April 2009 President message
As I have said many times before, competition shooting and recreational hunting are great activities on an individual and community basis. Shooting teaches discipline, concentration, safety and responsibility. When I think of shooting, I think of sport and good times with friends. But that is not so for many in the community.
If you have had nothing to do with shooting, then you have most likely conceived your opinion on shooting from newspaper stories about crime, police and crime television shows, radio talkback with callers calling for bans on this and that, and even uninformed politicians and academics. And that is the problem. We perfectly well understand what shooting is all about, but the uninformed opinion is one of fear. Our task, just as it was 60 years ago when the SSAA first formed, is to educate those in the community who otherwise have no other source of information on firearms than Underbelly or CSI.
Every year, we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying politicians, liaising with academics, issuing press releases and publishing books, magazines and journals that state our case for sports shooting and recreational hunting, and then, of course, there is our work at the international level and the United Nations.
Let’s look at the past month: SSAA National fielded more than 40 interviews on everything from the utilisation of fox fur to the health and environmental benefits of hunting for the dinner table. We responded to The Greens’ call to ban ‘hand-machine-guns’ (whatever they are) and participated in a dozen or so interviews on the SSAA’s Cooks Companion recipe book, made up of recipes sent in by members. On top of that, we published an ASJ that explains the ethics of hunting, issued three press releases, talked face-to-face with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and spent three weeks lobbying on various issues in Federal Parliament. I personally flew to Germany to attend the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities (WFSA) of which we are a founding member and met with the incoming president of the NRA.
All of this is the behind-the-scenes activities that we undertake every month to both promote recreational shooting and hunting and to protect your freedoms. You can take a look yourself on almost a daily basis at much of the work we undertake by logging on to our website and reading through the Notice Board, Media Monitoring, Capital News and Press Releases.
Add to this the tireless work of the board and state SSAA staff and officeholders who often put in more hours that are above and beyond the call of duty and you can see the extensive structure that operates to benefit members. In addition, our Accounts, Membership and Merchandise office in Sydney, the SSAA Insurance brokerage and our Secretariat in Adelaide, all work to make sure your organisation works smoothly and help to get the SSAA name and logo out there in the public eye.
This is what your SSAA does for you and it is because of your support that we can continue to do it into the future.
In closing, I would like to remind you that juniors are the future of our sport, so please support our Sign Up A Junior campaign.
Bob Green
SSAA National President
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