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Reader John H. writes:

The Australian government is once again planning more draconian gun laws and backdoor gun control against Australians. The Senate Inquiry entitled “The ability of Australian law enforcement authorities to eliminate gun-related violence in the community” is set to deliver its findings this week after several weeks of hearings. Initially launched by the Australian Greens, Australia’s left wing socialist party who have previously stated they wish to ban handguns for civilians, the inquiry is tasked to look at several facets of alleged increases in firearms violence in Australia . . .

Some of the proposals of the inquiry from the Greens include:
  • Bans on semi automatic autoloader handguns
  • All firearms in urban areas to be stored in a central respository
  • House alarms mandatory for all gun owners
Obviously the criminals will be the first to line to hand in their guns, guns won’t be stolen from the repositories and criminals will be deterred by the sound of a house alarm.
Appearing on the Today Show on Channel Nine at the weekend to discuss the large increase in the number of Australians applying for firearms licenses, Senator David Leyonhjelm from the Liberal Democrats (Australia’s libertarian party and the lone voice of reason on firearms) dismissed the proposals as ridiculous and stated, “If you don’t store them at home then they have to be stored in a central repository which makes them a target for thieves. Police and military armouries get broken into.”

This is inherently true in Australia with Police and military facilities a regular target for criminals. Notable cases of theft include Javelin shoulder-launch missiles stolen from an army base and an incident in 2012 where a lone gunman stormed an Austalian Navy ship in Darwin and stole over a dozen firearms from the ship’s armoury. It appears even the Australian military can’t protect its guns, so how much hope would there be for a citizen equivalent? It should also be noted that thousands of firearms handed in during the infamous 1996 firearms buyback were sold to criminals by contractors hired by the NSW Police to destroy them.

After the Sydney siege in December 2014, Senator Leyonhjelm was attacked for reasonably suggesting that a citizen with a concealed carry firearm might have been able to stop the attack before it started and that due to disarmament laws, Australia had been left as a nation of victims. The gunman, Man Monis, obtained an illegal sawn off Remington 870 and did not hold a firearms license. Monis also had an extensive criminal history and was on parole at the time for accessory to murder.

Australians aren’t permitted to own firearms for self-defence and it remains illegal for citizens to carry any item for self-defence including mace, knives, batons, pepper spray, acoustic anti-personnel devices and tazers. In the state of Victoria, it’s even illegal to carry a Swiss Army Knife. At the conclusion of Senator Leyonhjelm’s appearance the Today Show conducted a poll asking “Should Australians have the right to own a gun?” to which a staggering 97% voted yes. It may be an unscientific poll but it appears the attitudes of the public down under differ greatly from their lawmakers.

Australia’s porous borders means illegal firearms are easily acquired by criminals. Testifying before the Senate Inquiry, Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Julian Slater admitted that the AFP “have no idea what is getting through and we only know about what we intercept. It’s exactly like the drug problem.”Also testifying before the inquiry, the Australian Institute of Criminology, who have been tasked to investigate whether theft of firearms from legal firearms license holders was the main source of illicit forearms used in crime, stated that “of 48,000 legal handguns in the state of Victoria, only 5 have been stolen, representing a total of 0.01%”. this was echoed by Victoria Police who said that the firearms offences in this state.” The AIC and AFP both admitted they had absolutely no data on illegal firearms coming  in through the Australia border. The AFP also admitted that they had not even read the AIC’s report on firearm theft.

Australians were forced to hand back many of their firearms in 1996 under the National Firearms Act in response to the Port Arthur Massacre.

The most comprehensive study on the effects of the firearms buyback, a 10 year study published in the British Journal of Criminology by Dr. Samara McPhedran who also testified before the Inquiry, found that the $500 million spent on the NFA had no effect on the homicide rate, which was already declining well before Port Arthur. A further five-year study form the University of Melbourne supports this.

The NFA has also not stopped massacres from occurring in the country with the Monash Shootings in 2002, the Quakers Hill and Childers Palace Backpackers arson attacks, and the deliberately lit Black Saturday bushfires. A woman in Cairns stabbed 8 of her children to death in December 2014. Shockingly, there have been no calls to ban matches or knives.

We will keep an eye on the Senate’s findings when they are delivered on April 9. However, common sense appears to be lacking amongst most of Australia’s lawmakers.

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63 COMMENTS

  2. I have some good friends outside of Brisbane who still have their firearms post 96 NFA…. they refused to turn them in and simply use them for ranch/land protection.

    • Wow, if I didn’t know any better I’d think your friends firearms…sorry scary evil booming death sticks don’t contribute to any crime, which would mean a ban sites no good whatsoever. Good thing I know better.

      P.s. i call dibs on “scary evil booming death sicks” as a band name.

  3. The only thing that is keeping what is happening in Australia from happening here is Democrats have not taken decisive control over the Federal Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Branches, and begrudgingly, are stuck with the Second Amendment which they would repeal if they could.

    A look at what has happened with the progressive Democrat run slave states and Washington D.C. is instructive in this regard.

    • ^ This.

      That said, keep in mind that many Republicans have no qualms “regulating” firearm ownership and possession — which really means discriminating against certain classes of people. In other words the only difference between many Republicans and Democrats is how pervasive their gun control is.

      The solution is eternal vigilance (where have I heard that before?) … and a serious commitment to respond to any encroachments on our rights.

      • Yep. Even the outgoing Texas Governor, Rick Perry, has stated that he believes the government needs to control who can own and carry a gun. His most recent comments came about during the Open Carry discussions here. Seems the Carpet Baggers mentality now has strong roots in Texas’ political landscape.

        • They always have in Texas. We still have alot of work to do in getting rid of all of them, guys like Strauss and Patrick.

      • The solution is eternal vigilance and a serious commitment to abandoning candidates from the two parties of power who repeatedly foist encroachments on our rights.

        TFIFY

    • The party that’s currently the ruling one in Australia is a right-wing, conservative party (they are called “Liberal Party”, but in European tradition shared by Australia liberal = right-wing). They are your typical anti-socialist, low taxes, “tough on crime”, social conservative (they keep trying to ban online porn) guys. See for yourself.

      They also love gun control. Indeed, they were the dominant part of the coalition that created the draconian gun control laws (banning all semi-auto rifles, pretty much) back in 1996.

    • It’s not just that. The mistake the Australians made was not shooting the bastards. I think the Progressives appreciate the very real spirit of Molon Labe that we have, even more than we the POTG. Not many of us are that bloody-minded, just enough to give the Progressives pause.

      “When you think it’s time to bury your guns, it’s time to dig them up.”

    • He did, and the best part was that he did not have a permit and acquired the gun illegally. It’s a shining example of how a permitting system can’t keep guns, legal or illegal, out of the wrong hands.

  5. I noted the mandatory house alarms for gunowners, made me think. When government requires something for the benefit of the public at large, shouldn’t the government (public at large) pay for it? If I have a gun in Sydney, then, the government can come and install my house alarm. If the US government demands my guns be stored in a safe to prevent theft, when government supposedly is going to keep my family and possessions secure (haha), shouldn’t the government be required to install that safe?

    • When government requires something for the benefit of the public at large, shouldn’t the government (public at large) pay for it?

      Obamacare

  6. Australia is lost to the firearm owner, by the grace of God I was able to get out and can now call myself an American.

  7. Did you ever notice that crime seems to keep pace with police “advancements”?
    Seems that making more things illegal could actually be the biggest cause of crime.

  8. Australia was once a prison colony. As it will be again. Kinda like New Jersey but with a less intelligible accent. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

    • They probably don’t have those fascist uniforms like the NJ state cops wear, either. Just the attitude.

    • I’m from New Jersey… and I’ve been to Australia a few times. But even I would never in my wildest dreams think that the “Joisey” accent is remotely as desirable as the “Aussie” accent. We just sound stupid with a tongue that’s too heavy to properly form words. They just sound like they’re about to crack a beer and eat shrimp.

  9. They only want reasonable gun control. If we just go along with them on registration and universal background checks, they’ll stop there.

    Does anyone still believe this?

    • :In the state of Victoria, it’s even illegal to carry a Swiss Army Knife. ” A lousy Swiss Army Knife, I feel absolutely naked without mine, it’s saved my bacon more than once with I needed it to fix something. I’m SO GLAD that my Grandfather brought his family here 90 years ago.

  12. The aussies should ban the dangerous critters that kill so many people every year. Snakes, spiders, Emu, to name a few. I mean, if they’re illegal, they won’t exist anymore. Think of the children.

      • In todays lesson we learned:

        A) The Austrailian Government could not effectively kill a number of flightless birds with fully automatic weaponry and large amounts of ammunition. B) A bounty system employing ordinairy citizens was vastly more effective.

        Conclusion: Put a bounty on terrorists collectable by ordinairy citizens.

      • The Emu and Kangaroo are featured on our national ‘Coat of Arms’. And both regularly feature in restaurant menus and supermarket meat sections. What other country ‘eats’ it national emblems ?

  13. I think we are on borrowed time. The powers that be were itching for another “event” or “incident” to apply further pointless restrictions.

    As usual, the wrong conclusions will be reached that would have had no effect in preventing the incident from happening.

    It is said that no government inquiry is held without knowing the outcome in advance. The inquiry itself serves to rubber-stamp the already known conclusions.

    Will the report and its conclusions have any effect on crime or prevent another incident? The answer is an emphatic NO.

    Sometimes you have to take the world as it is, and not as you wish it to be.

  14. “Also testifying before the inquiry, the Australian Institute of Criminology, who have been tasked to investigate whether theft of firearms from legal firearms license holders was the main source of illicit forearms used in crime, stated that “of 48,000 legal handguns in the state of Victoria, ONLY 5 HAVE BEEN STOLEN, representing a total of 0.01%. . .” (Emphasis mine)

    OZ is a perfect example of how, in times of crisis, the political classes’ first impulse is to protect its vested interests by further restricting the liberty of it’s subject population. The above comment shows the weakness in this approach. With its vast, underpopulated coastlines and interior areas, OZ is a smuggler’s paradise. It’s undoubtedly much easier to smuggle in all manner of contraband in OZ than it is even along the US/Mexico border. The paltry number of stolen guns is a pretty graphic example of just how easily guns can be bought. Like drugs, gun are a desirable commodity for which demand becomes greater with each effort of government to make them harder to obtain. For those with the intent and money to make the purchase, guns are as available as drugs. Why steal guns when you can just buy them?

  15. Knowing the Aussies I’ve talked with in the past on this subject, they’ll not only take it, they’ll like it and beg for more. They’re too far gone in the individual rights department.

    • As an Australian gun owner I can honestly say that those people you’ve talked to are worse then the antigunners and I’ve said to these people that you people are the last people that should even be allowed to own firearms because you have a selfish mentality that has put a lot of your fellow gun owning mates through hell. If you don’t change your mentality now you not only should lose your gun license but also have all your firearms confiscated because you don’t deserve it.

  17. I suppose the only good thing is to have Australia as a poster child for oppression and no liberty, e.g. what not to do. They will have and likely already do have a powerful underground for firearms which will cause more trouble than the Country could ever imagine. Bans always lead to trouble.

  19. The glaring problem with “central repositories” is, WHO HAS THE KEY?

    Obviously, the people whose guns are stored there won’t.

    So, the elephant in the room is government’s ability to completely foreclose the people’s ability to resist a totalitarian crackdown.

    Which is why we in the United States have and support the Second Amendment to our Constitution.

  22. WOW, another buy back, why? the last few buybacks and law changes proved nothing changed, more gun crime now then ever. Why, because its about illegal imports and nothing much has been done to curb it. The initial changes to stop unregistered sales of rifles after Port Arther was all that was needed, all the following changes were just a waste of time.

    Couple of the changes actually made the security of privately held firearms worse in NSW, because the Firearms Registry couldnt tell who looked at what records and the ammunition bill made private information about owners more readily available. Even the RTA can tell who has accessed what data, but the firearms registry cannot.

    So the government would rather waste money on another useless propaganda campaign than finally spend the money to guard against the illegal imports, because a PR job is cheaper (and totaly inefectual, or worse) rather than the more expensive real solution (which is still cheaper than helping their primary resources mates).

  23. I do not trust Abbott as far as I can spit a rat. I heard more garbage from his lying mouth on the radio the other day about yet another task force to fight terrorists in Australia. Think about all the stuff Abbott is doing to Australian citizens & ask yourself why would he want to take our guns away from us?!
    Did you know that Abbott sanctions the genocide in West Papua by the Indonesians? These are the same people that helped Australian Diggers in WW2, & now we sit back & watch them being slaughtered!!! No, something is very very wrong here & I hope to hell Australians, black & white, will come together in time to get rid of the present government, & replace it with a completely better system. The two party system no longer works for the people, & is totally corrupt.

  24. B-but mah guns!

    The buy-back wasn’t instigated to prevent gun crimes and murders, it was in response to…

    The Port Arthur Massacre…

    Remember that?

    It was a bi-partisan effort (the opposition leader, Beasley supported it too, remember?) and, funnily enough, did exactly what it was supposed to do. Prevent further massacres.

    Australia hasn’t had one massacre since 1996.

    How many has America had since then?

    To suggest that the buy-back didn’t work, because it didn’t stop crime, prevent murders and the like, is a straw-man argument, ignoring the facts. No massacres since 1996.

    Plus, we haven’t all been marched into re-education camps, or suddenly been transformed into a dictatorship, or any of the other “b-but mah freedoms!” that trotted out as reasons for keeping firearms at home.

    Plus, the firearms laws across the country were tightened up and made uniform across Australia.

    Remember, Martin Bryant, according to the (loosest in the country) firearm laws of Tasmania at the time, was a legal gun owner, despite the fact he was insane, didn’t have to hold a firearms licence to own firearms, and wasn’t required to register the firearms that he’d imported.

    A lawful firearms owner. An insane, firearms owner.

    Remember. No massacres since 1996.

    As an interesting aside, most of the firearm owners simply took their cheques they got for handing their (now illegal) firearms over, and bought new, legal firearms. The amount of firearms in the country remained roughly the same. So, any suggestion that crime has skyrocketed (or plummeted) is not from the reduction in the number of firearms.

  25. The difference in Australian gun laws now means that most gun owners will be sane adults without a criminal history that have completed a course and demonstrated they are capable of handling and storing weapons responsibly and have a genuine use for a weapon ie land owner hunter security etc This hasn’t stopped crims from getting weapons but it has made it much harder for them to buy carry or use them Using a weapon for what ever reason and not holding a licence for that weapon gets you in serious shit Could be the reason we rarely find teenagers in the streets carrying

  26. The reason we haven’t had a mass shooting isn’t because of our gun laws. It’s because they don’t count monash university as a mass shooting because 7 were shot but only 2 died and for it to count as a mass shooting it needs four to be killed. So in other words because the “shooter couldn’t shot straight the laws are a success” which is a weak argument to justify any form of infringement on the average citizen.

  27. Having just read the report it looks like there won’t be a buyback after all. All those draconian laws they were looking into have been dumped and won’t be going forward and it also looks like we might have some regulations rolled back. From the looks of things here we may have won a victory in Australia.

  29. The Australian political party, the Australian Greens, are hell-bent on having all firearms (long/short/semi auto/revolver) removed from everyone in Australia, including the Police and security organisations.
    For a senior member of the Greens to chair a Senate Inquiry of which they called and allowed/prohibited certain witnesses/experts is not only immoral but totally unethical as it was directed to their self-serving outcome. Why wasn’t this inquiry co-chaired with a representative from the firearm/shooting industry ?
    Have at good thorough look at their policies http://greens.org.au/ and hope like hell that this mob do not get any more authority in Australia.

  30. 260 MILLION KILLED BY GOVERNMENTS IN THE LAST 100 YEARS.

    How many Billions have to die before you child murdering serial killer-loving traitors to mankind realize that you are infected with a zombie brain virus? You have no excuses for your traitorous child molesting baby stabbing mental illness, and all you are spouting is the excrement of satan’s wet dream, the love child of the most sick and deranged who ever lived: Victims who cannot defend themselves, who become playthings from the most sick and depraved~Aka POLITICIANS, the child raping child murdering servants of the dark side, that you are pathetic skinbags of treacherous infection worship and grovel too. Only because of the diseased brainwashing of idiots like you, can the most sacred of freedoms, the freedom to defend ones life against a subhuman parasite attacker, be even debated. How depraved and insane you look, as you grovel to your dark masters and lick the feces of there boots, but dont worry, you will be given your just reward as the jackboots of their mercenaries crush your pathetic slave brain once your use as a debt slave is over. Get off my planet terrorists, you are breathing my free air and you are unwelcome to our planet and its survival.

    Democide – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Democide is a term revived and redefined by the political scientist R. J. Rummel as “the murder of any person or people by their government, including genocide …

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide – View by Ixquick Proxy – Highlight
    Murder By Government–Democide

    Governments have murdered hundreds of millions of their citizens and those under their control. The questions are, then, how is this democide defined, …

    https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MURDER.HTM

  31. Despite the inquiry being called for by the ANTI-GUN Greens party and chaired by one of their IDIOT senators:- the report handed down states categorically that LEGAL guns owners are not going to be subject to any more Gun control laws, indeed it states that the registration/licensing procedures need to be streamlined and simplified as it ties up resources that can be better spent on illegal gun crime. We do have a large percentage of the voters in Australia as gun owners (Yes, we can own them, but no self defence allowed). The Concept of central storage will never be implemented as the country is too large and sparsely populated to make it viable for governments to justify. The Shooters & Fishers party is gaining support as well as the Pro-Gun lobby group Shooters Union (Affiliated with the NRA). People here are starting to realise that they were suckered into supporting the 1996 Buyback. Keep up the good fight in the USA.

  32. The Greens called the inquiry and chaired it, but got their arses handed to them by the rest of the Senators involved with every one of them coming to the opposite conclusion than the chair. That rarely if ever happens and amounts to a slap in the face politically for the commie bastard greens.

    Firearm ownership is on the rise and so is the number of permits issued to acquire firearms. Don’t believe everything you read online.

    We are at a point where owning a firearm takes a safety course, no criminal or mental history issues and a common sense means of securing the weapons. The fact the inquiry proved that guns used in crime in this country more often than not enter illegally, means legal owners are keeping guns out of the hands of criminals for the most part.

    This inquiry wasn’t run by our ruling government (for you yanks more like a congressional hearing.)

    I’m a bit surprised at the alarmism actually. Why are you taking the greens seriously? No one else on the inquiry did.

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