By Johannes P.
Man Haron Monis, an Iranian-born resident of Australia who was allegedly responsible for the terrorist attack on a cafe in Sidney this week, apparently was able to obtain a firearm license, permanent residency in Australia, as well as social welfare benefits despite being a terrorist thug who was, at one point, on Australia’s security watch list. “[S]ecurity officials had told the Prime Minister that a national database showed Monis had been ‘a recorded firearms licence holder within the jurisdiction’ of New South Wales. Federal police are now ‘investigating the origins’ of the entry in the national database, the statement said. At the news conference, Abbott said he also wanted to know why Monis seemed to have fallen off Australian security agencies’ watch lists in 2009.” . . .
So despite all their efforts at civilian disarmament — the background checks, the firearm registration, the outlawing of silencers, the virtual banning of handguns for possession by mere citizens, the gun confiscations — and other policies enacted in the past twenty years down under, they apparently did nothing to stop a lone terrorist (and accused accessory to murder) from acquiring a firearm and taking hostages. As usual, the laws simply ensured that the law-abiding were unable to do much but run away in the face of evil.
Perhaps we ought to keep that in mind the next time demagogues or oppression-minded politicos propose similar “solutions” to perceived problems in the United States.
In other news, reaction by the anti-civil rights crowd in Australia was swift: since the laws on the books didn’t work, pass more of them! Which reminds your scribe of the old maxim that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.