To have a future, we need to normalise shooting: McKenzie

Normalising shooting as a recreational activity is a vital aspect of ensuring the sport has a social licence well into the future, according to National Party Federal Senator Bridget McKenzie.

“Legitimacy in a democracy like ours comes from people accepting that you have a right and a privilege to do what we want to do, and so I think part of that is normalising and demystifying shooting,” she said at the recent National Gun Conference.

Hear all of what Bridget McKenzie had to say at the National Gun Conference in this video

Losing that social licence, she said, made the sport more vulnerable to being demonised, which in turn allowed “political forces to separate you from Joe citizen, from the broader body politic, and therefore you’re abnormal”.

She warned it enabled politicians to believe “we can do things to that group over there that we would never do to this group over here”.

“That’s why I want to keep us as part of the mainstream as much as possible,” Ms McKenzie said.

A long-time advocate for the shooting sports, she believes a shooting club should be considered no different to a netball club, and events like the Olympics were golden opportunities for normalising shooting in Australia.

“You can’t be celebrating women with gold medals around their necks and the very next minute stopping the clubhouses where that next generation of athlete is grown in every little country town around the country,” she said.

She also echoed the importance of shooters coming together and working co-operatively towards a common goal.

“I have always been bedeviled about the fact that I will go into country town and there’ll be an ACA [Australian Clay Target Association] target range, there’ll be a Field & Game target range, there’ll be an SSAA target range, and old mate who doesn’t get along with any of those other men will have his own [range], off the record, out in the back paddock,” she said.

“There is something unique about shooting [where] someone has a fight with someone in the 1970s and goes and sets up the same thing just down the road.

“That’s got to end. You don’t want that culture.

“That’s probably the culture that’s kept everyone separated over a long time and that’s allowed them to pick us off.”