Formation 1948 President Geoff Jones Editor Kaye Jenkins | Membership 175,000+ CEO Tim Bannister | |
Headquarters Adelaide, South Australia and Sydney, New South Wales, Australia | ||
The Sporting Shooters' Association of Australia (SSAA) was established in 1948 to promote the shooting sports and protect firearm owners' interests in Australia. The SSAA currently claims a membership of over 175,000, making it the largest body representing licensed firearm owners in Australia, with interests covering all aspects of recreational shooting and hunting, including firearms collecting and youth education. The SSAA also participates in the ongoing debates on government firearms policies.
Contents
Structure
The SSAA is organised at the bottom level as local sporting clubs, around locations and/or speciality shooting disciplines or conservation activities. Members may be unaffiliated with a club, or members of one or more clubs. Clubs are organised in branches, where each club sends two voting delegates to the branch AGM. A state may have one or more branches according to the population and size of membership. State level executive teams deal with state level sporting management and legislative issues, and elect the SSAA National Executive Board.
The SSAA is associated with the Federation of Hunting Clubs and both are associated with the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party (as it is has been called since April 2016).
Activities
The SSAA at the club and branch level has many thousands of volunteers and officials running competitions and managing facilities of their clubs for all levels of competition. The SSAA manages more than 16 handgun, rifle and shotgun shooting competitions at the local, state, national and international levels, as well as having several branches devoted to historic and collectible firearms.
The SSAA also comprises an insurance arm, SSAA Insurance Brokers Pty Ltd, which provides general insurance for the majority of major shooting organisations within Australia, as well as public liability insurance for SSAA members while shooting or hunting. The association's "Gold" membership automatically includes cover for firearms and personal liability with the annual membership.
Publications
The SSAA publishes a range of publications, including the monthly Australian Shooter, quarterly Australian Hunter, annual Australian & New Zealand Handgun, biannual The Junior Shooter, SSAA's Comprehensive Guide to Shooting & Hunting in Australia, Shooting and the SSAA - A Beginner's Guide, A Journalist's Guide to Firearms and the Shooting Sports, ASJ: The political voice of the SSAA, the SSAA National E-newsletter, Field to Fork - The Australian Game Cookbook, and more.
The SSAA has won national recognition for controlling feral pests in national parks and farmland throughout Australia, and for presenting the facts about various firearms- and shooting-related issues in an objective and scientific way.
Revenue
The national branch of the SSAA collects $10 million in annual fees.