A SCOUTS WA leader says the organisation was caught off guard by WA’s new gun laws, which have ended its popular PCYC air rifle sessions and shot down expansion plans.
Kim Zekulich was team leader of the Scouts’ “adventurous training” shooting activities before the PCYC closed down its air rifle programs over “onerous” conditions contained in the Cook government’s legislation.
Ms Zekulich described it’s demise as a “great loss”.
She’d been running the Scouts’ air rifle program at Fremantle PCYC two Monday nights a month, with a double session on Friday nights and reckons that more often than not they’d have a full turnout.
In fact, it was so popular she started looking into including another night of shooting at the Gosnells PCYC.
Aware that the laws were going to be reviewed, Ms Zekulich told the Chook that Scouts believed that restrictions for firearms would come into place for children aged 12, meaning they could still offer the program to the older scouts at PCYC.
However, due to the new requirements of parental supervision and stricter gun laws, this is no longer the case.
“I think that component of it is a big loss for the community, not only Scouts, because I know there were a lot of younger kids shooting during normal nights.
“It certainly is a loss for the kids to no longer be able to experience it.”
6PR Breakfast presenters Steve Mills and Karl Langdon picked up our story from last week (“Caught in the crossfire,” Herald and Voice, June 14) where former Fremantle PCYC president Adrian Pardini stepped up his attack on the government’s rolling out of the new laws.
“I’ve sent certain emails, but you know, the government’s more interested in telling the public how much they’re making everyone safe, rather than listening to those people that are involved in the sport,” Mr Pardini said.
When Millsy asked Mr Pardini about the benefits of kids learning to shoot air rifles, he said it was ironic that police had introduced the sport into PCYCs back in the 1970s as a way to teach people about gun safety.
“With air rifle shooting, it gives you focus, it gives you concentration, it gives you patience,” Mr Pardini said.
“It gives you all those things that that you need to to be able to, obviously, hit the target.
“Air rifle shooting was for kids… but it was more for some of those kids that didn’t want to go outside and kick a footy or a soccer ball or anything like that… A sport that is that is more to their style.”
by ISLA TOMLINSON
with STEVE GRANT