Sporting and recreational shooters air grievances at third day of Firearms Act inquiry

Sporting shooting leaders have called for recreational shooting to be reinstated as a genuine reason to own a firearm under the State Governments tough gun reforms at a Parliamentary inquiry into the Firearms Act. Recreational and sporting stakeholders were represented by the Shooters Union WA, Sportings Shooters Association of WA, and the WA Shooting Association on the third day of the firearms inquiry hearings on Wednesday last week. Shooters Union WA State advocate Steve Harrison opened his submissions to the inquiry by calling for the repeal and rewriting of the firearms legislation to be aligned with other States to create consistency across the country. “Every other State and Territory in Australia has, more or less, the same firearms laws,” he said. “They licence the shooter, not the firearm, they do not impose limits on the number of firearms a licensee may own.” Mr Harrison said the SUWA was denied the opportunity to be “effectively involved” in the consultation process prior to the establishment of the reforms in law in June last year. WA Shooting Association vice-president Murray Bow revealed to the inquiry that the WASA had been contacted by small gun clubs — mainly country clubs — for advice on how to wind down their business due to declining memberships because of the reforms. Sporting Shooters Association of WA president Paul Fitzgerald told the inquiry the push to ensure community safety was not contentious, but he said the reforms unfairly target recreational and sporting shooters across the State. “There is no argument that we need to make sure firearms are secured in the community — simple as that,” he said. Mr Fitzgerald said the firearms storage matrix provided confusion and hurdles for people throughout the State — from the occupation of residencies to the thickness of gun cabinets. “What we’ve found with the storage matrix is there are some huge complexities about occupied and unoccupied premises and people have two firearms and they’re at an unoccupied location — which could be a shed 50 metres from the occupied premises — and they’re now having to suffer the burden of purchasing a new firearm cabinet,” he said. “For as many years as it has been required the thickness of the cabinets has been two millimetres in the body and four millimetres in the door — as a minimum now we’re at three millimetres and six. “You’ve got families that live at the same residential address and so they’re suffering the numbers of firearms at a single address. “The SSA are not suggesting that storage and safely securing firearms is not at the top of the list, but it’s a huge issue.” Mr Fitzgerald also supported the reinstating of recreational shooting as a genuine reason to own firearms under WA law and told the inquiry that people are struggling with the ability to shoot clay targets on their own property under the reforms. “We do have a large cohort of firearm owners in West Australia who don’t want to compete at an approved shooting range and they don’t necessarily want to hunt and kill animals — they want to use their firearm like they have for the last 30, 40, 50 years for recreational activity,” he said. WA Shooting Association president Ralph Folie noted during the inquiry that 15 per cent of stolen firearms are not recovered and that nothing had been raised as to providing police with greater resources to recover illegally-possessed guns. Mr Folie additionally told the inquiry the requirement for a person to hold a firearms licence for five years to act as a supervisor was “absolutely irrelevant” and “so stupid” in the real world. “Any time frame on competency is absolute garbage — someone could be in a club for five years and attend once or twice, and after five years they get deemed they can be the supervisor,” he said. “On the other hand you could have someone that comes as a firearms instructor from the police force or the military, they bring that experience across — why on earth would they have to be in the system for five years to qualify, it just does not make sense.” Labor’s controversial firearms reforms — that have been labelled the strictest in the country — came into effect on March 31 after they were cemented into law in June last year, stirring up concerns amongst WA’s farming community. The reforms, which restrict the number of firearms licensees can own among a raft of other measures, have drawn the ire of many firearms users who argue that they are too strict on law-abiding shooters including farmers, feral pest hunters and others. The bipartisan inquiry into the Act launched in May and began its first round of hearings on September 10 with over 20 stakeholder groups sharing their thoughts on the legislation across four days. The Legislative Committee hearings have been closed to the public, and come after 38 of the 2670 submissions detailing stakeholders’ thoughts on the laws were released on the WA Parliament website earlier this month.