Thursday, July 5, 2018

Gun Control & Public Safety.


Gun Control.
Intelligent people have difficulty in understanding Australia’s firearms laws. Such as why do 17th & 18th century pistols require an “H” class restricted licence for ownership & use? This is the same licence requirement for say a 9mm semi-automatic Glock handgun, there is a vast difference between a flintlock pistol & a breach-loading semi-auto pistol! Then there is the self defence issue, if you experience a home invasion & you & your family are at risk of harm or death, then you will just have to die, because it is illegal to use your gun to defend yourself! One would have thought this was a human right, but no, not in Australia it isn’t!

Why is it that the gun is to blame when people, criminals, commit a firearms offence? Just for argument’s sake let’s assume there is a spate of killings where the tool used is a wood golf club. Now if the government suddenly decided to confiscate all wood golf clubs, golfers would be up in arms, “why blame us for what someone else does with a wood golf club” they would say, “it is the killer you should blame, blaming a wood golf club is ridiculous”! And of course they would be right (I wonder how many members of “Gun Control Australia play golf?), blaming an inanimate object would be a downright stupid thing to do, & yet that is exactly what the government has done in regards to guns. The argument we often get thrown at us by people with no understanding is “why do you need a gun? People don’t need guns! Well if shooters & hunters don’t need guns, then golfers don’t need golf clubs! The fact is that we like our guns; we enjoy having our guns, just like golfers enjoy having & using their golf clubs.
In the Port Arthur shootings (there never was a coronial enquiry, all swept under the carpet!), they say the gun used was an assault rifle, an AR15 caliber .308. The Australian government used this shooting as an excuse to confiscate the guns belonging to law abiding citizens. What guns did they confiscate? Well AR15s had been banned a long time ago; in fact the AR15 used in the Port Arthur shootings allegedly belonged to the Tasmanian Police Department!!! The guns they confiscated were semi-automatic .22 bunny rifles, semi-auto & pump action shotguns!!! These guns were favoured by Australian farmers; farmers needed these guns in their work to dispatch sick livestock & to control feral animals. Controlling feral animals is seen as being one of the important duties of all land owners.
Now we used to be able to carry what was known as a snake gun, this was usually a cut down .410 shotgun to handgun size for protection against snakes. These were banned many years ago. Land owners used to be able to carry handguns for protection against wild boars & stroppy bulls as well as being used for feral animal control. You can still work without any impediment from carrying a hand gun on your belt, but you can’t work affectively with a long gun hanging off your shoulder! Now handguns have also been banned! There was no justification for banning & confiscating these guns, other than to say it was in the interest of public safety! Public safety? These people & these guns played no part in the Port Arthur shootings, & these same law abiding licensed gun owners were not & are not criminals! Practically every day vehicle owners are responsible for killing & injuring pedestrians & other road users, & yet no one blames the car, & the government has done nothing to make our roads & paths safer for the public! Gun owners have to pass a written safety exam & a physical test. All vehicle owners have to do is learn the road rules & pass a driver’s test. There is no safety training to obtain a driver’s licence!!!
Where am I going? Where is this taking us? Well no where good I guess, because unless law abiding gun owners back each other; and by this I mean we all support each other (yes even supporting the muzzle-loader community!!!), then we are without a doubt going to end up being disarmed! The very fact that; Possessing any object specifically for the purpose of self-defence, lethal or non-lethal, is a criminal offence in Australia is a sure sign that our government has no regard for “public safety” so using that as an excuse to confiscate our guns is absolute bullshit, & if that is not the reason for confiscating our firearms, then you have to ask yourself “what is the reason?”.  



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