Action Plan

Kimber

I ask all, in the most sincere way to use the experience that you all have and possibly with the help of the Moderators to see if there is a possible way that all our disciplines could be represented in the future to a GB and not loose any of the disciplines status in any shape or form.

I emplore you not to Kill each other but if all slates were clean. Can we do it?
Regards,:rolleyes:

Sparks

You'd have a technical problem with the olympic disciplines in shotgun, pistol and rifle Kimber. See, they're governed by the ISSF (International Shooting Sports Federation for those new to the game). The ISSF will only recognise one body from each country as a Member Federation of the ISSF. However this rule came in in '89 and many countries had different bodies for shotgun and rifle/pistol at the time, as in Ireland where you had the ICPSA and the NTSA. For these cases, it was permitted for both bodies to remain Member Federations sharing a single vote at the ISSF AGM, but; should either one ever close down or cease to operate, recognition would immediately devolve to the other and could not be restored. That one body would be the sole GB for olympic shooting in all disciplines for that country. So, if you were to try to merge the rifle bodies into one, you would have to merge them into the NTSA and then rename the NTSA and reorganise it; but keep it as the same legal entity. However, this would cause further problems due to the conflict at international level between the ISSF and the IPSC; to quote the Secretary General of the ISSF from a few years back:

in France, a year or two years ago, this practical shooting federation tried to take over the Federation Francaise du Tir, our member federation. Some of the practical shooting federation's officials were sneaking in[to] the French federation. We warned them that we don't want any [practical shooting] officials dealing with us. We want to keep the [French] sport shooting federation recognized as our member, but if practical shooting takes over, we will not keep up recognition. We probably might exclude them. We might suspend membership

Now that scrap doesn't affect us as individual shooters on the ground here - NTSA members can shoot whatever disciplines they want to - but the organisation has to keep clear of that scrap because if derecognised by ISSF, the ICPSA takes over as the sole ISSF body in Ireland and the NTSA can just pack up and go home.
So trying to get the NTSA and the ICPSA or the other practical pistol people into the same body isn't a good idea at all.

There are other problems like that between various disciplines where arguments at international level mean that we have to tread with care on the ground to avoid stepping in something unpleasant. So this idea of a monolithic body, it's not really going to work so well. The original idea to get around this was a loose federation of NGBs, the NRPAI. Well, we've gone over how that idea fell over rather a lot lately, so let's just say that there are problems with that idea that just don't have a real solution.

And what will you do regarding shotgun? Will you merge the ICPSA and the various rifle bodies? And what will you do regarding the Pony Club, who are already a part of Equestrian Ireland, or the Pentathlon association? And what about the NARGC?

Perhaps what's needed is to accept that the different disciplines just need seperate bodies to administer their sports? There is, after all, no reason those bodies could not work together for common goals - the Irish Pony Club tetrathlon shooters, for example, get training at NTSA clubs and that's seen excellent results over the last few years. And there's nothing wrong with multiple GBs - the only reason the ISC want a single monolithic body, after all, is so they only have to maintain one contact point, deal with one grant application, and so on. It simplifies things for them, not us!

Dvs

Kimber,
I think what Sparks is trying to say is,















No !:D

Regards,
Dvs

Sparks

Well, I was actually trying to say "No, because..." DvS

Kimber

Sparks,

Thanks for a detailed reply.
There was alot of thought and time put into that.
Also it was an education. I did not think anyone would post a reply.
And yes you were right. As much as I would like all disciplines to fall under one unified body. The reality as outlined could not allow this.
Pity..
But thanks for the information,
Regards,

Sparks

You're welcome Kimber.