bladeracer wrote:SAnewb85 wrote:Every gun shop should be licking their lips.
Offer $100 "trade in" when they purchase a .22/scope package.
Offer some pre-tafe safety courses.
Organise and advertise some range days where parents and kids alike can "come and try" which would help remove the stigma around owning real guns.
This is likely the single most pivotal time in Aussie gun rights and public perception since 1996.
These ideas should be happening all the time, not just when something like this comes up. Come-and-try days at SSAA and such are a great opening. I have sincerely offered to pay the costs of some anti-gun nuts on Facebook to go along to their nearest SSAA range and have a go, on me. Tell me their nearest range and I will organise with the range to cover their fees when they show up. Never had anybody take me up on the offer though. I have a feeling the majority of anti's simply don't qualify to shoot even under supervision at a range, let alone to have a licence.
I'm just not sure that people that enjoy playing with these things actually have any interest in real firearms, at least not enough for them to jump through the hoops to own them. There is not much connection between owning toy guns and having "wars" with their mates, and actually owning a real rimfire rifle and having to go to a range or travel to the bush to use it. Add the costs of owning real firearms - licencing, memberships, security, ammo, etc - and most won't bother. The couple-hundred dollars they spent on their toy gun is nothing compared to the expense of owning a real one.
I was talking to an idiot on a firearms forum on Facebook offering to buy these toys on behalf of south-Australians and sending them across to them. Pointing out to him that these are already illegal in Victoria prompted the response that he has lots of them and has no trouble buying them online...and this moron is already a licence holder.
I do think there is an opportunity to direct these angered owners though, and at least garner their votes over to our side of politics. Some of these people have many thousands of dollars worth of gel blaster collections.
Agreed!