Sounds Good Tiff, now you need to keep on top of them looking for promised progress.Tiff wrote:Well the dust has barely settled, but thought I'd add a brief update for those interested in how things went at the meeting this evening.
Firstly I'd like to publicly thank Chapuis for his significant help regarding fire safety legislation and hopefully the committee will take action soon.
In essence, the meeting tonight was entertaining....
I printed off some of the relevant guidelines/legislation for range & fire safety and handed them out before it started. The look of sheer bewilderment on many of the members faces was amusing.
There was the usual "I've been here for 60 years, what right have you got to ask us to change now" & "if you go and leave the area with work in 6 months, why should we change anything".
A couple of committee members took offense that I'd been quietly looking into things behind the scenes - something I unfortunately had to do, after publicly asking to see the range safety certificate & range orders etc (not unreasonable as an RCO...) and being told not to worry about them, they exisit somewhere. A situation I still can't get my head round!
The good news is they have formed a private sub committee to look into the range saftey aspect, including getting the lead levels monitored (any ideas on who could do this?). The vice chairman will look into getting a fire risk assessment done by a retired fire officer he knows.
Plus there will be a new nights shooting introduced in January to coach beginners, with new members being actively sought - a big positive change!
The downside is in the meantime it carries on as usual, with no known copy of the range saftey certificate in existance, significant breaches of the fire code and about 18 out of 20 points on the NRA/NRSA indoor range inspection sheet currently being breached. I'm certainly not happy RCO'ing for the club untill this is resolved, since I simply cannot see how our NSRA insurance is valid?
I'm hoping the seriousness of the situation will sink in with most of the committee (some are unfortunately lost causes) in the next couple of weeks.
Tiff
Some clubs can be a bit like that, resistant to change for the sake of it because its the route of least resistance/effort.
I asked for ages just to get a tin hat target provided on club practice days as this (being an F class club) was when all the SOWRs with irons came out, so make the most of it right?
The wailing and gnashing of teeth that involved.....and god help you if you wanted a Fig11.
The latter has fallen so deeply into "Bullshit lore" or "Its right because Reg said so and he should know" that is is almost universally accepted that you cannot shoot at humanoid targets at Bisley.
This is crap and the director of shooting has stated as much to me personally (only politely). If your discipline uses it you can use it.
It is stick in the mud "No other disicipline has the right to shoot of they are not doing it our way" types that need weeding out and re-programming.
Rant over
Good luck mate
