With a tragic murder and hospitalization of random innocent people on the streets of Sydney today, you might think the media would be asking questions about how a patient of a mental health unit with extremist beliefs was able to escape the facility in which a court had ordered he be kept.
Instead of course, we have pathetic self-serving articles claiming how fantastic our gun laws were, despite an evidently suicidal and mentally disturbed individual being able to kill one person and severely injure another before eventually being detained by heroic bystanders on the street.
The danger these people put themselves in cannot be understated, it is readily apparent from the video that fortunately the attacker’s state of mind rendered him as a relatively ineffectual opponent. This could easily have been a fatal encounter for those bystanders too, had they been unlucky and faced a more determined and focused attacker. We won’t provide credit to killers and provide links to videos of attacks with bladed weapons, suffice to say going for a melee in a knife fight is a nearly surefire way to get stabbed in some way or another.
The interesting take away from this is of course the amount of time it took for police to respond, once again demonstrating that when seconds count the police are only five to thirty minutes away. Even if you are in the center of the busiest city in the country.
The comments that fantasize about how much worse it would have been had he had access to firearms are tiresome to the extreme. There is no need to imagine, we can look back at our recent history in Australia to see what happens in similar situations. See the mass shooting perpetrated by a criminal in Darwin earlier this year, the 2014 Martin place siege or even more lethally in Melbourne, using a car in Bourke street to rob six people of their lives whilst the country looked on in horror.
Our gun laws are effective in stopping people who do not wish to break the law from obtaining prohibited firearms, they do little else. When we see some of the most strictly controlled firearms in Australia in the form of pump-action shotguns and handguns showing up in the hands of these murderers it is clear the laws are ineffective in preventing their proliferation.
Patting yourself on the back because an escapee from a mental institution decided to stab and murder people with a kitchen knife in the CBD is insentive to those injured and killed and naïve beyond belief.
Instead imagine if we allowed people to possess less than lethal means of self defense; like pepper spray and electroshock weapons. Perhaps we wouldn’t even be talking about an incident that ended in a fatality at all.
For as long as there has been an anti-gun agenda there has
been an accompanying endless parade of “experts” and doomsayers pushing
for the increasing regulation and eventual ban of firearms. Their message has
mostly been facilitated by media outlets happy to deliver any sort of message
that detracts from any meaningful and evidence-based conversation, for the
purpose of hooking more consumers. After all, the only thing that sells nearly
as well as sex is fear.
Rarely, if ever, is there an opportunity offered by the
media to people who have actual working knowledge of firearms and firearm laws,
and who might offer an actual insight into how to craft effective and
functional laws that would actually achieve the goal of improving public safety.
This would be counterproductive in advancing the narrative that guns are bad
and that gun laws are the only way to save lives.
Most recently, two of the most prominent anti-gun “experts”
Samantha Lee and Phillip Alpers have been pontificating their rhetoric at any
and all available opportunities. However, they rarely fail to demonstrate just
how little they actually know about firearms, or about the laws that govern
them. Something that you would expect any kind of actual expert to be competent
at in their given field, rather than wildly unqualified. That such obvious
failings in their arguments are then used in decisions regarding legislation
surrounding firearms is truly appalling and their obvious incompetence is not
only ignored but applauded, is a direct risk to the future of all Australians.
“Samantha
Lee, a lawyer, has been the Chair of Gun Control Australia (GCA) for over
ten years. She has participated in the United Nations Small Arms and Light
Weapons conference in New York as part of an Australian delegation. She was
awarded a Churchill Travelling Fellowship to travel to study ways to prevent
handgun violence in Australia by looking at models in America, Canada and the
United Kingdom.”
This is the same woman who came out with such classics as “2
Ammunitions” and “Rapid Style” during the Adler debacle, or who
despite being a lawyer can not wrap her head around the fact that the National
Firearms Agreement is not a legally binding document.
It is no surprise then that Samantha Lee asserts that there
has been an erosion of
firearm laws in Australia because of the lack of adherence to the NFA.
Which is interesting because the people who are governed by those laws, that’s
lawful firearm owners in case you didn’t guess, seem to be finding new
restrictions being imposed on them quite frequently. As an example, New South
Wales had the genius idea of having Gun Shops record the details of all
ammunition purchases in a ledger. Not that anyone from the Firearms Registry
ever checks it, but it would make a great shopping list for any criminal who
gets a hold of one.
Samantha Lee also claims that by limiting the number of
firearms in the legal market, illegally obtained firearms will also be reduced.
However, if David Shoebridge didn’t insist on advertising firearm ownership densities
by suburb in New South Wales, that number would probably drop anyway. But
what Samantha fails to mention is the possibility of illegal firearms making
their way into Australia, firearms which have been heavily restricted or
unavailable for lawful purchase here for decades. She also fails to mention any
plans on how to tackle illegally
manufactured firearms, some of which are not only sophisticated, but
capable of very high rates of fire and easily concealed.
In fact, Lee does not appear to have laid the blame for
criminal use of firearms at the feet of anyone other than lawful firearm
owners, which is strange considering that if she were genuine in addressing gun
crime she might consider the people who are actually committing it. But that
would make sense, unlike most of what comes out of her mouth.
And then we have Philip Alpers: Staunch anti-gun advocate,
former TV Journalist, Associate Professor (not a real professor), and confused
hypocrite. A man who proudly admits that he has no qualifications, yet believes
he is qualified to advise on how to reduce gun crime. I wonder if he has ever
researched how to make criminals obey those laws then? This same man who has
travelled under the protection of armed men, yet blames those same men for the
rise of illegal firearms in the pacific region through firearms being “leaked
from lawfully imported police, military, and civilian holdings…almost all of
them originally provided by Australia and the United States to equip PNG’s
military and police.”
This is coming from someone who has essentially called for
the removal of firearms from lawful firearm owners, leaving only the government
with guns – until they sell them to criminals? Yep, seems like an expert to me.
Oh, but his corkers don’t end there.
After the Christchurch terrorist attack, Alpers proudly
stated that such an attack couldn’t happen in Australia because of our “benchmark”
gun laws and no access to those types of firearms. Maybe tell that to the
family of Senior Constable Brett Forte who was
shot and killed in 2017 with what was suspected to be an SKS or SKK rifle,
and could have been used to also commit such an atrocity. Truth be told, that
heinous crime in Christchurch could have been perpetuated in any number of
ways, but the parasite involved wanted to force the NZ government to perpetuate
an act of demonization and vilification against her lawful firearm owners. A wish
which was eagerly granted by the NZ
Government.
But of course, he believes what he says. He also believes
that Australia banned all semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. Sorry to burst
your bubble Mr Alpers, but we still have plenty here. Category C and D firearms
are still available to Primary Producers and Vertebrate Pest Controllers, as
well as criminals with the right contacts. In fact, criminals are able to
obtain these firearms easier than the rest of us who just want to live our
lives in peace, but don’t let that get in the way of an agenda. Speaking of
which, it’s interesting that in a country that had not had a mass shooting
since 1997, the first thing that was blamed for this crime were the gun laws.
Not that there were several indicators that the shooter was not fit for a
firearm license, or that had existing laws been followed properly and had he
been vetted appropriately, the shooter would not have been able to legally
source those firearms. That would be an inconvenient truth.
More recently the tragic events in Darwin have highlighted
the fact that when it comes to gun control, these self-proclaimed experts are
utterly clueless. Alpers is quoted
as saying that the shooter in Darwin should not have been entitled to any
access to firearms at all.
Duh.
But then he goes on to state that even though the firearm
used was already highly restricted (well, he says illegal) and illegally
modified, not to mention obtained illegally by a person on parole and wearing a
tracking bracelet and was already disqualified from owning a firearm due to
their criminal actions, the laws did not fail.
Uhh yeah, they did.
The only people prevented from owning and carrying firearms
that day were the victims and other lawful citizens who could just as easily
have been killed also. How it can be argued that the laws did not fail is
beyond comprehension, but it is without doubt that failure to defend them would
possibly cast doubt on their effectiveness, and years of brainwashing a fearful
public would be undone just a little.
It is clear that neither Lee or Alpers have really given any
actual effort or thought into how to genuinely reduce gun crime or make
Australians safe. Their sole focus is on banning firearms from lawful firearm
owners, and to hell with anyone who argues. It is the opinion of these two anti-gun
campaigners that gun violence is the fault of lawful firearm owners, despite
there being overwhelming evidence that shows that the vast majority of gun
crime is committed by people who have no lawful reason to obtain a firearm.
They are wilful in their victim blaming of firearm owners who are robbed of
their possessions, despite the actions of anti-gun supporters being complicit
in such thefts (we’re looking at you, David).
They are open and forceful in the demonization of lawful
firearm owners by imposing new regulations and laws that they know full well
will have no impact on criminal behaviour. And they will use any and every
trick in the book, from blatant lies to outright emotional blackmail, to ensure
that any efforts to address gun crime without targeting lawful firearm owners
are shunned.
These fake experts are in the way of sensible
and rational discussion and progress in the battle for our future and our
safety. Until we address the cause of crime in general and improve our society,
all the insane laws in the world will not save us.
Now the ABC have doubled down on this week’s “2 minutes hate of gun owners” campaign with Queensland Labor MP Leanne Enoch resurfacing:
“A YEAR after Queensland MP Leeanne Enoch fought to remove a billboard encouraging people to buy guns for Christmas, the politician has revealed the extent of the backlash.
Ms Enoch started a petition in November last year to have the towering Brisbane billboard, featuring a gun-toting woman dressed in a Santa Claus outfit, removed. Speaking to ABC’s Four Corners last night, Ms Enoch said her attempt to get the billboard advertising Gun World Australia was met with brutal opposition.
“Let someone break into your house and rape and kill you,” a Facebook commenter wrote.
“Someone shoot this b**ch. Would be the most cliche murder. You have no place in our community woman. Take ur (sic) opinion elsewhere,” another added.
Ms Enoch, who was Queensland’s Small Business Minister at the time, had around 3000 people comment on her Facebook post linking to the petition. “I was receiving threats of sexual violence, of physical violence. I had threats to my life and that spilt over towards some of the people that were making positive comments about bringing the billboard down as well,” Ms Enoch told the program.
“There were moments when I really thought, ‘Am I in danger here?’ These are people who were advocating the watering down of gun laws, these were people who had access to guns.”
Ms Enoch launched the petition a few weeks before the Queensland state election, held on November 25, 2017.
“My first reaction to it was one of horror,” Ms Enoch said, referring to the first time she saw the billboard.”
Pics or it didn’t happen, Leanne.
So in other words, what Sean Nicholls and the hacks at the ABC have apparently done is made a quick sweep of Leanne’s Facebook page and looked for the most polarising comments they can find and tried to make them collectively representative of everyone’s opinion, because guns are bad mmkay. Newscorp also did the same.
Comments like this are certainly not to be condoned at all, but in lieu of any screenshots or knowing who or what the motivations of the alleged posters were, it’s hard to take the claims seriously at all. It could also very likely be one of the usual Labor/Greens/anti-firearm sock puppet accounts that love to infest any firearm thread to undermine it – the “I’m a gun owner but…” etc type of comment. You don’t know who is behind that keyboard.
Gun World also ran into another local Helen Lovejoy feigning outrage over another of their billboards earlier in the year.
Put simply, Gun World is a legal business selling legal products. Don’t like it? Don’t buy it. The fact that a Queensland MP went out on a personal vendetta against a business that was doing nothing wrong was what invoked a strong backlash, and rightfully so.
In other words, Leanne Enoch picked a fight, lost and tried to run away screaming ‘victim!’
God forbid you ever step foot in 4Chan, Leanne.
Queensland Labor are a train wreck. Revolving door Police Ministers, Jackie Stalin-Trad’s numerous anti-gun rants, Enoch and now Annastacia Palaszczuk’s underhanded stunt against the KAP and their staffers.
Just another in a long list of many reasons not to vote for Team Red (or Team Blue or Green) and another reason to defund the ABC.
Right after a shooting in Point Cook, fake news about 18 school shootings and the emotive rant from Emma Gonzalez comes this from Domainfax:
“Makenzie Hymes was so heartbroken by the latest shooting at a US school she decided to prepare an Australian history lesson for American politicians.
Hymes, a 13-year-old who loves dancing and the piano, wrote the story of Australia’s gun control laws on a placard she took to the White House this week where she joined dozens of other school children demanding tougher gun laws.
Most students kept to short slogans.
“Am I next?” read one. “Fear has no place in school,” said another.
But Hymes, a middle school student in Washington DC, wanted Americans to know about John Howard’s response to the Port Arthur massacre more than two decades ago.
“Australia had its worst mass shooting on April 28, 1996,” her placard read, before explaining the bipartisan deal that followed. “The government brought back and destroyed over one million guns,” she concluded. “Australia has not had a mass shooting since then.”
Anyone else notice the sign? I think the US education system has far more to concern themselves with, than using a teenager who doesn’t understand a complex issue to sell an agenda. Particularly ironic when it comes to African-American teenagers and their representation in both education and crime statistics.
Further, it shows what rubbish they’re indoctrinating, er, teaching children with regard to firearms and mass shootings. The official number of firearms confiscated was 643,726 guns at a cost to the tax payer of $319,833,727. Obviously not teaching children economics either.
Complete emotional drivel from the SMH.
Just a standard ploy: when you’re out of actual arguments, use kids who don’t understand issues and push emotion to get your agenda over the line. Always a winner. Obviously, Fairfax has been taking cues from the Alannah and Madeline Foundation and Walter Mikac will probably get a guernsey soon.
Being a victim doesn’t make you an expert regardless of age. Do we let victims or teenagers formulate policy on anything else? We don’t even give them the right to vote until they are 18, why should we think they are capable of making informed decisions on complex issues, other than because someone put them up to it for a photo-op?
This is the irony of what gun control advocates have become: using events that target the innocent to target everyone else who is innocent.
Remember, this is the same Fairfax that used an American ex-pat “artist” living in Fitzroy a couple of years ago, to write a cringe-inducing emotive ode to war criminal John Howard, to thank him for disarming the population while wrecking it with every other policy he could apply.
Comparing Australia to America on firearms is a false binary argument. As we talked about at the weekend, the arrogance of Australians to think that we should lecture Americans on their domestic affairs, while being completely ignorant of the facts and thinking the same applies there as it does here is just ridiculous.
It’s also clear that the Australian press is nothing more than paid cheerleaders for civilian disarmament. Can you actually name one journalist in Australia that is pro-gun? I certainly can’t.
I also can’t name one Australian journalist that knows anything about firearms or doesn’t lie about this issue, but perhaps we should consider an addendum to the “death and taxes” quotation.
Guess today’s 0.00% year on year Sydney house price announcement has Domainfax staff worried.
It’s obvious to many that the Australian media and politicians have been at the forefront of shaping Australians’ perception on firearms, particularly to those who are indifferent or against firearms in general.
The level of astounding mistruths and misinformation that are promulgated on this topic in Australia is of epic proportions, but like any issue, unless you’re a firearm owner or clued on about guns in some way you aren’t going to know that. Frankly, most Australian journalists and politicians are rubbish when it comes to the issue of firearms.
It’s important to understand how they have been able to achieve this and it’s very simple: through language. In reality, they nearly always employ a barrage of emotive buzzwords in place of any sane debate or discussion on this topic in Australia. It is exactly the same trick as yelling “racist” or “bigot” when you want to shut down a debate on immigration or any other issue.
There many terms used by the Australian media and politicians to stifle debate on firearms and we’ve identified the five worst phrases.
“Port Arthur!”
Google just about any article on firearms in Australia and it’s a safe bet that the Port Arthur Massacre is in some way mentioned.
This is, in reality, a form of trauma-based neurolinguistic programming. When Port Arthur is uttered, the average Australians’ thought process goes something like this: “Port Arthur Massacre – man killed lots of people – semi autos are bad – John Howard changed gun laws – no mass shootings since.”
All of these points are demonstrably false when explored with an open, objective mindset and a hint of critical thinking. There’s little to no discussion by the media of where the AR15 used allegedly came from, the Police response time, the active role John Howard and Tim Fischer took in ensuring there was no Coronial Inquiry or Royal Commission or any discussion about how the National Firearms Agreement was formulated as far back as 1991 by Labor. There’s no exploration of the relationship between NFA architect Rebecca Peters and her personal financier, George Soros.
It was infamously said that the reason for no Royal Commission into the events at Port Arthur was because of ‘trauma to the victims’, but it seems that goes out the window whenever there is some issue regarding firearms in this country and it’s ok to keep bringing it up and put the victims’ through it every time.
It is the go-to weapon of the media but fortunately, the knife has really started to become blunt. Continually relying on Port Arthur as your primary argument for gun control is in fact, a weak one.
“American style gun culture!”
Another buzzword deemed fail safe and arguably the 2nd worst used. If in doubt, just bring up some vague comparison to the USA and the debate is, apparently, over.
There’s never any discussion about the complete disparity between the two nations which add validity to any discussion: levels of income disparity, population size, gang activity, health services, demographic crime trends, etc. It’s just a straight up, superficial black and white reference.
Comparing Australia to the United States is an intellectually dishonest, false binary argument. There’s never any mention of the daily examples of firearm self-defence by US citizens which far outweigh the total number of homicides ever year. There’s no discussion about disproportionately higher African-American crime rates or the scourge of Mexican cartel violence spilling onto US soil. Those who cite this argument also almost always don’t know what the laws actually are or the wide variance of laws at the federal, state and county level.
There’s also no comparison to other western countries such as Canada, Switzerland, Czech Republic, etc which have far more liberal gun laws and comparable crime rates to Australia.
The reality is the per capita murder rate in the US has declined 49% over the last 25 years while firearm sales and concealed carry permit holders have nearly trebled. Meanwhile, south of the border, Mexico just posted a record number of homicides for 2017 in a country with gun laws stricter than the UK. Don’t worry though, their lives don’t count.
It’s also amazing that Australians’ are so open to sledging the US on this issue, yet we complain about not being able to defend ourselves in our own homes and are 100% reliant on the ANZUS treaty for military protection against foreign threats.
“Semi-automatics!”
The amount of lies told about self-loading, semi-automatic rifles in Australia is astounding.
The biggest one being is that they’re banned completely in Australia. Well no, they’re still legal. Semi-auto handguns are also still available. However, the restrictions on both of them are absolutely ridiculous and make very little common or legislative sense that they are virtually banned.
The doublespeak around semi-automatic rifles is even more blatant when Police are praised for having them yet citizens are demonized for the same. When the Police have them they are deemed “proper and necessary tools to protect the public” but when the public have them they are “killing machines designed purely to commit the next Port Arthur”. Seems fair and reasonable.
Semi-autophobia is one of the leading causes of ignorance in Australia in the firearm debate. Meanwhile, over the ditch in New Zealand (and a slew of other countries), one of these can be hand on the lowest category of licence and remains the most popular rifle in NZ. No “mass shootings” there in 21 years either.
“Firearm Buyback!”
First of all, you cannot buy back something you did not own in the first place – this is sleight of hand. The use of this term is deliberate and invokes a sense of mutual agreement. “Don’t worry mate, we’ll be a good government and give you some cash for that gun and she’ll be right”. The reality, as we have seen, was far more sinister than that.
Call it for what it was: compensated confiscation with the threat of imprisonment. Seriously, does this look like a passive buy back to you?
Further, the number of number of firearms that were confiscated by the government seems to inflate year on year and depends on who is doing the reporting. There’s also no mention of several of those firearms re-entering circulation due to negligence and corruption in 1998 either. Or you could ask Michael Keenan about how many were recently handed in.
“No mass shootings since 1996!”
Patently false and one of the more annoying catch cries. If we want to get technical, then the last mass shooting in Australia honour goes to NSW Police, who shot an escaped mental patient with a pair of scissors and three old ladies out for morning tea at Westfield Hornsby in 2016. But that’s ok, because the government did it.
There is no international consensus on what constitutes a mass shooting. The FBI uses mass killing as 4 or more. Interpol use 4 or more, some countries use 3 or more. Should it be people shot or people shot and killed? Who is right?
Australia has changed the definition of mass murder multiple times since 1996 and the latest research by the notoriously anti-firearm University of Sydney used “5 or more killed by one or more perpetrators” to get around the Logan shootings in 2014. They also were forced to concede they couldn’t attribute any decline to the 1996 laws.
They also discount the massive decline in firearm homicide, as shown by the ABS no less, between 1980 and 1995.
Mass shootings are a poor metric of firearm law effectiveness. We now have daily gun crime in our cities, home invasions and car jackings are now a regular occurrence and the public is unable to protect themselves against it with so much as a pepper spray.
Declaring that victims of mass shootings are somehow more dead than those that are killed by other means is also a facile argument. Do victims care how they’re killed or injured? No, they care about why it happened and how it could have been avoided. We have had many sickening mass casualty attacks since Port Arthur, some with and some without firearms, with vehicles now seemingly the latest trend.
There’s absolutely nothing to stop another mass shooting – as Man Monis, Rick Maddison and a slew of other incidents have shown. And the second another major one happens in Australia, the apologists won’t know what to do with themselves.
There’s also been no mass shootings in New Zealand for the last 21 years either despite not changing the laws, but that doesn’t count for some reason.
Obviously, the above is not an exhaustive list. There are several other terms that they employ like “assault rifle”, “high powered”, etc, which are equally as dishonest and have the same objective.
Again, education and experience are key in the firearm debate. The media and political class know this, hence why they invest so much time and energy in emotive linguistics to keep the debate in a juvenile context.
However, you can only cry wolf so many times before the magic wears off and the fake news MSM seem not to have learnt their lesson.
It’s not all bad though, in 2017 during the firearm amnesty Channel 9’s Brett MacLeod interviewed Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MLC Jeff Bourman in a very balanced and noteworthy interview. This is the standard the debate should be at in the media and kudos to Brett MacLeod for providing some much needed balance.
Firearm owners United is a grass-roots movement dedicated to uniting the Australian Shooting community, and to help provide a voice for their concerns.
