3 months as a new 22LR Owner
Hi all ,
As the title states I've been a new 22LR owner for 3 months and here's what I've found which may or may not be of interest to someone.
Getting the license
As long as you have a genuine need it's not complicated, you'll jump through a few hoops but they're not that hard.
The best thing to do is go into a firearms shop and talk to the guys, I haven't found a shop where they aren't helpful.
Once you have the necessary paperwork just toddle of to the post office with some identification and pay the application fee.
Keep the Post Office receipt, I can't stress this enough, keep a copy of all paperwork/receipts even if you think it's not important.
Now the hardest part... waiting.
After a short while you hopefully will get notification that it has been preliminarily approved and it's time to start getting a safe and installing it.
Buy a bigger safe than you think you'll need. Mine is an eight rifle safe and it can properly fit 4 rifles with scopes, I only have one rifle but I keep all my cleaning parts in there so it's a bit crammed
Take lots of pictures of the safe installation, thankfully it's easy to take pictures now everyone has a mobile phone.
Don't forget to put a ruler/tape measure up to the washers so they can check the size.
Send off statuary declaration for the safe install with all the pictures, I emailed mine off.
OK, the second hardest part.... waiting again!
If everything was done correctly you will get another notification that your license has been approved, be prepared, this can take a while.
Now you just need to wait for the postie to deliver your paper license.
This paper license is your firearms license, it doesn't have your photo on it and isn't credit card sized, it's the bit of paper.
Hopefully you've got your Post Office receipt when you applied for the license as you'll need to attach it to the firearms license as it states "This license is not valid unless proof of payment is attached"
A Little bit later the postie will bring your Firearms Identification Card. This card is similar to your driver’s license.
This process took me about 6 weeks.
It seemed to take a long time, not as bad as the eastern states but I applied the start of June and got my paper license mid-July
Price
My rifle wasn't expensive. I could have bought an expensive rifle but I get lots of joy with a cheap rifle and if I wanted to upgrade I would, plus the rifle is excellent if I needed to use it on my property.
Rifle Cost $450
Safe $550
Application fee $300
Cleaning parts $100
Ammunition
I read that 22lr rifles like different types of ammunition. Some rifles that perform well with one type of ammunition might not perform as well with another and you can't tell unless you try them.
With this in mind I've bought several different brands and types of ammunition and found that Fiocchi works well for me, I don't know if this is psychological or not but at $10 for 50 rounds I'm not complaining.
Where to Shoot
There's a couple of rifle ranges around the Perth area but I've only used one and the guys there are friendly so I'll continue to use them. Once I've got the confidence to shoot in public then I'll go out to Wanneroo and see about joining a club so I can shoot competitively which is my main goal.
Rifle Care
I clean my rifle after every shoot. So far I've put about 1000 rounds through it and the only time I didn't clean it I got bad grouping so the results are inconclusive and again this could be psychological. I will continue to clean my rifle after every shoot as I like cleaning it.
I hope this is of some use to new shooters
Minimike