Gaz wrote:
I wanted to say you're wrong on the mobilising clubs against local political antis, but we've just seen how that approach doesn't work with the Labour MP on page 1 of this thread. Only a fortnight previously she had been invited to a country sports event where she, oddly enough, made all the right noises about protecting shooting. So, mobilising local clubs/shooters probably isn't going to work for anything above local council level.
I agree that mobilising piecemeal at a local level won't work however local mobilisation co-ordinated nationally would at least get some national notice and raise the debate.
The key, which I keep banging on about, is good national leadership to plan, direct and mobilise shooters. It is about everybody doing something at the same time as well as dedicated few doing a lot.
I have to say I get a bit saddened with this continual downing of shooters being the fault, yes there are naysaying, discipline precious shooters that would sell their mothers to keep the little that they have at the expense of the rest but from my experience they are in minority and the vast majority of shooters and clubs that I see are open and have a fundamental understanding that the key to shooting is championing gun ownership not shooting disciplines as it is this factionalisation that divides us nationally. Within in the shooting community it is our national bodies that are our worst enemies as their inability to come together to forcefully grasp and drive the gun ownership agenda wastes the resources that we as shooters pay for already as members.
If there was a decent national body that could be respected and trusted with the gun owning agenda then I am sure that enough shooters would respond, the negativity that comes forward currently is because shooters have a long memory and still hurt from being shafted by the national organisations, especially the NRA, after Dunblane. This means that when talking about the issue we are talking about the current crop of morally bereft national bodies that seem more interested in looking after themselves than that gun ownership and shooting.
If there was a new movement, without the baggage of treachery and failure of the current crop, that would lead the fight, and when you see this latest sh!te from labour then believe me a fight it is, most of the shooters I know would respond with support and money. The vast majority of members of shooting bodies join only for one thing the insurance, in the case of the nra shooting at bisley as well. Very few join primarily because they believe that the organisation will save shooting from anti legislation.
Nothing will work until we as shooters have some belief in what we can do, until then we will continue to be victims. Unless we work on the positives in shooting, whilst acknowledging the negatives we will get nowhere.
A life without hope is no life at all.
