Open letter to shooting organisations: Firearms Amendment Bill

Here is a letter we are sending to all Victorian shooting organisations today.  It is hopefully self explanatory.  Please feel free to share it if you are on the executive of an organisation, or know someone who is. Read more »

Victoria’s review of firearm regulations: our submission

As many of you know, the Victorian State Government is seeking submissions to the Regulatory Impact Statement proposing new Firearms Regulations to replace the existing ones, which expire in April.  Read more »

Gone but not forgotten!

I thought I’d give you a quick update on what’s been happening, as you may not have heard from us over the past couple of weeks.

Apart from the usual end-of-year distractions, we have been busy:

  1. Preparing our response to the current review of firearms regulations here in Victoria;
  2. Organising a meeting of our political committee (which will be mapping out our plan for this year’s Victorian State Election ) for later this month; and
  3. Organising a meeting of a committee looking at the Category B PTA issue – for next week

The first item – being our response to the firearm regulation review – has taken up the most time.

The good news is that we got off to a quick start and the first draft of our submission is now going through an internal review. We hope to share this with you in a bit over a week’s time.

In the meantime, don’t forget to check out the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) at https://engage.vic.gov.au/firearmsregulations (click the link to go there) and work up a submission if you haven’t already done so.

The RIS is a document which explains what changes the government is proposing to make to our firearm regulations which support the Firearms Act.  They set out fees – some of which are:

  • going up (permits to acquire);
  • others down (pensioner discounts are proposed); and
  • others not changing (junior licence fees frozen)

– as well as other detail such as the list of ‘exempt’ devices from the definition of a firearm, membership of the Firearms Appeals Committee and so on.

Submissions are due by January 25th, so don’t forget to check the RIS out if you haven’t done so.

COMING UP: over the next few weeks will be more on the RIS process, updates on the Firearms Amendment Bill currently in Parliament, news about the future of the CFCV – and some early news on the election.

Opinion: A gun too many, in the eyes of some

You will be aware that Victoria Police (VicPol) has decided to interpret the Firearms Act in a way that means it is now asking shooters applying for their 11th Category B PTA for ‘more information’ on why they need that subsequent firearm.

This matter is being worked on by the CFCV in partnership with others, however one of our friends, lawyer Simon Munslow, has prepared this following article looking at it from his legal point of view.

We’d like to thank Simon for providing this article for our use. Read more »