Lobbying for our members 

We already have the runs on the board 

By Tim Bannister 

You would have to be naïve or deaf, dumb and blind to not understand that firearms can provoke emotional and sometimes illogical responses. 

As hunters, collectors and target shooters we aren’t fazed by them, in fact, a new firearm or cartridge will just pique our interest, and we will want to know more about the engineering and chemistry that make it all go bang. But it is in our interest to understand there are those in the public, the police, the lawmakers in parliament and often in the city-based media, who have less than positive opinions on firearms. 

The media, competing for attention, will often lower its editorial bar to sensationalism mode. Clickbait or snide commentary designed to provoke fear or disgust are the tools used to please their editor bosses, and ultimately the owners who in turn need to feed their shareholders.  

The West Australian newspaper ran a headline, ‘Teaching kids to kill’ after they interviewed a 16-year-old girl who had won a junior local target shooting competition. I personally intervened in that outrage, contacting the editor and the two journalists who wrote the story. The outcome was that the two journalists resigned from the paper. It was actually a sub editor who wrote the derogatory headline but the journalists felt betrayed. Imagine how the 16-year-old girl felt. 

Sitting at an outside table in Christchurch, taking a break from an international conference on firearm ownership called In the right hands, I was talking to a police inspector from a state firearms licensing branch. 

“It’s all about KPIs. We have to reach certain expectations with charges and arrests and I tell them, even if they have stored all their firearms properly and they are all registered, [when undertaking a firearms storage inspection] stick your head up in the ceiling to see if they are growing drugs or check their car window tinting to see if its too dark!” Mr Inspector said. 

“So, it’s just a matter of proving they are criminals, then?” I asked. 

“Exactly!” he said, before the blood drained away from his face, twigging that he had just walked into an honesty trap with someone who had minutes earlier introduced himself as a shooting magazine editor. It made a great story. 

When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was first elected to run the nation, his party put in place a NSW Labor party numbers man as the Minister for Home Affairs – the department in charge of the then Customs Department and keeper of the National Firearms Agreement. He announced to the media that his job was to stop “the importation of shotguns that look like rifles and rifles that look like shotguns”. He had no idea what he was talking about and no intention of listening to anyone who did, let alone the legitimate firearms owning community. Thankfully, he retired not long after, citing poor health. The posting had been a ‘job for the boys’ – a way of fattening up his pension as a reward before retirement and he faded into political obscurity. 

I have worked in the world of firearms for more than a quarter of a century and I sometimes wonder what would I as the 19-year-old media university student think about the path I took writing and promoting the shooting sports and hunting, lobbying lawmakers, calling out those that misuse illegal firearms and hassling the antis?  

The university café was the social hub of the institution, and I could often be found there drinking my fourth coffee on any given afternoon. One such afternoon I remember telling a social sciences student that I was going shooting on the weekend at a friend’s farm and it was going to be a lot of fun. “Guns aren’t fun,” she snapped; “they are dangerous!” glaring at me in disgust. Boy, she would be writhing in tofu and decaf coffee-fed outrage if she knew what I did now. 

So how do you change the police, the public, the media and the lawmaker’s opinions on firearms? Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes there is an incentive for them to hold those negative views on legitimate firearms ownership, be it a police rank promotion or posting to a more exciting department, going up the ladder as a sensationalist journalist or a politician getting re-elected because they appear tough on crime, even though the new laws will only affect the law abiding. 

But lobby we must and should, and I have seen the progress we have made as a community since facing the derision by then-Prime Minister John Howard in the late 1990s. We have gone to local government meetings, state parliament, federal parliament, the United Nations in New York and collaborated with international organisations such as the World Forum on Shooting Activities (WFSA), New Zealand’s Council of Licensed Firearm Owners (COLFO) and the National Rifle Association (NRA). We have condemned those who are against our sport and we have supported those who support us. 

The one thing in common during the past few decades is that it has always been a SSAA President from Queensland leading the lobbying and fronting up, particularly on the federal and international stages. No other SSAA National President has represented the Association internationally or driven lobbying efforts to protect our chosen recreation. Former state and National Presidents Geoff Jones and Bob Green are the only two National Presidents to have put themselves out there in person to push for our freedoms and push back on those who would restrict our sport. 

It was under their encouragement and tutelage that I was encouraged to learn and practice the art of lobbying and debate. Alongside Bob and Geoff, I became a member of the Australian Firearms Advisory Council, reporting to the federal government, gave statements at the United Nations and generally interrogated and outed untruthful reports by anti-firearm groups and media. I met privately with Prime Ministers and spoke out at Senate Inquiries set up by the Greens, designed to blame law-abiding shooters for the violence of unlicensed criminals. I then, in turn, employed and trained young and intelligent staff to assist in our lobbying and I can now reveal that one of those staff members, now working in agricultural advocacy, has agreed to assist SSAA Queensland and its Australian Shooters Alliance organisation (ASA) with national lobbying. Many of you would know her and have read the shooting stories by Rachael Oxborrow in this magazine and previous publications. Rachael already has strong contacts and has already talked with the Attorney General’s firearms unit on the National Firearms Registry rollout. 

As SSAA Queensland further undertakes its own operations and responsibilities, the decision to spearhead our own lobbying at the federal and international arenas was an obvious one. It has always been Queenslanders, and the staff they chose, who have carried out the lobbying and are well known and respected worldwide. 

We have been awarded official stakeholder status under the Federal Attorney General’s office, are now affiliated with the NRA and have strong links with other international shooting policy groups. 

We already have the runs on the board and we will continue to fight to look after our members going forward, just as we have in the past.