Straight from the horse’s mouth:
“The Australian Gun Safety Alliance, a coalition of concerned organisations committed to ensuring that gun laws are upheld around the nation, will save lives, AMA President, Dr Tony Bartone, said today.
Launched by the Parliamentary Friends of Gun Control this morning, the Alliance will work together to ensure that State and Territory Governments continue to comply with the National Firearms Agreement (NFA), the landmark gun law agreement that was forged in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
“Gun deaths have halved in Australia over the past two decades, thanks to the National Firearms Agreement,” Dr Bartone said. “Countless lives have been saved.
“But there is still work to do, and illegal gun possession remains a major health concern.
“It is estimated that there are anywhere between 260,000 and six million guns held illegally in Australia, and most gun-related deaths in Australia are within the families of gun owners.
“Guns have a legitimate role in areas such as agriculture, regulated sport, and for the military and police, but gun possession in the broader community is a serious risk to public health.
“Doctors see first hand the damage, and physical and emotional trauma, caused by guns, whether through accidental or intentional misuse, and the AMA strongly opposes any campaigns or policies that seek to dilute or relax the restrictions on firearm purchase and ownership.
“The Alliance provides an important forum through which the AMA will continue to advocate for gun safety in Australia.”
The AMA Position Statement on Firearms 2017 makes a number of recommendations to minimise gun-related violence, including:
- Continued, consistent laws across all States and Territories,
- A real-time, readily accessible National Firearms Licensing Register,
- Stronger laws banning high-powered semi-automatic weapons and pump or lever action rifles, and
- Tighter restrictions on applications to own a firearm, to avoid misuse of the current “genuine reason” eligibility rule.”
So there you have it. Not exactly ground breaking or new but given the AMA, a doctors union, has now joined the rebranded Gun Control Australia outfit, you can be clearer of their intentions. They may say pumps and levers now, but that’s just the next target and we saw that with the Adler fiasco. Also amusing to see them still pushing the National Firearms Agreement as legally binding, but we don’t expect them to stop pushing that lie.
The AMA, along with a slew of public heath organisations, have jumped on the Australian Gun Safety Alliance bandwagon which as we previously stated, is the same people with the same intentions – this time just hiding behind the linguistic guise of “safety”.
This is also a reminder to those LAFO’s who think your firearms are safe. As we’ve also said many time before, the end goal of these authoritarian groups is complete civilian disarmament via incrementalism, nothing less. It’s a comforting lie to tell yourself otherwise. If you’re not going to look out for your fellow LAFO’s, then you may as well hand your guns in now and save yourselves the trouble.
As for the AMA, it’s just the latest in a long line of anti-gun, public health zealotry from them. Plenty of health professionals in Australia who shoot and hunt and disagree with the AMA’s position.
The AMA needs to clean up their own backyard and leave the LAFO community alone.
You’re kidding right? What a joke australia stand up to these morons…. they’re the ones with a health issue….
I’m a Doctor, and a Licenced Firearms Owner. I just hate it when our representatives just think they can walk in and join political lobby groups on our behalf without asking us first. We pay their wages and they ought to just check that they’re properly representing us before they take a position on an important matter like this.
Great to hear Chris. We hear from many like yourself in the medical profession who are disenfranchised with the AMA and other groups.
Medical “malpractice” is a far greater problem in Australia (and elsewhere in the world). The removal of murderously incompetent Medical personnel is a far greater problem.
Indeed it is reported that Australia has one of the highest incidences of Medical “misadventure” in the Western World.
This association must intimately know that and is simply ‘virtue signaling’ as a smoke screen by the appearances of this transparent blame shifting.
So how do these idiots intend to take the illegally owned guns off their owners if they don’t know where there are?
To use Port Arthur now as an example is mute do to the amount of time that has past; it is scaremongering.
This is just another group trying to garner political influence. They would serve the community better by focusing on issues such as drugs and aged care
Ignoring the medical communities direct kill rate through mistakes (as detailed above), I’d think there is plenty for doctors to be keeping themselves occupied with that is far closer to their actual area of expertise – eg Opioids – a category that includes pharmaceuticals such as oxycodone and fentanyl, as well as illicit versions such as heroin – remain the main cause of accidental overdose death in Australia. Opioid-related deaths hovered at around 450 per year at the turn of the century, but since 2006 these numbers have risen sharply to hit over 1100 per year since 2014.
Deaths involving amphetamines have also been rising, increasing from 175 in 2013 to 442 in 2016. These drugs have in fact overtaken alcohol to become the third most common substance detected in accidental drug deaths within Australia.
Penington Institute Chief Executive John Ryan said –
‘I think there is an enormous untapped opportunity if GPs were able to take an increased and leading role in relation to dependence treatment.’
and perhaps he is right, or he would be if GPs were not too busy virtue signalling on the far less dangerous issue of firearms.
(stats and quotes taken from the Royal Australian College of GPs website).