Give our kids gun training
WITH the Russian invasion of Ukraine Minister Peter Dutton said Australia must prepare for war.
Queensland MP Bob Katter said the same on Q&A recently, urging Australia to make or buy thousands of missiles and deploy them to our coastal regions and arm five million citizens with rifles.
In a neutral country such as Switzerland, military service is mandatory for men. All men between the ages of 18 and 34 deemed “fit for service” are given a pistol or a rifle and trained.
After they have finished their service, the men can typically buy and keep their service weapons, but they have to get a permit for them.
My own grandfather was in the Citizen Military Force during the 1920s and a sergeant in the Volunteer Defence Force during the World War II. Due to being exempt from service as a farmer, he did his bit at Lake Rowan, Victoria, and kept a Vickers machine gun on the farm and gave it a squirt every weekend from 1939 to 1945 to ensure it was operational.
It is interesting to note that the first shots fired by Australians in the world wars were from the shores of Port Phillip Bay at escaping German merchant vessels. So when push comes to shove we better know what we are doing.
Australia should be putting firearm training back into schools as it was with cadets when I was a teenager.
I can still remember looking with envy at the Scotch College students in their cadet uniforms carrying a school bag and a cased rifle to school on the Glen Waverley to Flinders St train.
Firearm safety training is akin to teaching students how to handle power tools in woodwork class.
We know at some time people will encounter firearms, just as they do an angle grinder. Better they know how to handle them both safely.
The reason nearly every country town has a Rifle Range Road is because in the early days of Federation, Australia was preparing its young men to defend our country and built these ranges and encouraged participation.
Since the 1996 gun buy back we have done the opposite. At NT Field and Game we have been training the ADF in shotgun shooting for the past five years.
We have taken riflemen and women, and turned them into shotgunners. Hundreds of them are now proficient with these small arms, shooting at close range, moving clay targets.
We have also taught them teamwork with fast action “flurry” shoots combining a shooting squad with a crew of loaders and spotters.
Isn’t it ironic that the US has sent 500 Mossberg pump-action shotguns to Ukraine to arm civilians to defend their country.
These were the same types of shotguns we had to hand in and are still prohibited from owning
The Mossberg 500 is a high-functioning shotgun with an excellent combination of adaptability and consistency in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
NT Field and Game have clay target practice at the range at the Mickett Creek Shooting Complex on Friday arvos from 4pm until the darkness under lights.