WFSA: The World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities

In the last few years the pressures to increase gun laws everywhere have intensified many times over, and lawful Canadian firearm owners well know this. There has been a rising awareness also that legislative practices have been circulated amongst authorities throughout the global village. Many of them have been of the failing variety, but that has often not mattered. More than at any time in history, citizens of countries from one side of the world to the other have faced being saddled with regulatory practices not derived from local knowledge - being placed on the receiving end of answers to questions that have not been asked where they live, but in different societies, with different needs.

The World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities (WFSA) was formed in answer to this fact. Its aim is to protect the interests of sporting and recreational firearm users. The Forum's headquarters are in Brussels and its Secretariat has offices in Italy and the USA.

A practical result of the need to internationalize, the World Forum has cemented itself as the voice of the international shooter by having attained its vitally important official position as a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in Roster Consultative Status with the Economic & Social Council of the United Nations. It is free to attend UN meetings involving firearm-related matters.

A typical meeting of the Forum involves representatives from Australia, Africa, America, Canada, New Zealand, Britain and Europe. Matters of interest are already long, and the list of likely subjects is rapidly expanding. The Environment Sub-Committee, as one example, deals with such matters as metal and noise pollution on ranges and shooting grounds, management responsibilities for contamination, the effects of Chronic Wasting Disease, and range use rights.

On the Forum's website there is now a steadily accumulating body of knowledge that reflects the international shooting community's areas of concern. For instance, the Environment section carries a free publication certain to turn into a core document for consultation by those engaged in handling shooting ranges. This is a handbook for range managers, produced by one of the European members, The Association of European Manufacturers of Ammunition (AFEMS). Such sharing of information is central to the Forum's existence.

The WFSA is an association of associations with over thirty members worldwide. Participants include, among others, the South African Gunowners Association, ANPAM (Italian firearms manufacturers), AFEMS (European ammunition manufacturers, Asociacion Armera (Spanish manufacturers), the British Shooting Sports Council, Forum Waffenrecht (Germany), the National Rifle Association of America, SAAMI (American manufacturers), Safari Club International and the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia.

Canada's National Firearms Association was accepted for Membership in the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities in 2003.

United Nations matters take up a considerable slab of the Forum's time. For instance, there are unremitting pushes for the indelible marking (as in serial numbers) of firearms, and this issue, with its relation to military and sporting firearms alike, has been the focus of much attention.

Another body vital in the process of informing and educating the international community is a subset of the Forum, the Manufacturers Advisory Group( MAG). Numerous of the Forum's conferences and workshops have focused on international firearm matters over the last few years, and the reports generated by these workshops become the primary source of information on the topics. The Government Group of Experts approved by the 2001 UN Small Arms and Light Weapons conference engaged with the Manufacturers Advisory Group with a view to increasing their understanding of issues surrounding the transfer of firearms between countries at a meeting held in Geneva Switzerland. The value of these exchanges cannot be overstated. It is of paramount importance that the lawful owner of firearms should have a voice, in this time when more and more people, particularly in the media, are convinced that all firearm ownership is a negative force in any society.

The WFSA was the coordinating body for the world's firearms community at the UN Conference on Small Arms and Light Weapons, held in July, 2001, in New York. A UN Conference can be a continuing arrangement, rather than an event. This one handed authority to an internationally drawn Group of Government Experts to consider a future binding legal instrument on gun-related matters.

It is at this level that the World Forum is now making representation. The next Small Arms conference in the set was held in July of this year. The WFSA also organized a conference in London in May, 2003. Its title was: Legal, Economic and Human Rights Implications of Civilian Firearms Ownership and Regulation. With its history and its continuing presence in the area, the Forum had not long before been invited to make a submission to the UN through its Special Rapporteur, Professor Barbara Frey, on the human rights implications of small arms ownership. That conference was a logical extension of the Forum's movement into the area.

The World Forum continues to monitor all international firearms regulation matters at the UN, the EU and other organizations. Other questions affecting the international shooting community are being raised continually - environmental issues such as lead and noise, ammunition and explosives, the tracing of firearms, the definitions of firearms, the welfare and seasonal hunting of animal populations, the image of the sport shooter... there is a constant need for the affairs of the lawful sporting shooter, and no less so the affairs of the lawful firearms manufacturer and trader, to be transparent.

The truth is that they are, but all too often in the past, there had been no international group to say so, and to demonstrate them.

The activities of the lawful sport shooter are not to be confused with the illicit arms transfers of rogue governments carrying out genocides. In its populist activities such as the Sport Shooting Ambassador Award, and the more governmentally-oriented production of its workshops and symposiums, the WFSA now speaks for the legal firearm owners in all countries. Its expertise is being sought more and more by government groups worldwide.

Canada's National Firearms Association is a proud Member of the World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities. National President, David A. Tomlinson is on the WFSA Executive Committee.

The National Firearms Association serves on the UN/Legislative Committee, the Environment Committee, the Image of Shooting Sports Committee, and the Research and Statistics Committee.{mosauthorxtd noshow}