Firearms policy by tarot cards
If you never quite understood how firearms policy in Australia is made, then join everyone else. Including our police ministers.
The Police Ministers conference will be held tomorrow. The time for letter writing is over.
If you wrote to your local MP, police minister or other politicians sticking up for a better policy process, then thank you. You’ve done your bit. A couple of letters won’t do anything but a good number of them will. Politicians value votes, not common sense.
If you didn’t write a letter or email, then we’d like to encourage you to do when we have our next fight – because there will be one.
We had fights in the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s and we’re having one now, in the 10’s. We’re going to have a fight on something else in the 20’s, on something like storage, calibres or the ability of our kids to go shooting with us. It will happen, because it always does.
The common theme through these episodes are that they are grubby power hungry political reactions to some event. Or non-event. It is little wonder why shooters feel angry, tired and frustrated at how firearms policy is made. It’s a process which has real consequences.
Many people don’t understand why we feel this way over something as obscure as a 7 shot lever action shotgun, so let me draw an analogy. If a mate of yours stole $5 from your wallet and got caught out, you would feel very cheated. If he said “but it’s only five bucks – I’ll pay you back”, then he’s missing the point. Trust has been lost. It’s over.
It’s the same with firearms. For shooters, trust went out the window ages ago. The current fight isn’t “just two extra shots”, but something much more fundamental.
How policy should be made
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: policy needs to be done properly. It needs to involve a process of identifying problems, consulting then looking at options.
Instead a number of our politicians used something else. It wasn’t common sense, nor was it informed consensus. Tarot cards?
Stop the trend
The CFCV was created in 2002 as the start of a whole-of-industry approach to our policy problem. Part of this includes forums to let you in on the discussion and to be part of the solution.
Invitations to the 2017 Victorian Shooting Industry Forum have been issued to our full and associate members and will be available here shortly.
It’ll be your chance to hear from industry leaders what our shooting groups are doing to take the tarot cards away. You’ll hear about some of the ‘behind-the-scenes’ discussions and how we can get onto the front foot for a change.
You’ll hear about the looming threat to hunting posed by the Great Forest National Park, the washup from the NFA and how we intend to approach the 2018 Victorian State Election.
You won’t want to miss it!