The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

I have some sympathy with the pishing in the tent point of view rather than pishing outside.

That is what has kept me a member all these years, however I am at the point now where I am thinking individual membership is an exercise in futility as over the decades I have had promise of delivery but it has never happened, how long should I stay this gullible?

I don't know about turning finances round, it should be making money for goodness sake. Mismanagement at all levels got the NRA into its latest round of financial troubles, which it has a history of, and drastic down sizing seems to me is what balance the books at the expense of the staff resource. This has been of no benefit to shooters by severely limiting what it can do.

The biggest issue that I see for the NRA is its lack of meaningful engagement with its membership about it issues, problems and how it is going to tackle them especially for non Bisley shooters.

Engaging with the membership and actively bringing them along with the organisation could go a long way to establishing the key thing that the NRA lacks amongst shooters, goodwill and credibility.

Mercer making promises like he has done here in this topic and then not following up on them just makes him look like an amateur who is snubbing the membership and adds insult to injury. It is this cavalier attitude to the membership that is really making me loose heart with the NRA's current regime.

Notwithstanding the plausible reasons suggested here for the apparent lack of movement on this important national issue of range access we as a membership and the club in question should be getting these explanations from the horses mouth through NRA communication mechanisms not via an open forum that the NRA regards as insignificant and of no importance.

It has been postulated to me that the collapse of access to fullbore ranges outside Bisley could be seen by some NRA people as being no bad thing for Bisley, whilst I don't subscribe to that view I can see that when the NRA's activities on this front are done in such a covert manner why views like this get traction amongst gun owners.

I am sure Andrew Mercer is working tirelessly to move the NRA forward and doing a great job within the key areas of priority. His immediate goal has/had to be to turn the finances around and he and his team look to have made good inroads into this.

What they have not done so well is support clubs outside and away from Bisley and this has been demonstrated on more than one occasion with the Grove Smallarms and no doubt others. incidentally I am led to believe the GSA is the largest shooting club in East Anglia. If teh NRA do not have sufficient manpower to support clubs such as the GSA then a polite 'sorry we cannot help so you are on your own' would suffice instead of repeatedly committing to actions and then not following them up.

My day job is corporate insolvency, and I spend all day looking at s*** balance sheets, and by far the majority of failed companies I look at fail because of bad management.

I haven't looked at the NRA's finances, but I have no doubt from what I read that they fell into that category and were probably teetering on the brink of insolvency for the last decade or more.

Once you are in that state, it is very difficult to get out of it. Bisley is no doubt extremely costly to run, just looking at the infrastructure, so you need X amount of cashflow just to keep your head above water. To then start investing in the place, when you are on the breadline, will mean either a drastic increase in income, or a drastic reduction in outgoings, or more likely both.

Bisley can't do the former without increasing all pricing out of proportion, so it has had to carry out drastic cost cutting, including staff.

To invest, it will need to find new revenue streams - ideally the place would be packed out with paying punters every day of the week.

By all accounts at long last Bisley appears to be turning the corner, but it won't be a quick process, as day to day existence will largely be fire fighting.

I am in the process of joining the NRA, because if you have been a personal member for the last decade you have probably been throwing your money away, but if I join now I will, hopefully, actually reap the benefit of change.

I don't know what the personal member numbers of the NRA are, but if there were, say, 500 or more individual members all moaning , constructively, from the inside that the NRA needs to support regional clubs more, you would hope that they would finally take notice and start to take a more pro active stance.

Earlier in the thread John Morgan-Hosey was mentioned as being put forward as a NRA general council candidate, I just wish I had joined previously so I could have given John my vote.

It will be apparent to many on the thread that due to his job and the type of shooting he does that John is probably more aware than anyone else on this forum, outside the NRA, of how the bureaucratics of the MoD work, and I heed his advice.

As a Grove Shooting Club member I am directly affected by the access to the Great Carr and Robins Lodge ranges at STANTA issues, so I have a vested interest in it being solved. I can also see and agree with the views of a number of posters on the thread.

John M-H mentioned a couple of times earlier in this thread that our point of contact with the NRA should be Iain Robertson rather than Andrew Mercer, and posted his email address, has anyone tried contacting Iain direct on the Grove STANTA issue?

David
I confirm that the KLSM club secretary (Mike Craske) contacted Iain Robertson direct via phone the day after we were fist given notification that civilians were banned from using stanta field firing ranges (Great Carr and Robins Lodge). So he is aware of the situation and has no doubt been monitoring this thread.
Dave

Cad Monkey wrote:David
I confirm that the KLSM club secretary (Mike Craske) contacted Iain Robertson direct via phone the day after we were fist given notification that civilians were banned from using stanta field firing ranges (Great Carr and Robins Lodge). So he is aware of the situation and has no doubt been monitoring this thread.
Dave

David & Dave

All three clubs impacted contacted the NRA very quickly. When do you think the NRA began to actually act on this information though? When they were first informed verbally or a number of weeks later, ie in the last few days......

Ceri

If the NRA are now doing something about this, belatedly or otherwise, that's a positive move :goodjob:

And Ceri, it goes without saying I appreciate the effort you have put into this

CJ10 - any news or update on this yet?

ovenpaa wrote:CJ10 - any news or update on this yet?

Waiting to hear back from HD, who attended the Council meeting.

Ceri
Can you share any more information on this, who is HD and when was the council meeting?
Dave

Dave

HD is our regional NRA representative, who happens to be a Grove member. The Grove liaised with him to get this subject put onto the NRA General Council agenda for last Friday, 5th September.

Am waiting to hear back from him on the specifics of what was discussed regarding Stanta and the other issues the Grove has previously raised. I don't believe HD is a member of this site so wouldn't want to publish his name without his permission. (If you shoot at Thetford CGR with the Grove you would probably know him).

If what I have seen is accurate the NRA appear to be moving forward the SARTs issues, if nothing more.

Ceri