Dear friends and colleagues,
further to the ISSF Meetings held last february in New Delhi I feel today the duty to inform you that my long-term support to President Vazquez Raña has definitively come at an end.
I have been noticing a progressive drifting regression in the ISSF management, expressed in poor transparency and even poorer involvement of some managers, the Continental Confederations and the National Federations. ISSF kept failing to provide these Bodies with any real support through the years and, most of all, failed to provide more detailed information concerning the 2020 IOC Agenda, a term which should represent a great opportunity for the future of the shooting disciplines, considering its high ethical and cultural significance.
In compliance with the IOC guidelines we all must strive to support the goal of the gender eguity, a goal which in my opinion must necessarily include the ISSF leadership.
Gender equity must be set as a goal to respect at all cost, this is the core of the proposals I have submitted to ISSF last November 14, 2016. My suggestion was to recommend IOC to set the three competitions of rifle 50 mt prone, pistol 50 mt and double trap also for women. In the alternative, best solution would have been to have mixed team events for these three events.
For many years I have been asking to my colleagues of the Executive Committee and Administrative Council the inclusion of the firearm events in the Youth Olympic Games, currently out of the programme of this event in the most discriminatory way.
Finally I acknowledge in these days about reunions held between the ISSF Secretary General, Franz Schreiber, the ISSF Vice President Gary Anderson and the IOC: meetings where the issue of the use of laser was discussed as possible future of the shooting sports.
With regard to the non inclusion of the firearm competitions in the Youth Olympic Games and to the ISSF recommendations to the IOC concerning the deletion of the 50 mt rifle prone, 50 mt pistol and double trap from the Olympic Shooting Program, I have come to the realization that this will possibly lead to an additional marginalization of the sports use of firearms.
For all of these reasons I believe it is appropriate to convene that ISSF Extraordinary General Assembly that so many Federations – as well as FITAV – applied for. I think it is time for a change.
Yours respectfully
Luciano Rossi
FITAV President
