Many of you who follow us online know what we’ve been up to – but many others may not.
So here’s a summary for those of you who are less familiar with our work, of what we’ve been doing over the past few months.
The CFCV’s main membership consists of 6 of Victoria’s major shooting organisations. We’re the closest thing there is to an ‘industry’ lobby group for shooting organisations.
National Firearms Agreement
First of all, you may be aware the Federal Government sneaked changes into the National Firearms Agreement over and above the reclassification of our lever-action shotguns to Categories B (for those up to 5 shot) and D (for those with more than 5 shots).
Those “other” changes encourage the states to impose tighter storage requirements, introduce limits on how much ammo you can purchase, and so on. The also fail to recognise the legitimate need to allow juniors into the sport and restrict what constitutes ‘genuine reason’ for obtaining a shooters licence.
We commissioned a political consultant to pull a strategy together to head that off. This includes a range of meetings with key federal and state politicians to point these changes out to them, and gain their support for withdrawing from the latest version. It resulted in strange claims by the Federal Government that the NFA was ‘not binding’!
This work is not complete, and still ongoing: we don’t yet know which way this’ll go, but are obviously hoping that it will result in states winding the clock back a little.
This work doesn’t involve just the CFCV: it involves SSAA NSW and the Collector’s Guild who joined us on this work and contributed to it financially.
FOIs
The second key piece of work over the past few months has been chasing the Victoria Police and Department of Justice and Regulation down over “recommendations” they told the Herald Sun had been made in relation to changing our firearm laws.
We did this through four Freedom of-Information requests. It revealed that the Victoria Police provided the government with no less than 5 pages of suggested changes to our laws, which became 7 pages of changes in a Cabinet submission. We don’t know the details because they were denied under exemptions which we don’t believe apply in this instance.
For that reason we’re taking legal action against the Victoria Police to get those documents. It’s a first for us, and maybe other organisations. Regardless of that, we’re serious about this and recently put out a call for donations which around 200 of you have kindly made. The more we raise, the more legal help we can hire. Thank you to everyone who has put their hand up!
Equally important to getting our hands on the ‘recommendations’ is the need to get clarification over the polices role. For too long they have hands their hands on policy when their job is to enforce the law, not make it. We’re hopeful this action can help remove the police from the policy space.
We’ve been speaking with our lawyers this week, so hope to have more information on this soon.
Expect this matter to heat up over the next few weeks.
Then we have our day-to-day lobbying activities to reveal, expose, get and seek change. Importantly, there’s also the help we provide to pro-shooting candidates at state and federal elections which is the main activity we were created for.
So that’s where your money has been going.
How we’ve raised our funds
Our funds have come from different sources. Major shooting organisations have contributed to us both directly and through membership fees.
They’ve come from people like yourself through direct donations and also – believe it or not – simply by doing their weekly shopping at their local Ritchies IGA.
We have no salaries or office expenses. Every cent is spent on our lobbying and election activities!
Coming up …
The creation of the Great Forest National Park in the state’s inner north-east threatens a range of hunting activities in prime hunting area and is a major concern to shooting organisations. This is likely the result of a preference deal between Labor and the Greens, which we need to stop with concerted political action.
We have been working on this with the other shooting organisations and other groups such as politicians. How this will pan out isn’t yet clear but we do expect it to become clearer as next year’s Victorian state election rolls around.
Also on our radar is stronger engagement within the shooting community. We continue to hold presentations with clubs and organisations who are interested in finding more about who we are and what we do. That work will continue.
Club presentations
We’ve also been on the road, giving presentations to clubs on who we are and what we do.
That’s something we’ll continue for a while yet. If you’re a member of a club and think your members would like to be given a first-hand account of the political world we’re in, drop us a line by clicking here.
Want more?
The main ways to connect with us are on the right hand side of this page. The best way is to jump on our email list by clicking here.
We’re also on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
Keep up the great work, My main personal concern at the moment is the exclusion of junior permits, I have been waiting for my eldest grandson to be old enough to learn proper gun safety and all the wonder and family tradition that it brings just like his parents before him. I think that what the politicians have continued to do to us since the thief John Howard did his political stunt at our expense is nothing short of disgusting.
Well done.
Great post and keep up the good work. Anyone who hasn’t given even a small sum should consider the outcome from doing nothing. YOU WILL LOSE YOUR SPORT so chip in.
Does anybody want the “greens” to win?