Taking his cues from every other poser on this topic in Australia, Adelaide ‘artist’ Peter Drew is the latest drone that has taken it upon himself to go and lecture Americans about gun laws:
“Drew — who began his refugee poster campaign in 2015 — has generated awareness around the way Australians treats asylum seekers as well as the traditional owners of Australian land.
But his latest campaign looks beyond the borders of Australia, with the artist planning to travel to the United States to generate discussion around American gun laws. So what is the message?
A hot topic internationally, Drew said America had a “broken system”. His next set of posters display a broken rifle and the words ‘Australia, it works’. Drew said he would travel to Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York in August where he hoped to speak to American people about the issue and how things are done in his home country.
“Personally, what I hope from this campaign is to speak to American individuals about what they think of the issue,” he said.
“There are a lot of cultural views fed down to us and I really want to see what they actually think of their country. The gun laws poster is just one of eight posters I’m working on at the moment.”
He decided to release the gun laws poster on his social media platforms ahead of his trip to get a feel for what people thought closer to home. He said he would more than likely tweak the idea again before heading overseas, but the message was clear — Australian gun laws work.
“Releasing the poster more or less coincided with getting my studio up and running again because I was out of action for about six months,” he said.
“But getting it out there helps to get feedback and really helps me to refine my work and my ideas. I want to try and create a discussion with my posters. I think there’s an insight that’s missing in the debate [around gun laws].
“There’s a lot of emotion in the debate and I want to appeal to American pragmatism.
“The system they have now is broken and they need to fix it.”
Yes, just what everyone needed – another sanctimonious, left leaning Australian who feels the need to go over and lecture Americans on a topic he clearly doesn’t understand, under the guise of “understanding”.
It’s the same old stuff we’re used to. Drew has used the usual tactic of reducing his argument to a false binary comparison between the United States and Australia, and it’s safe to say he doesn’t know what the laws, facts or anything else are on this issue outside of Occupy Democrats or resorting to Google.
Will Drew discuss why the firearm death rate in Australia reduced by 46% in the 16 years before the National Firearm Agreement?
No, of course not.
Is Drew also going to discuss how the US per capita homicide rate has halved since 1980 despite a doubling of the firearm supply?
Doubt it.
It’s also incredibly rich of Drew to say how there’s too much emotion in the gun debate and that he’s hoping to “appeal to American pragmatism”, when his whole schtick relies on an emotively simplistic, symbol-driven poster campaign which does absolutely nothing to explore the issue or debate it. That’s called propaganda for those playing along at home.
The most ridiculous part of this whole stunt is that Drew is only travelling to California and NY – the two most anti-firearm states in the country. Rather than risk having his platform challenged, Drew has decided to seek out the two safest intellectual spaces in the US he could find on this issue to “discuss” his work – completely gutless.
Perhaps Drew could familiarise himself with California’s laws being on par or tougher in some ways than Australia but still didn’t stop events like San Bernadino or the Youtube shooting?
As we’ve stated before, Australians lecturing Americans about firearms is a cringeworthy, embarrassing cultural trend that needs to die. Reducing the argument to a simplistic, false binary comparison on the issue and being completely dismissive of any other socioeconomic or causative factor is intellectually dishonest and a copout. Nothing about Drew’s campaign is original and is just more of the same rubbish we’ve been subjected to over the last 21 years.
“Real Australians” don’t lecture other countries’ citizens about how to conduct their internal affairs.
Try Texas!
I would recommend that he try a trip to Venezuela to explore discussions about how well their recently implemented Australian style gun laws are going.
June 2012 Venezuela brought a new gun law into effect which bans the commercial sale of firearms and ammunition.
“The Venezuelan Violence Observatory (OVV) puts the homicide rate for 2013 at approximately 79 per 100,000 and the murder rate in the capital Caracas at 122 per 100,000 residents – the second highest murder rate in the world”
Ugly Ozzy go home!
Mr Drew would do better to ask why there was no coronial inquiry about the Port Arthur Massacre as required by law.
Two Singapore nationals died so for that reason alone, the death of foreigners, an inquiry was needed by law.
I’d also like to know why John Howard said at Salamanca in Hobart on 3 may 1996 that an inquiry wasn’t needed because they found the perpetrator-and of course it was only one perpetrator.
It is argued, erroneously IMV, that a trial wasn’t needed because Martin Bryant confessed. At the time, though, he hadn’t confessed to anything.
Equality before the law but if you’re PM you’re a bit more equal than most, apparently.
As we come to the 22nd anniversary of the massacre, I say
CORONIAL INQUIRY NOW!!!
Fine with me. Reinforces the absolutely true concept that the gun-banners are really just that… gun banners.
Hey fellas, I see no down side to this. I foresee that all of you will ignore this self-important twerp, and we in Australia are less one more anti-gun Nazi.
Now if only there is a way to permanently return Soros’ Rebecca Peters to the US!
I’m just going to leave this here.
http://junkee.com/bondi-hipsters-gun-laws-aussie/156081