SHOOTERS say the federal government has been caught making up a story to defend a gun law that they say offers no benefit and is hurting the firearm industry.
'Appearance laws' have been used by states to ban guns based on what they look like rather than on how they function.
However, the National Shooting Council says the law, which is part of the National Firearms Agreement, has never been justified and has already resulted in several successful legal challenges.
Council spokesman, Peter Zabrdac, said his Council wrote to the states and territories who said the law was based on incidents that 'could', 'may', or had the 'potential' to happen, and on 'assumptions'.
"We then wrote to Minister Andrews in April putting these statements to her and asked her to consider removing appearance laws from the Agreement," he said.
"Her delegated response said there were "numerous incidents" of firearms that appeared the same as "fully automatic firearms". But when challenged, she failed to provide any examples of these'".
He said not one Australian government has been able to provide evidence that explains why they have this law in place, and is clearly a policy based on a fabrication that needs to be exposed.
Mr Zabrdac said the law was having a detrimental impact on the shooting industry and driving the gun debate in the wrong direction.
"Appearance laws means that any legally imported firearm can suddenly become illegal, because of an opinion that an unqualified bureaucrat has. It's highly subjective, wrong, open to abuse and needs to go.
"Instead of looking at this logically, Minister Andrews decided to 'double down' on a policy that simply can't be supported".
