If you’re concerned shooting organisations aren’t doing enough to protect the shooting sports, then don’t blame them.

Blame us.

Shooters have long held concerns that their shooting organisations have not done enough to fight for the future of the shooting sports.

Bear in mind though, that most of them were set up to host events, run competition and provide services to their members, which they do well. That’s where their expertise is, and in some cases could compromise themselves if they openly engaged in political fights because of their links to pro-shooting programs supported by state and federal governments.

For a start, it’s not wise for them to bite the hand that feeds them.

Secondly the people running them are normally qualified and experienced in running competitions and events, not politics. There will be some exceptions to this, but their primary responsibility is to facilitate shooting sports and other events.

Thirdly, their knowledge of the environment in which they operate is likely to be limited to the discipline they manage.

In Victoria, major shooting organisations decided in the early 2000s to create the CFCV as a political umbrella to co-manage their political interests. By drawing on political expertise from across the shooting sector – and in some cases, from outside the sector – we’re able to do the political work for our member organisations without compromising what they do.

Victorian shooters are facing the prospect of:

a new national park which could have a massive impact on hunting;

new firearm regulations which will lead to tighter storage and transportation requirements; and

a revised National Firearms Agreement which has done a lot more than reclassify our lever-action shotguns: it is openly encouraging states to impose stricter storage requirements than many of us can afford, and wants to make it easier for you to lose your licence.

In other words, the attacks continue – and we’re losing the war.

While that is true, we have shown what can be done with well focussed political action. We’ve secured $12.5m funding for range improvements, supported pro-shooting candidates, had the Firearms Consultative Committee and Firearm Safety Foundation of Victoria established and funded, helped to ensure the continuation of duck hunting and sidelined at least one senior anti-hunting bureaucrat.

These have all been positive outcomes – but we need to do more. A lot more.

We need to become more active and involved in state and federal elections to slow the anti-gun juggernaut down. Winning this fight will require significantly more funding than before.

So if you’re concerned that not enough has been done to protect our political future, then that’s our responsibility, but it’s also yours.

Your support – and that of your 200,000+ other licensed colleagues, can make a huge difference on whether we succeed or don’t.

Why your donation is important

We’ll do the work, but need donations to be able to do it.

Your donation does two things. First, it helps fund our expenses such as mailouts, printing of literature and advertising which help us get our messages out more and more online. It helps with meeting the costs of the current work we’ve commissioned to tackle the recently updated National Firearms Agreement.

Secondly it helps us support pro-shooting candidates at state and federal elections. It helps meet their nomination costs and printing of How-To-Vote information, which can be substantial.

If we can’t do these things, we lose.

Why your club or organisation should care

If you’re member of a shooting club, then it’s your club which needs to also get involved. By getting involved, your club or association can stay up to date on what’s happening in the shooting sports and let their members know.

It’s important they do this, because part of what we’re doing involves the release of important How-To-Vote information in the lead up to state and federal elections. This is information which needs to go out quickly, so if your club is not on our email list, it should be (click here to join our email list).

Like what we’re doing? Help us do more.

What we’re doing gives you the best chance you’ll have of doing something for the shooting sports.

Shooters can help us continue fighting for the shooting sports with small monthly donations – in most cases, for less than the costs of a pack of 22s.

One of our current needs is to meet the costs of the consultancy we have engaged to help fight the recently updated NFA. As one of our delegates said “you are literally fighting for the future of shooting in this country”.

Why? – because new provisions were added to the NFA which now encourage the states to increase storage requirements, genuine “reason” in some places now reads genuine “need” (which makes it more difficult to buy each firearm) and firearm advertisements will now need to carry more of your own details. The NFA also further restricts what events will be recognised for licensing. The reclassification of our lever-action shotguns is no longer our main problem!

These are significant problems which we need your help on. Click here to help the fight.