Combined Firearms Council of Victoria

After some weeks of discussion, the Herald Sun has published a letter in it’s paper from us on its recent spray of anti-gun articles. 

Except they didn’t quite deliver on that promise.

Following the recent spate of anti-gun articles, the Herald Sun refused our request to publish an opinion piece where we could address the two key themes (firearm thefts and the Adler ban), but kept open the offer of publishing a letter to the editor.

We were not happy with that offer as we really felt the Herald Sun had treated gun owners like you and me, very badly.   However after failing to convince them, last week we decided to accept the offer and after several exchanges, had settled on a letter of approx 250-300 words to be published, in their words, in a prominent position.

Over the weekend we submitted our letter: here is what appeared in today’s paper:

We’re disappointed that the letter has been chopped back, leaving out our key argument that the Police should not be publicly speculating on policy.  We appreciate that it is in the nature of submitting letters that they get chopped down, however on this occasion we had an agreement on the word count.

We’re also disappointed that it wasn’t in a prominent position, but in the middle of other letters.  However whether those conditions were relayed to the right staff isn’t clear, so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Despite our obvious disappointment that this is the only acknowledgement of seven clearly biased articles, we appreciate the fact the Herald Sun kept the door on this open, when it could just have easily closed it on us or ignored us altogether.