It wasn't about not being able to afford it (although in the dark days of the 90's, that was certainly a part of it) someone in the CoC had a look at the return for investment....
I took Stan Frost up on this once when I was in Canada House, as he was bemoaning the situation described above. He was complaining about the loss of free flights, loss of free ammo, loss of free targets, etc etc etc that he grew up with in the DCRA. (At the time, he was the president of the DCRA I think....)
I asked him when the last time was that he had coached a military shooter.
He started talking about coaching cadets, and I stopped him (rather abruptly) and said, "No, an actual soldier, sailor or airman in the regular forces or the reserves"
His response was "I have never done that."
My response was "That's why your money pit dried up."
In his 40 years of involvement with the DCRA, the thousands and thousands of rounds fired, the free plane rides, the free range time, the free....you name it....he had only ever USED the system, he had never once thought about giving back to it.
That's why the DCRA and PRA's got themselves cut off from military support.
The military gave and gave and gave....and got....NOTHING.
We were damned well within our rights to cut off the DCRA, and for Mr. Frost to have been still bemoaning that 15 years after the support was cut off indicates that he didn't understand why. The fact that he was the head of the DCRA at the time speaks volumes about why the Service Conditions portion of the DCRA is in the state it is.
I haven't spoken with Stan since then, and I have a feeling that he didn't like me yanking the rug out from under his opinions.
NS
