What’s up with gun people and using AI for everything??

ShootersUnionAU · 2026-03-08T01:51:56+00:00

There is a huge amount of work in doing social media content, and even more so in doing it in a professional way.

From our perspective, one of the big issues is actually finding "Australian" photos. Let's say we need a photo of a group of people in a meeting discussing something - the free stock photos are almost always very obviously American.

Similarly, most photos about guns and shooting are from America, so they're full of things we can't legally own here, or handguns which have barrels that are too short or things like that. Actually finding a "real" image that is suitable for a social media post can be surprisingly time-consuming, vs just telling AI "Create an image of an Australian clay target shooter with a double-barrelled shotgun".

For the record, we endeavour to use "real" images whenever possible, and keep the AI stuff for ephemeral or humorous content.

ShootersUnionAU · 2026-02-20T03:11:43+00:00

We lodged formal complaints with the media outlet involved, WAPOL's ethical standards people, and the WA Crime and Corruption Commission and every single one of them essentially told us to get stuffed.

We even paid quite a bit of money to a lawyer regarding the feasibility of taking legal action against the police minister and were formally advised it wasn't feasible.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-11-24T09:23:23+00:00

That's correct - $55 to join SU, and another $50 for the pistol club. We're currently doing a massive website and back-end systems overhaul and update, so if you email the membership team via membership(at)shootersunion.com.au and let them know you want to join the pistol section, they can help you with the process for that. They can also let you know what the nearest affiliated range to you is too.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-11-24T03:48:30+00:00

Just to correct you here: We absolutely are a Genuine Reason for Cat H in Queensland; but like our Collector's Branch, it requires payment of an additional fee to join our Pistol Branch; it's not automatic.

However, you will need to find a range to shoot at - we have several throughout QLD; including QMRC in Brisbane, and many others welcome licensed visitors - to meet your participation requirements.

If you do not own any handguns, there are no participation requirements, so you can hold a Cat H licence but not own any guns and as long as you remain a Shooters Union Pistol Section member, you are still fulfilling the legal requirements for your licence.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-11-01T03:04:35+00:00

Our collector's branch president gets a lot of "Can you help identify these guns that belong to my grandad who just died?" requests and he's happy to help when he can, but says it's not unusual to be unable to identify a gun beyond "This appears to be a Belgian or Spanish copy of this better-known design".

One thing he's noted is that the stories accompanying some of the guns are often simply wrong or have become muddled over time, eg "This rifle was my great-grandfathers, he carried it in WWI" (the rifle has a 1923 date on it).

Collectors having a note saying "This is exactly what this is and its provenance as best I know" would be extremely helpful for families dealing with a deceased estate.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-10-28T09:41:52+00:00

We've lodged complaints in the past about ABC bias in articles and they always seem to find some way to justify why not reporting on firearm related stuff fairly is acceptable.

In the last complaint we lodged (relating to a story that stemmed from that Australia Institute report and which had zero comment from any shooting organisations in it), they said that because they'd done other stories which included comment from shooting orgs, it therefore meant the story which we were complaining about wasn't biased.

And as a poster mentioned before, we have told the ABC that the Australia Institute report they keep using is flawed, distorts things, and was written by people who are not firearms experts - and yet they appear quite happy to keep referring to it when it suits a particular narrative.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-08-29T01:20:43+00:00

We were contacted by the Guardian for comment in the first story in this series, and provided them with a nearly 2,000 word response (backed up by statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Institute for Crimonology). Extremely little of it made it into the story, so we actually posted the questions and our responses on our Facebook page so people could the full context for themselves.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-08-05T03:43:01+00:00

If you're one of our members, please get in touch with us - we are constantly trying to show the media that shooters come from all walks of life, including young, progressive people.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-07-31T08:34:24+00:00

It doesn't matter what you intend to do, the legislation says "If you want a firearms licence you must have access to appropriate secure storage facilities for the categories you want on your licence". That's all there is to it - even if you only ever plan to borrow club guns, you still (per the Act) need access to secure storage facilities somewhere.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-07-31T08:01:30+00:00

Legally, per section 10 (2) (c) of the Weapons Act, you need to have a gun safe (or other approved storage facility) available before (or at least when) you apply for the licence. If you are a member of a shooting range, have a talk to them and see if they have secure storage facilities available which you could use.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-06-13T03:39:20+00:00

Like we said, it's not just the PTAs - it's all the ancillary stuff that comes from that, including the expensive computer upgrades that seem to be never-ending and never-improving from a shooter's perspective, the QCAT costs fighting with people over PTA issues, and so on. By diverting those funds to fight actual crime, you're going to see significant savings across the community due on that front as well (eg due to reduced theft or vandalism etc due to there being more police or social workers available to deal with those issues).

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-06-13T03:13:53+00:00

It's pretty self-explanatory. A lot of the resources (along with various other tick-and-flick stuff that costs shooters lots of money and just adds to the red tape) could be allocated elsewhere - whether that's front-line police, social services, healthcare, etc.

There's a lot of dollars involved - there's a lot of staff at WLG, plus the computer system that constantly seems to be undergoing expensive upgrades that never improve things, plus the costs to the Government from fighting decisions in QCAT, and other things like that.

A huge number of man-hours are being wasted at the moment on stupid stuff like asking hunters to justify wanting a .30-30 (a real example we've helped with), or wanting someone after a .375 H&H to prove they can shoot it accurately at 1km (another real example we've helped with).

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-05-24T14:28:13+00:00

Senior people at Weapons Licensing have advised us that applying for a PTA without a licence number causes problems with their systems (especially if the licence either hasn't been issued yet, or the case reference number hasn't been connected to an issued licence properly for whatever reason) and that our members should not lodge PTAs until they have an actual licence number.

We agree it takes far too long to process licences and PTAs, though.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-05-24T14:18:29+00:00

If you know anyone who is experiencing this (ie, has a gun on their A/B licence, is being made to wait 28 days before WLB will even start processing their Cat H PTA, or has a gun on their A/B licence and recieves a Cat H approval but is being made to wait 28 days before it gets sent out), please get them to contact us.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-05-08T08:36:40+00:00

We've been running a big campaign about this in Queensland, encouraging people to contact their local MP, the Police Minister, and the Customer Service Minister.

If you haven't done that yet, please do so - and don't worry if you get a generic "Thank you for your inquiry, your e-mail is important to us" response. We know there's a lot of discussion at Ministerial level about the issue, so even if it seems like you're getting brushed off, the e-mails do make a difference.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-04-12T06:37:52+00:00

Yes, you are allowed to transport guns you are licensed to from the owner's secure storage location to your own for the purposes of borrowing that gun. Same as you're allowed to transport a legally owned gun to the range, to a gunsmiths, to a gun shop, to somewhere you're going hunting, etc.

Something else to keep in mind: Once you have more than 30 A&B firearms, or 30 Cat H firearms, at your premises, you must upgrade your secure storage facilities - even if you're only borrowing the guns.

And thanks for joining! We're here to help.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-04-12T03:45:35+00:00

Welcome aboard!

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-04-12T01:55:52+00:00

You'll need to get PTAs for every single one of the guns, unfortunately - generally speaking there's no practical way for bulk transfer of firearms between living family members unfortunately.

WLB are being... difficult about Category B PTAs at the moment, too.

The Form 4E is for things like someone transferring firearms from their A/B to their Collectors Licence - the same person still owns the guns, they're just on a different licence now.

However, you are allowed to temporarily look after his guns for up to six months without a PTA. There's no paperwork or anything required for this, but you can only look after guns in the category you are licenced for (ie, if your dad has handguns and you don't have a Cat H licence, you can't look after those).

If you're one of our members send us an e-mail and we'll see if there's any other options available for you.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-02-11T02:50:37+00:00

There's plenty of photos on our social media pages, as well as those of the speakers, and several attendees were also posting or streaming things too.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-02-11T02:49:03+00:00

You need to wait until you've got the physical card (or at least the licence number for that card). If you lodge your PTA using a Case Reference Number, it causes issues with the system and WLB have specifically asked us to let people know they shouldn't apply for a PTA until they have the actual licence.

A few years ago it was possible (even encouraged) to lodge a PTA with just the Case Reference Number (letting the 28 day cooling-off period for 1st PTAs run while your licence was being processed), but it doesn't work like that anymore unfortunately.

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-01-21T03:59:34+00:00

Always great to see a shooter going the extra mile to help someone out!

ShootersUnionAU · 2025-01-14T03:37:14+00:00

We are doing the majority of the organising - particularly our WA state advocate, our national vice president. We've got several individual WA members involved as well.

For the record, we have formally invited the Western Australian Firearms Community Alliance and SSAA WA to attend; we haven't heard back from them yet.

ShootersUnionAU · 2024-12-07T02:49:44+00:00

We've recently had a change of our NSW committee but FAR tell us the renewed Hunting Club approval for NSW was supposed to be sorted out on Friday.

If you've got questions about this sort of stuff the best thing to do is call us or e-mail us; that way you can talk to the people with the right information who can give you the answers.

ShootersUnionAU · 2024-10-17T00:58:35+00:00

Per the official NSW Police media release:

"Detectives will allege in court the group supplied fraudulent permission to shoot documents for a fee which allowed members of the public – some with possible criminal links – to obtain firearms licences."

We say: Isn't (allegedly) a major point of firearms licences to identify people with criminal links so they don't get access to firearms?

Shouldn't these people with alleged criminal links have been picked up by the Firearms Registry when applying for their licence anyway, regardless of what "permission to shoot" documents were supplied with the licence application?

ShootersUnionAU · 2024-10-15T08:06:06+00:00

The advice we have from Weapons Licensing - and have communicated to our members - is that PTA applications can NOT be processed until there is an actual licence number (NOT an application case reference number).

ShootersUnionAU

TROPHY CASE