Gwion wrote:I think you are being deliberately obtuse and I'm getting sick of repeating myself.
If a member is willing to take out a public notice of their intnt to shoot on a given day and to cover any working losses incurrred by the RO to supervise them during the working week, then i guess it is possible. Highly unlikely and pretty stupid but possible.
This discussion is going nowhere. If, as you say, shooters just want to go out bush and do what they want then you have answered all your own questions.
If you want a range that is open for anybody to come along and shoot hiwever they want and are willing to accept liability for random people turning up and getting pissed off for being asked or expected to follow some basic safety rules then have at it and set one up.
Just stop bagging out those of us who put themselves out in time, finances and legal responsibilty to offer something to the shooting community other than just whinging that nothing is good enough.
For most people it is always going to be:
Too far
Too expensive
To regulated
Too restrictive
Too not what i wasn't to do...
There will always be people who expect someone else to take responsibility for what they want to do.
I think you have it backwards, you seem to be the one that keeps saying it's all too hard.
Nowhere did I say anything about allowing "anybody to come along and shoot however they want", or "for random people turning up", or anybody getting pissed off for being asked to follow some basic safety rules. My entire discussion has been about hiring a range, not random drop-ins, and not unsupervised larrikins, but people that have signed a contract with the club to use the range. If you want to put a bond in the contract to cover any potential vandalism or loss, then do so.
And where did I suggest "shooters just want to go out bush and do what they want"?
Just because some people are making the effort to operate a club means that all criticism is off-limits, even if their efforts are not necessarily working to the good of the club, or the sport in general? As I explained to my apprentices, in school you just need to do the best you can, but when people are paying you to do the job, the best you can do is not automatically good enough if you can't do a job that's worth what you are being paid for doing it.
I have actually put ideas forward that, if nothing else, might give some direction to clubs that might actually makes things better, but you just shoot everything down as too hard. Any endeavour that wants to be successful, instead of being happy to stagnate, needs to be continually looking at the world around them, and seeing where they fit into it.
As for your final comment, that makes no sense whatever. Nobody is expecting or demanding anybody else take responsibility for what others want. Where did I make any such implication in anything I put forward?
Yes, for most people, they are going to have to sacrifice various things to attend a range, that is to be expected with any recreational activity, but that is no reason to build a club that maximises those restrictions, instead of finding ways of minimising them. But the primary goal has to be to make it enjoyable, without pleasure, it becomes far harder to get people to accept the difficulties as being worth the effort and expense. The more pleasure there is in attending the range, the less all of those problems matter. If a shooter can think to himself, "I have to mow the lawns, but I'd much rather go to the range", but decide mowing the lawns to be the more enjoyable way to spend the day, then the range is doing something wrong.
Why would somebody spend ten of thousands of dollars, and spend weeks in hospital, year after year, to race motorcycles, if there wasn't enormous enjoyment from doing it? All motorcycle racing is is turning huge sums of money into noise, late-night engine builds and repairs, no holidays or free time, and constant pain from accumulating injuries, and yet we keep doing it until we no longer can. All recreation requires some degree of sacrifice, we just weigh it against what we get in return for it.
You actually said that your club "...would happily open the range for such events...", but then recanted in every way possible.
There are reasons why shooters have to take to forums with threads like this one, trying to find places they can shoot, and clubs should be taking that on board if they want to support the shooting sports. Do it well, and it wouldn't matter if there were no shooters anywhere in your area, they would happily travel to your facility if it offered what they are looking for. There is nothing at all to be gained by cutting yourself off from tens of thousands of shooters that are not interested in joining your club because it offers them nothing they want. Ask the shooters what they want, then find ways of offering that to them.
For me, I just want a facility that I can bring my rifles to, when it suits me, even if I have to book months in advance, and pay hundreds of dollars for the privilege, and simply spend the day enjoying them all. I really can't see what is so damned difficult about that, especially when compared to the amount of work that has to go into actually organising and running a competitive shoot instead.