One of the nice things about debating about the cons and cons of gun control: the real world is full of real-world examples of why gun grabbing is beyond foolish. I’ve already connected the dots between gun control and the destruction of press freedom, drawing on the lessons provided by Mexico. Today’s case-in-point hails from the land down under. smh.com.au reports . . .
THE police have launched an audacious effort to get thousands of illegal guns off Sydney’s streets, urging people to be more courageous and simply pick up the phone to tell them where weapons are in order to save lives. The acting NSW Police Commissioner Nick Kaldas [above, right] launched Operation Spartan yesterday to combat a recent ‘spike’ in gun crime amid fears that innocent people would be caught in the crossfire.
The word “audacious” is the tip-off that the Ozzie’s cops are doing their bit to edge Australian society ever closer to a police state. In this case, they’re relying on an anonymous drop-the-dime program for people who hate their neighbors or want to get a rival drug dealer in hot water. I mean, remove guns from ne’er-do-wells. A program based on some extremely odd statistical “evidence” (as usual).
He said most weapons were imported, but most of the illegal guns being used in the shootings had probably been stolen from legitimate sources, either homes or businesses.
There were 589 guns reported stolen in NSW last year. An independent study suggested there could be as many as 500,000 illegal guns nationwide.
I make the number of guns reported stolen last year at roughly .01 percent of the population of illegal guns. And yet New South Wales’ top cop reckons the guns “stolen from legitimate sources” account for “most” of the shootings? Run that by me again?
Police say that in the past 18 months, close to 10,000 firearms have been taken off the streets. However, only some of these were black market weapons.
Putting the info together, only 589 out of 10,000 guns taken off the streets (horrible term that) were traceable to thefts reported in 2011. Where did the rest of the 9,411 confiscated weapons come from? How many were turned in and how many were rooted-out by the boys in blue?
While we’re at it, how many of the remaining 450,000 illegal firearms do the Australian po-po reckon they’ll recover with their new WE ARE SPARTA pogram? I mean program?
I’m thinking Australian criminals aren’t hurting for firearms. More to the point (you knew I was getting there eventually), whenever a government focuses on illegal firearms instead of apprehending and incarcerating felons, it inevitably leaves law-abiding citizens defenseless. Worse, it enables “proactive” policing. Which erodes political freedom.
Mr Kaldas said there had been discussions with the state government about making it an offence for witnesses not to co-operate with a police investigation. ”I’m not sure if legislation can fix that easily, but it’s certainly something we are very open to and would have a look at,” he said. ”I don’t think there is an offence at the moment for people not providing information to the police. That’s something we will look at but I’m not sure that’s going to be enough of a deterrent to actually affect what’s happening here.”
The NSW Police chief doesn’t know if his employers have the right to remain silent? Wow. The gun control-minded Brits have already done away with the right to remain silent. Of course, that could just be a coincidence. But what if it’s not? Because you know what? It’s not.
More gun control = less freedom. Deal with it.
What’s easier to do? Raid a house of civilians holding onto guns for their own protection or real criminals who would shoot back? Water and cops take the path of least resistance.
They need a 1000 dollar a head reward system like Newark NJ has. Times are tough and it’s easy to sell someone out for a little cash.
They banned guns about 15 years ago. So that didn’t make the streets safer. What a surprise.
What’s easier to do, raid a house of civilians holding onto guns for their own protection or civilians without guns?
There’s also this from today’s heraldsun.com.au
Regrets? They have a few. Then again, not too few to mention.
“…law of unintended consequences has kicked in”
No, it was bound to go in that direction. As with many laws, it only keeps the good people honest.
The problem is that so many people in government believe they they can make a law and everything will go away. They are often more in love with the legislation process and words and forget that humans with free will do not simply conform and that the bad guys do whatever they please. The Port Arthur massacre was a tradgedy that they should have taken steps to learn from, not simply turn on the ban hammer and treat everyone like their children.
If they are smart, they will reverse their prior poor decision hopefully the law will swing to some commons sense way/
I think you mean 0.1%, not 0.001%. But still, point made. Also note that at the current rate of seizure, if no more firearms made it into the hands of criminals it would take the police 75 years to get the remainder off the streets.
D’oh! Text amended.
“More gun control = less freedom”
— True.
A lazy population more concerned with materialistic pleasures than liberty and living in a moral society also gives the police-state elites the ease to pass new laws and take away more freedoms including citizen gun ownership.
A lazy population more concerned with materialistic pleasures than liberty and living in a moral society is why I cry for my descendants.
Which is why everyone should read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. He’s describing just such a situation and the parallels to the world today sre depressing.
Yeah, and Orwell’s stuff was not far off the mark either.
The thing about Orwell is that totalitarianism is very overt. Hedonism is insidious and difficult to combat because you want people to have freedom and pleasures in life. You just don’t want it overwhelm everything else.
Guns are not scary.
Bad people are scary.
Bad politicians are scariest of all.
”I don’t think there is an offence at the moment for people not providing information to the police. That’s something we will look at but I’m not sure that’s going to be enough of a deterrent to actually affect what’s happening here.”
Wow – Adolf and Uncle Joe Stalin would be proud of the Aussie cops.
Actually, there was a comedy about Stalin’s bastard child rising to power in Australia.
http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0115886/
Any time idiots and kids who have never traveled beyond their own hometown try to claim that other modern nations are “just as free” as the US and have all the same guarantees, I just shake my head and point to things like this. But, hey, given our current politicians, they may end up being right in the near future.
Also, I don’t think many antis are arguing that gun control doesn’t limit freedom. Like the good closet-despots they are, they just don’t care. Listen to mikeb’s disdain for the Constitution sometime and you’ll see just that.
Agree. As the kids get older and learn how other governments screw over their citzens, I see the urge to move to another nation evaporating.
I wish I lived in a place where guns were just left out “on the streets”. It would sure save me a lot of money.
We keep hearing about the need to get the guns off the streets. I didn’t realize they were out roaming about without people holding them.
LOL.
Well, the police are onto something. At the height of the Cold War it was estimated that one out of every five citizens of East Germany were informing on their neighbors to the Stasi (the E. German version of the KGB). The one thing liberals never understand is that big government is just as capable of taking away their goodies as yours. My rule is always that “Don’t give the government a power you would not be comfortable being used against you”.
Australia really needs a version of our 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th amendment.
Just out of curiosity…does ANY other Country constitutionally have exactly the same freedoms as we in the U.S.A. specified in the Bill of Rights? I think some others’ Constitutions emulate ours and pay “lip-service” to personal freedoms for the People, but they don’t actually measure up to what we have on the delivery end.
No wonder everyone else wants to immigrate here – legally or not.
Nope
Yep. That’s what I thought. All the more reason to defend our Freedoms without quarter.
Operation…”SPARTA”?? Snicker. Guffaw!!! Uh, maybe I’m wrong, but didn’t the Spartans tell a hopeful conqueror to go blow? I believe the words were something akin to “come and get them” when told to lay down their swords.
And what most people forget is that he eventually did, killing them all in the process. Not without ridiculous losses, of course, but in the end the Spartans at Thermopylae were wiped out.
The Spartans held the line long enough for the rest of Greece to mobilize. In the end, even though Athens was sacked, Xerxes lost most of his army during a long retreat and the rest of the Persian army was defeated at Plataea and Mycale.
To paraphrase Churchill, Thermopylae wasn’t the end or even the beginning of the end, but it was the end of the beginning.
Aussie gun control has as much to do with crime reduction as the draconian measures taken against firearms ownership here in the UK: None.
What our respective governments did was USE crimes involving firearms to introduce extreme anti firearms ownership legislation as a means of social control.
Once they had most of the populace disarmed there was no longer a lingering fear that the citizenry might ever remove the ruling “elite” no matter what provocation.
Leaving us defenceless against criminals of ANY flavour concerns them not one whit.
No, they do take it into consideration often. By leaving you defenseless they can be assured that crime will increase and the gullible among you will beg to give them even more control over their lives to “solve” the problem they created. The politicians have nothing to threaten an honest man with so they have to create criminals out of thin air. For example a nurse who wants to obey the absurd rules is facing years in prison and is slandered by Bloomberg as a drug addict. If you have ever known a nursing student you know that they have to be TOTALLY concentrated on their studies, to the point of ignoring almost everything else. For her to be ignorant of an obscene law in a far away city is understandable.