From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I think Matthew is talking lots of sense here. When it comes
down to the bottom line, the simple fact of the matter is that
we need to attract more People into the Sport. The problem
with this as I see it is, a) Many clubs (especially those
shooting full bore rifles as opposed to Pistol cal ones.) use
MOD ranges as these are the only places to shoot them. The
problem being that you can show up to the range only to find
that you have had your booking cancelled by the Army or they
have stolen your booking. At my local range they have just
initiated a new rule that is basically "no army, no shoot". So
we have about 3 dates booked for the entire year! This is not
acceptable to new comers. b) compared to other sports you
are generally restricted to set times, again if booking on
another range. My club gets MOD range bookings generally
on Sunday Mornings, many People want to take part in their
hobby whenever it suits them not when it suits the club or the
MOD. It is very difficult to simply decide to go shooting
because you find you have a spare afternoon c) The British
Weather! OK we can't do much about this but we can make it
better. Look at us now, all die hard shooters willing to get
soaked to the skin and covered in mud for our sport. This is
not acceptable if we want to attract newcomers. How many
ranges have convered firing points and decent drainage so you
don't drown on the firing point? Not many! d) Advertising, how
do we get new members other than by personal
reccomendation? I don't think you are allowed to advertise
Firearms or Gun clubs in the general press or broadcast
media so we have a problem there.
Havind said all that I think Matthew's ideas are good and are
the only serious way in which we should be going.
As I've said before, my local range at Ponteland would be a
great place to develop commercially if the MOD would go for
it, if anyone want's to invest drop me an e-mail.
Jonathan Laws. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
You can advertise gun clubs anywhere.
My personal view is that many of the obstacles you mention are
very difficult to overcome, so a better path might be to simply go
around them by promoting shorter range disciplines which can take
place indoors or on covered ranges that are open more often.
Once you've got people shooting at 100m with a surplus Lee-Enfield,
then you can get them interested in TR and so on.
The reason why pistol shooting was so popular is simply that it is
convenient. Rifle shooting is far less so, which is why less
people did it. What needs to be done is to make it more convenient
and as interesting as possible.
Steve.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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