group working with all the gun related associations to bring issues to the government and to fight for issues when they arise.
Once you go away from that you are seen as competition from the other gun Associations and their member clubs.
You should aim to be the glue to get them all working in the one direction the conduit to which they turn when they have a problem. In that role I can see The Shooters Union being very beneficial.
Devils advocate, but perhaps having competition may sharpen the focus and reduce the internal politics of other groups.
Just be The lobby group that you set out to be…
Dont be a ssaa wannabe.
@ShootersUnion what about getting air rifles and pistols off the registry to start with and then when the sky doesn’t fall down we could push for 22’s, then shotguns and so on over time.
We’ve done some groundwork on that one. 
While we would like to see air-rifles de-registered, along with low-power or target air pistols (especially since gel blasters are totally legal in QLD), a more realistic solution is basically doing away with PTAs for Cat A guns - you go to the dealer, they run your licence, if it’s valid you can buy your shotgun or .22 and take it away with you, the dealer sends a Form 10 to WLB saying “I sold Fred Bloggs (licence details) a double-barrelled shotgun (details)”, sorted.
We are very much opposed to registries - at best they’re a gigantic waste of time and money, and worst they’re a shopping list for criminals - but there’s so much embedded support for them in Australia that trying to do away with them completely just isn’t going to happen anytime soon, no matter what any of us do.
…but have you watched the Fight Club?
Oh god, being able to buy a firearm and leave with it then and there, what a joy that would be!
Used to be.
Yep just a year or so ago in Victoria when PTA’s were done in about 15 min that’s not an unreasonable time to wait in the shop. Good for the shop what else will you buy in that 15 min.
Yeahhhh, it’s a blessing and a curse. LOL, mostly a blessing
As a shopkeeper I not only endorse this but greedily rub my mitts together whilst doing so.
For what reason do you think there is such embedded support? Is it a fear factor thing? Like “If we know where the guns are, we can prevent crime” or something along that line?
I would really like to see how you go with that in WA.
I don’t think you will win with that one though our system works differently to every other state.
We are basically licensed to the gun where your gun is licensed to the shooter.
Now if you can convince our lot to bring our laws in line with the other states you will have a bunch of happy shooters.
The extra frustrating thing is that I must have missed it by a number of months. Ever since I started shooting last year it has been days. I think 3 days is the shortest.
For a short while, it was “Take a seat please” and it was done within five minutes at the PMC in Darwin (Police HQ). Its now out to about a week and can be up to two or three depending on the time of year.
It seems to be a fear thing, with an element of “So we know who has what guns”, like it matters. If someone has a gun licence, it is a safe assumption - indeed, it’s an assumption we know the police in at least two states work on - that they also own or have ready access to a firearm.
Knowing they have three shotguns, two .22s, a .308, grandad’s .303 and a .223 for foxes doesn’t actually make any practical difference.
Our view is that we should basically have Canada’s and NZ’s (pre- The Incident) laws. Licence the person, buy what you like within your licence categories, if you don’t have a licence and have a gun - or are licensed and sell a gun to someone who isn’t - then expect to find yourself in jail.
I suppose they need the registry to make the inspections aspect doable. Without a registration and then the inspections there would be no way to know if a licensed firearm holder bought a gun and then either lost it or sold it to an unlicensed person.
The funny (well sad really) thing is that here in Qld they are so far behind in processing all the PTAs that they have very little idea of who has what. I have personally been caught by it where a gun has been bought or sold and they’ve come back saying the seller isn’t the registered owner only to be proved wrong by us the gun owners providing paperwork to them. These were guns that should have been processed two years prior.
I know first hand of several other similar cases too, one of them was a bulk processing of over 80 guns from a large collection where weapons licencing had no idea who, what, or where the guns were until they were contacted and provided copies of all the paperwork they should have processed over 12 months prior. The bit that got me on that one was the comment from someone up the chain in weapons licencing which was “yes i’m not surprised at all, my guess is that we are about three years behind.”
How can anyone honestly say that it’s a system that works?? The very people that are trying to keep tabs on are the ones who are correcting their messed up records for them.
We’ve had some similar boo boos down here.
I bought a shotgun (I bet you’re all shocked) off @AusTac that he had owned for years, that had been through an inspection before, but when we came to transfer it to me lgs says, sorry mate there’s no record of this ever being registered. I had to do it as an amnesty gun.
But it had been bought by AusTac from an lgs, been through an inspection at his place and then sat in his safe for how ever long before I bought it.
But it’s ok because having registration will “save the children”…