The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

I have just returned from my first Imperial meeting and have a question for you.

I converted several sighters and also saw people withdrawing from the detail due to the weather. (I was on the 1000 yard point at 11.00AM on the saturday in the monsoon).

I know the ruling is to hand back any converted sighters and also any unused ammunition but my question is should we be getting a refund for this?

Several shooters retired from the Lovell on saturday and had only fired one round and some had not fired at all so they were handing back 11 or 12 rounds. With the growing and high cost of ammunition should the NRA now start operating some sort of refund system for this?

I know for a fact that all the converted sighters are sold on after the imperial meeting at a slightly reduced cost as my rifle club bought a load last year. So in effect the NRA get paid twice for the rounds and the shooter loses out.

They could operate a voucher/sticker system for this and it wouldn't be hard to administer.

What do you all think?

Nope!

The converted sighters and returned brass pay for the Second and Third stages of Queens and Georges and the Chairmans Prize.

It used to be that you had to pay for all of these in the entry so the entry fees were reduced on the basis of returns.

Now you pay exactly the same for the Queens and Georges as the other comps and the Chairmans Prize is free as it should be!

Love

Karen

So on that basis what would happen in the Queens etc if nobody converted sighters and we were still using RG which had no onward use other than scrap value?

The NRA would be down the money.

But statisitical theory applies quite accurately to returned sighters. It's possible to predict how many we will get with a fair degree of certainty. And this all only came about after we started paying direct for the ammo.

iain

I understand all of that, but is there any reason why I cannot keep the ammunition that I have paid for and not used?

Effectively you've paid for ammunition to use in the competition - the rules allow you to convert your sighters, to your advantage. If you want you could choose not to convert if you want your full money's worth.

It's not on your FAC, and if you think I'm staying late each night to write 1 or 2 rounds onto each competitor's FAC you've got another think coming! :roll:

That's the legal reason. Also, several hundred people who shoot the Meeting do not have FACs and have no legal authority to hold the ammo. We have to provide a means for them to return unused ammo; it cost nothing more to do it for everybody. The practical reason is that we don't want people, including for instance quite young cadets who have never before had unsupervised access to ammo, wandering around camp with pocketfuls of the stuff. The financial reason is that we need the money from the components to cover certain costs, as Karen said, and we either supply the ammo at a discounted price and get the bits back, or we sell it at full price. Given the legal and practical issues, we choose to deal with the financial one by supplying and getting the bits back. It's neater and safer and saves a load of paperwork. It also allows us to deal in the bits in bulk, which gets a better price. If you like, think of it as making an efficient donation to the NRA. If you don't like, join the Association, stand for General Council, then for Shooting Committee, then for Chairman of SC, and then as a Trustee you can have serious influence over the process.

Iain (ex Chairman Shooting Committee)