With the bodies not even cold and the Australian media in complete damage control over the Osmington mass shooting, the Alannah and Madeline Foundation’s Phil West, also a former member of Gun Control Australia, decided to one-up AMF CEO Lesley Podesta’s “all gun owners are unemployed victims of globalisation who need a gun to feel more masculine” remark with this absolute cancer in Domainfax:
“The mass murder near Margaret River in Western Australia makes a lie of the gun lobby’s hollow rhetoric in opposition to strengthening our nation’s gun-ownership and gun-security laws.
Three generations of the one family have been wiped out. Two grandparents, their daughter and her four children aged 8 to 13. When gun law reform is discussed, weapon enthusiasts and the gun lobby argue that only legal gun-owners will be affected by changes that seek to enhance safety or restrict gun use.
However, all legal owners of firearms – such as farmers or weekend pig-hunters – are responsible, legal gun owners until they become irresponsible and kill spouses, former partners, children and others. They are responsible until they have a breakdown, suffer depression, get drunk or take ice. It is mostly their own families who are the victims.
It continues:
“The horror at Margaret River, the worst since Port Arthur in 1996, must be a game-changer. One day a responsible gun owner is using his weapon to kill vermin. The next it could be his family.
Almost all people who have not been in trouble with the law or who have not had a mental health episode known to authorities are deemed “fit and proper” to hold a gun license. Their mental health episode – or an argument with their partner or neighbour – may come the following week or month. They are then a person with mental stress, anger or depression with a high-powered killing machine.
Urban gun owners should not be allowed to hold their weapons in houses in the suburbs and the sale quantity of ammunition should be highly regulated. Guns should be held in a secure lock-up in a police station and the gun enthusiast must provide two weeks’ notice of intention to use the gun, with details of where and with whom they will go with the weapon. They would pick up the weapon on the morning it is required and return it within seven days. No non-farmer should be allowed to own more than one firearm.
If, after returning from a hunting trip and handing in their gun, the gun owner takes ice, has a fight with a partner or a depressive episode, their gun will not be available to be used to murder in anger, depression or delusion.
In rural communities, as soon as someone is no longer an active farmer, because they have retired, are unable to work due to a disability or have sold the farm and live in town, they should not be allowed to own weapons unless they change their ownership status to that of a registered hunter. The same storage conditions for this non-active farmer would then apply.
For active farmers who need guns for vermin and other reasons, the security of gun holdings should be legislatively controlled. Thousands of guns are targeted for theft from rural or outer-urban properties every year by criminal gangs. 27,000 guns were stolen between 2007 and 2017. This is a horrific figure.”
You can go read the rest of this if you can forsake the IQ points.
While this is, no doubt, partially clickbait agitprop to inflate Domainfax’s falling circulation numbers, West’s drivel is also outright slander against gun owners.
Western Australia has by far the strictest firearm laws in the country, yet West’s assertion is to tighten said laws which would affect only (drumroll) gun owners. How exactly does that disprove the gun lobby’s argument? It doesn’t. Case in point: how did WA’s ridiculous ‘military appearance’ law stop a tragedy like this?
The logic that everyone is responsible until they’re not is a complete garbage line of reasoning. Why not just remove the presumption of innocence western society is founded on, have minority report and be done with it?
Everyone’s a responsible car owner until they decide to drive up the footpath at Bourke or Flinders Street and mow down pedestrians or drive their children into a dam.
Everyone’s a responsible drinker until they decide to get drunk and one-punch someone.
Everyone’s a responsible knife owner until they decide to use a kitchen knife to slaughter 8 of their children, as was the case in Cairns in 2014.
How quickly he also forgets the child killed in Lalor Park by a crook who left an illegal gun within reach of a child. Absolutely no mention of that by the Alannah and Madeline Foundation at the time for obvious reasons.
West’s suggestions are ludicrous. Give two weeks’ notice to use a firearm? Great, so West’s solution is to tie up Police in even more paperwork and bureaucratic nonsense for no proven benefit to community safety, while the illegal firearm market continues unabated and would probably grow as a result. I’d love to see how that would work in Victoria, given the current debacle with LRD and the crime wave that Police have their hands full with.
His claim about firearm thefts doubling since 2007 are ridiculous, as the number stolen as a percentage of all firearms owned in Australia is literally nothing, as this is what they were in 2007 from the Australian Institute of Criminology themselves:
Yeh, totally ‘horrific’.
It’s fair to say that West has no idea what the current laws are, but that’s par for the course for the professional anti-gun lobby in Australia. West finishes off his ‘argument’ with the usual appeal to emotion over the death of children – something AMF has been doing in a professional capacity for 22 years now with Walter Mikac’s children – and wants federal and state ministers to ‘examine his ideas’.
Au contraire, it’s time we examined the Alannah and Madeline Foundation to see exactly where their money is coming from and going, why they get so much airtime and to confirm whether they are an actual charity or a gun control lobby group masquerading as one – particularly when you have the current Prime Minister as it’s personal patron.
Given this being the latest in a string of embarrassing statements coming out of your organisation Peter, it’s best you kept your mouth shut and not remove all doubt that you are indeed, a fool.
The gun control lobby never apply this to car owners where about 2000 people die each year in car incidents. Are all car owners responsible for that statistic? Do car owners need 2 weeks notice before they use them? Car owners never police officers go to their houses and get their vehicles checked do they? We know how hypocritically angry they would be if it happened! The gun control people are Satanic and selfish. They don’t want war control which is something I want. John Howard seems to love warfare, he wanted Australian troops in Iraq even though there was no proof of “weapons of mass destruction.” The government is evil and has ruined this country. There’s a new law in this country every week. It’s not a normal country anymore. It’s a country based on emotions rather than fact.
Where is the outrage in the suicide in Australia? I saw on the news apparently it’s 1 person commits suicide EVERY 3 HOURS in this country. I did a calculation and that’s about 3,000 per year!
Bill i agree though i will add before Gough Whitlam there were never more than 20 pieces of legislation passed in a single year. this gives time to properly debate all aspects of every bit of legislation. since that time however there have been anywhere between 600-1000 pieces of legislation passed every single year. how is it possible for any of those pieces of legislation to be properly debated especially when half the time many of the parliamentarians (unless it is voting for their pay rises) are not even in chamber.
The fact that the grandfather was a licenced firearms owner is a moot point .
The fact that he killed 6 members of his own family & himself points to some serious mental issues.
Comparitively on 19/ 12 2014 in cairns Raina Thaiday murdered 8 children with a kitchen knife.
How is it that this massacre is different to the other? Are the children any less dead because she used a knife not a gun?
Is it any less tragic ?
The fact is that this particular tragedy is being exploited to benifit the antigun agenda .
When Raina murdered those children yet did not kill herself ,the story was all about why she did it, mental health, drug abuse , poverty & indigenous issues. Not about what tool was used.
All this anti gun rhetoric is to keep live the memories of his Children if it was alowed to fade away he would lose money
My friends and i have had firearms since we were young and old enough to hold them 60 years and in my circle of friends no gun related deaths
We were raised with respect for life and people
Our jobs have at times shown us the other side of the coin but we never bought those problems home
Im a grandfather 6 times i own many firearms i would never use any of these on my family
My country asked me to serve and i did so
That is now past a mrmory
The Alana and Madeline found as tion needs to let those children rest in peace and stop draging up old memories
Should we make drugs illegal it would stop a lot of crime
Instead they are providing rooms for drugies to shoot up in
NOT A GOOD EXAMPLE FOR THE NEXT GENERATION
I sometimes woinder the various governments of today feds and state are going to end up
The garden path is getting a bit crowded
Phil West, I take direct offense in that you claim that as a Legal Fire Arms Owner, I will automatically:
– be a murdererer waiting to happen.
– commit domestic violence.
– be a drunk and drug abuser.
– suffer mental illness and then kill people. and that
– owning a gun increases my likelihood to become a killer.
These are broad generalisations based on the actions of an extremely small minority, yet our entire community has been tarred with the same brush.
I am aware that you have gone on to outline a number of draconian measures that you would like to see implemented that would make lawful ownership of firearms even more difficult and stigmatised. Why should we LFAO’s be subjected to such views, particularly given your detachment from truth?
Regards,
Chris Hodge – SFFP-ACT Branch
27,000 guns were stolen between 2007 and 2017 – Don’t forget that this number includes firearm parts as well as Glue guns, toy guns, staple guns etc as the database hasn’t filtered them separately since 2007.
I’ve always looked upon ‘potential’ as a positive thing … as in ‘people should strive to exceed their potential’ … Alannah and Madeline Foundation’s Phil West strikes me as the sort of person who looks for the worst in people he hasn’t met yet … what a miserable way to see the world
So many issues with this clickbait garbage – the “pre crime” aspect, because you own a gun you are a potential killer – which extends to knives, cars, hammers, fists, boots, etc etc. do we restrict access for law abiding citizens because someone may break the law?
Interesting that they seem to have included the killer in the casualty list – trying to bump up the numbers?
and a 2 week waiting period to access your own firearms for use? how would that have stopped someone who clearly planned this well in advance? does anyone believe that he wouldn’t have lied on the application form when he was planning to murder his entire family?
As most people that were in touch with reality already knew, the draconian gun laws that were introduced in Australia in 1996, were not the reason we had not had a gun related massacre in Australia since then. This West Australian massacre, only and unfortunately confirms what we already knew. Now we should be holding all the Gun Grabbers responsible for this and any other criminal misuse of firearms, as they have been the ones that have been side tracking the authorities away from the real cause of these and other massacres……… Mental Health issues. I assume because of the fact that these same draconian gun laws haven’t stopped gun massacres from occurring in Australia, this has something to do with the complete lack of media coverage of this tragedy now (May 13 2018), by the mass media? I’ve been listening to the radio this morning since 5am, and there has not been one news report about this gun massacre. This is just the opposite tactic that the Gun Grabber use, to when Anti-Gun media hysteria is required by them. RIP and FJWH! JB
Phil West is nothing but pond scum using the misfortunes of other to promote his own agenda and line his own pockets. How dare you try to brand myself and thousands like me as a murderer waiting to murder, a drunk or drug abuser etc etc. What about all the murders with illegal firearms? Or the murderers that use knives, vehicles etc etc or don’t they count ?
You are not allowed to vilify anyone under current legislation. if these comments can be proven, this mob/person is in a lot of trouble. they are comments without any element of truth and to tarnish innocent people with a guilty brush is lying and tantamount to inciting hatred of this group. I’m not sure how you go about confirming that this is correct, and if so, then bringing legal action against Mr West? JB
John have you noticed how this legislation is selectively applied to certain groups. we can be telling the truth about the problems with the aboriginal or sudanese or muslim communities and get charged yet they get away with slander against everyone else. sadly these laws are not about protecting everyone equally.
So according to Phil West’s thinking, I I buy a box of tampons I will automatically be able to play tennis, ride a Horse on a beach………..