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Shooting associations take fight over damaged ammunition to court

SINGAPORE — In the latest twist to a long-standing tussle, the Singapore Rifle Association (SRA) has sued its former parent body Singapore Shooting Association (SSA) over the damage caused to its basement armoury — and its ammunition — arising from two floods between December 2014 and May 2015.

SINGAPORE — In the latest twist to a long-standing tussle, the Singapore Rifle Association (SRA) has sued its former parent body Singapore Shooting Association (SSA) over the damage caused to its basement armoury — and its ammunition — arising from two floods between December 2014 and May 2015.

Around 185,000 rounds of ammunition, a third of the bullets stored in the armoury at the National Shooting Centre, were submerged for more than a day in floodwaters over 1m deep in the first flood on Christmas Eve, and could no longer be used due to safety reasons, said the SRA. 

The second flood, which happened on May 3, was about 0.3m deep. No ammunition was damaged this time as the SRA had stacked the boxes on plastic palettes before the flood.

In a trial that opened in the High Court on Tuesday, the SRA allegedly lost S$455,678 across both incidents. Among other things, it had to foot the bill for cleaning works and the replacement of damaged items, and had to bear the cost of the damaged ammunition.

The SSA, which is the national governing body for the sport, is claiming that it had “surrendered” the National Shooting Centre to Sport Singapore between Oct 30, 2013, and Dec 1, 2014, for refurbishment and renovation works ahead of the SEA Games in 2015. Both the SRA and SSA have been caught in a series of legal disputes over the last two years. 

In February last year, Sport Singapore closed the National Shooting Centre — leased by SSA and ran by SRA — after an arms audit by the police. More than 70 weapons were seized for serious licensing irregularities. 

In May, the SRA lobbed a civil suit against the SSA for allegedly breaching the SSA’s Constitution and attempting to suspend the rifle association’s privileges. It sued SSA president Michael Vaz, concurrently the Singapore Gun Club president, a month later for alleged defamation. 

The SSA then expelled SRA from its ranks in December, declaring that the rifle association “no longer had the best interest of the shooting fraternity at heart”.

For the ongoing trial, lawyers acting for the shooting association intend to call upon Mr Vaz to testify that it was Sports Singapore that had carried out works to an unlined earth drain at the National Shooting Centre, and dumped earth fill material at the premises. 

But the SRA’s lawyers countered that this was a “red herring”, as the floods had occurred after the works were completed. A civil engineering professor will testify that unsuitable weak organic cohesive soils were used to construct the unlined slope, and one side of it ended up slipping. This led to the blockage of the drainage channel and the subsequent flooding of the club premises. 

SRA operations manager Marcus Kung told the court that a third of the ammunition in the armoury was damaged by the flood, and could not be used due to safety concerns. “Due to wet primer and gunpowder, the explosion will not result in the bullet being propelled from the barrel completely. If the shooter did not detect it and fires off the next round, it’ll be known commonly as a ‘chamber explosion’,” he said. 

The SRA had been quoted over S$140,000 for the disposal of the ammunition, and later came to an arrangement with a Malaysian company, Malayan Arms, to take over the damaged ammunition at zero cost. 

Malayan Arms had planned to recycle the bullets. While the police had agreed to this, the SSA blocked it due to the ongoing lawsuit.

The trial continues on Wednesday.

 

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