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.
“An anti-gun group has accused the firearms lobby of hacking its Twitter account and writing posts that claimed the group was funded by George Soros and had worked with the “deep state” to block investigations into the Port Arthur massacre.
Gun Control Australia, an anti-firearms group that advocates for tougher gun laws, said on Thursday that its Twitter account had been hacked earlier in September.
“GCA is now aware the account has been hacked for some time with many false tweets being posted that have not been endorsed by GCA,” Samantha Lee, the head of the group, said. “GCA stopped using the Twitter account some time ago due to ongoing harassment from the gun lobby.
“This is just another dirty tactic by the gun lobby to suppress the voice of concerned Australians who are proud of Australia’s gun laws and don’t want to see Australia become like America.”
While the hack appears to have occurred earlier this month, Lee only became aware of the breach on Wednesday night when the imposter posted a tweet about the new Australian Gun Safety Alliance. The alliance was launched on Wednesday night by the parliamentary Friends of Gun Control, headed by Labor MP Andrew Leigh and Liberal John Alexander. The alliance includes members from public health organisations, the Blue Ribbon campaign, medical associations and child safety associations.
While Lee had been invited to the event, she didn’t attend because of a previous commitment. She said GCA was a signature to the new gun safety alliance and “fully supports the new body”. However, on Wednesday night a tweet from GCA’s account said the group was “deeply saddened” not to be invited to the launch.
Lee blamed members of the “gun lobby”, which she claimed was attempting to “sabotage” the launch of the Australian Gun Safety Alliance. She said the hack would be reported to the Australian federal police.
After being made aware of the false tweet, Lee said she realised the GCA account had been hacked some time ago.
Earlier in September a tweet from the group’s account stated that it had been working with “the deep state” to ensure that an inquest was not held into the Port Arthur massacre “and we will continue to do so until all of the witnesses are dead”.
Claims the Port Arthur massacre was in some way manufactured are popular among far-right conspirators. Earlier in September, the hacker also tweeted a fake Change.org petition claiming the group had received a $100 million donation from George Soros.
Soros, a prominent business magnate, philanthropist and political activist, is also a lightening rod for a myriad of far-right conspiracies.”
The article was pulled but you can find an archived copy of it here.
All of the tweets referred to by Michael McGowan were from the Gun Control Australia parody account. Give it a follow on Twitter if you haven’t been shadow banned already.
There was no hacking done at all and Gun Control Australia have never had an official Twitter account. Roland Browne has a personal account and he rarely uses it. Sam Lee does not have an account. GCA’s Facebook account hasn’t posted in months either.
Sam Lee has essentially tried to blame the “gun lobby” for the non-existent hacking of a non-existent Twitter account and then McGowan hasn’t even bothered to research the source. Either that or he has and tried to outright lie and claim it as genuine. Neither are good outcomes.
This is just the latest anti-gun offering from the same McGowan that previously accused (and then retracted when held to legal account) FOU of being Nazi sympathisers based on the random musings of some anonymous Antifa blogger.
Embarrassing efforts like this is exactly why the Guardian has it’s hand out for donations.
The internet is forever, Michael. Your journalism career seems destined to be the complete antithesis of that.
It appears now “mathematical modelling” is the new buzzword to try and sell Australia’s gun control joke. A colleague of the Fake Professor Philip Alpers (who co-authored this latest research) and long time anti-gun campaigner, Simon Chapman is the latest Howard-era fossil to rush to a defence of the anti-gun narrative.
Chapman’s usual schtick is to use sensationalist verbiage with some statistical gymnastics and we weren’t disappointed with this sophist drivel in the SMH:
“The centrepiece of the law reforms was the outlawing from civilian ownership the rapid-firing, mass-killing machines that armed forces carry. In 2016 with two colleagues, I published a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association where we told the world that 20 years on, Australia had not had a single mass shooting. In the 18 years up to and including the Port Arthur massacre, we’d had 13 where five or more (not including the perpetrator) were killed.
The New Yorker named our evaluation of the impact of the new laws as one of five most notable medical research reports of 2016. Today, 22 years on, Australia still has not experienced a mass shooting. Nada. Zilch.
And then:
Griffiths University researcher, gun violence expert and former chair of the International Coalition for Women in Shooting and Hunting, Samara McPhedran has said: “It is possible that the concentration of incidents in one decade was a statistical anomaly. Mass shootings are rare events, and the long gap between incidents post-1996 may simply reflect a return to a more ‘normal’ state of affairs, similar to the years before 1987.
In February, in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, school killings, The New York Timesput the US National Rifle Association’s response to the Australian lesson this way: “Such episodes are rare enough that it would be statistically incorrect for gun control supporters to draw a cause-and-effect conclusion.
In research published today in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, we have tested this “rare events are still rare” dismissal. Using the eye-watering mathematics used to test the likelihood of rare events being truly rare (insurance companies have long used these techniques to assess risk and set premiums), we tested the “null” hypothesis that the rate of mass shootings in Australia in the 18 years before the 1996 law reforms remained unchanged in the 22 years afterwards. We set out to see if the obvious, was indeed obvious.”
“Without a 22-year randomized controlled trial assigning only parts of a national population to live under the National Firearms Agreement, establishing a definitive causal connection between this legislation and the 22-year absence of mass firearm homicides is not possible. However, a standard rare events model provides strong evidence against the hypothesis that this prolonged absence simply reflects a continuation of a pre-existing pattern of rare events.”
Further, he general flaw in this research is that “rare events” do not have patterns as previous events being random and also rare do not have causal connections with each other. The model was also based on an assumption that “3 mass shootings every 4 years so therefore 16 have been avoided.” Further, the research does not explore or account for any other factor other than purely the National Firearms Agreement.
Standard Chapman.
Dr Samara McPhedran also responded to Chapman, elaborating on the above and putting him well and truly back in his box. McPhedran succinctly elaborates that the so-called “mass shooting” phenomenon was incredibly rare in Australia even before the 10-year period spanning 1987 to 1996.
Chapman has no credentials in the field of firearms or criminology. He did his PhD on cigarettes and advertising and spends most of his time campaigning against smoking.
There was a 46% decline in the firearm death rate between 1980 and 1995 well before John Howard’s laws:
Furthermore, knives have always been the preferred weapon of homicide in Australia and remains unchanged:
He also fails to explain why New Zealand also experienced a decline at the same time despite not changing firearms laws or having a “mass shooting” since 1997, courtesy of the G Solution:
And the United States per capita homicide rate has declined 49% since 1980 despite the firearm supply nearly doubling:
Explain these transnational, long term statistical declines in the face of greatly varying legislation, Simon. We’ll wait.
Chapman also lies about full auto firearms being available (they were in Tasmania until 1996 despite never being used in crime) and lies about semi-auto firearms being available after 1996. He also makes no mention of other countries such as New Zealand, Canada and the rest which also have access to these firearms and not having experienced epic levels of crime or shootings.
The study from 2016 that Chapman is referencing came to the following conclusion:
This is after Chapman moved the goal posts yet again on what defines a mass shooting, and made sure it was fatal mass shooting purely to get around the Hunt massacre in 2014:
No mass shootings since 1996 is a lie and an insult to those who have been killed and shot with firearms and killed by other means since 1996.
As we’ve stated before, what defines a mass shooting? There are many varied definitions out there in use among criminologists and law enforcement institutions alone. Who’s definition is correct? And is being shot and not killed any less valid a definition than being shot and killed? Is being killed by any other means worse than being shot? Of course not and debate will rage on as to what the definition actually is, despite it’s ever changing definition in Australia.
Chapman is the undisputed king of manipulating statistics to find what he wants to and this latest “research” is nothing more than that. What would you expect from a former member of Gun Control Australia?
Chapman once called semi-auto rifles “fightening death machines.” The only thing “frightening” is the continued level of dishonesty in Chapman’s so-called research, as he yet again tries to sound terribly self-important on an issue he has been terribly dishonest about since 1996.
Chapman claimed later in his op-ed that the gun lobby “doesn’t want to fight anymore.”
Au Contraire, Simon. We’re always up for a debate but really the question is, are you and your Sydney Uni echo chamber colleagues when you aren’t furiously blocking everyone who disagrees with you on Twitter:
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.
“A SEMI-TRAILER ploughed through steel gates to an entrance of a gun store in Melbourne’s west yesterday morning.
CCTV footage obtained by the Herald Sun captured the moment thugs rammed the front entrance to Gun Emporium in Tullamarine at 3am.
But workers claim the shop’s high security measures scared the alleged offenders off.
The attack occurred just hours before masked offenders armed with sledgehammers and a gun stormed O’Reilly’s Firearms in Thornbury and fled with more than 65 handguns.
It is not yet known whether the two incidents are linked.”
Well that’s odd because:
Hey Herald Sun, your agenda is showing. A for effort though, give Peter Blunden a pay rise
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party of Victoria MLC Jeff Bourman introduced a bill into Victorian Parliament this week to allow the advertisement of individual online firearm sales, bringing Victoria into line with the rest of the country.
Unfortunately for those in attendance at the upper house debate, the Greens opened their mouths via Sue Pennicuik:
No, that is not the case at all. You need a valid firearms licence to purchase any firearm legally in Victoria. Sure, you can fill out the paperwork for a Permit To Acquire when you apply for your first licence at the same time but you’ll find that there’s a little something on top of that application:
Good luck picking that firearm up from a dealer without a licence.
Sue got salty when we confronted her about this on Twitter:
Let’s take a look at the Victoria Police website shall we?
So as you can see, more of a case that Sue only read the part that suited her and her corrupt party’s agenda. If Sue can provide evidence of a PTA being approved without a valid firearms licence then we’ll stand corrected.
We’ll wait.
The rest of Sue’s litany was just the usual Greens’ emotive rhetoric and even David Shoebridge got a mention – what better way to bolster your credibility on this issue.
Further, these comments point out the total uselessness of the PTA system. A PTA is essentially another licence you must apply for after you’ve already been granted a licence to own firearms. Essentially it is a licence within a licence – completely and utterly useless authoritarian bureaucracy for no proven benefit and a lazy cash grab to boot.
A licence within a licence? Reminds me of a movie with Leonardo Di Caprio.
This is nothing really surprising from the Victorian Greens, with their former leader and anti-hunting hypocrite Greg Barber recently resigning so he could “go do some fishing.” It’s not hunting when it’s fishing according to the Greens.
And it’s just the usual authoritarian hysterics from a fake environmental party that had nothing to say about the ongoing invasive species disaster unfolding in this country, after Australia was found to have the 2nd worst biodiversity loss in the world last week. Further restrictive gun laws and hunting laws that the Greens continually call for just throw kerosene on that massive dumpster fire.
The Greens ‘care’ about diversity – just not diversity of Australia’s native wildlife.
A better solution to this mess would be to dump PTA’s completely and move to ten year licences, as is the case in New Zealand where they also don’t waste their time on pointless bureaucracy with firearm registration. The Northern Territory also recently introduced ten year licences, there is no reason Victoria can’t do the same when it already does this with motor vehicle licences.
The bill has proceeded to the lower house for debate.
Gun Control Australia are at it again. After all of their Adler shenanigans, they’ve moved onto another firearm they want banned and tried to claim it’s a danger to the public:
“A shotgun with an assault rifle-like magazine, described as “more dangerous” than the controversial Adler weapon, needs far heavier regulation according to Greens politicians and gun control advocates.
NSW Greens state MP David Shoebridge and federal Greens senator Lee Rhiannon have come out against the Pardus LAX 12 MF shotgun, which is now available in Australia. MF stands for magazine fed, referring to the detachable ammunition magazine which can be quickly detached from the firearm and a new one inserted. The shotgun is advertised on the company’s website as having “the feeling of a more tactical usage as well fast loading with detachable magazines with different capacities”.
Yes, you read that correctly. “Assault like magazine.” Inventing new neurolinguistics terms all the time must require a decent amount of mental calories, something you wouldn’t normally associate with David Shoebridge et al.
That wasn’t the best part though, it was this from Lee:
“The magazine is the concern for this one. It’s quick release, you push the button on the side and the magazine drops out then you feed in another one. It’s the same magazine as an AR assault rifle,” Samantha Lee, chair of Gun Control Australia, told HuffPost Australia.
So if that didn’t sink in the first time, Lee is claiming the magazine on the Pardus which accepts 12 Gauge rounds is the same as the .223 Remington/5.56x45mm rounds an AR15 rifle accepts. Right.
Amateur hour has become amateur month at GCA.
Deliberate deception is not the issue though, the fact is it’s exactly the same tactic they used for the Adler that they are now using for the Pardus. They’re also targeting magazine capacity in a not so subtle way. They’re literally just moving through the catalogue, screaming about x firearm and creating a false justification for why other people in power want it banned.
If you’re late on the scene, Gun Control Australia’s agenda is total disarmament – Lee admitted to that last week when amid playing the victim card, Lee stated “We want courage. We want these men to come out and actually tackle the legal firearms market.”
This latest move is just another expression of that.
The link Josh Butler provided re: gun numbers doesn’t work and Crimtrac figures are more accurate which show a far greater number of firearms and licence holders. We contacted Josh Butler regarding the article but as of publishing he didn’t respond, and we doubt he will considering he blocked us on Twitter last year.
That aside, much like the Nationals and their press releases this week, you can smell the fear at Gun Control Australia as licence firearm holder numbers grow and the number of firearms increases every single year.
But we all know why the Pardus is next on the GCA hit list, it can hold more than 2 ammunitions.
In further evidence that mainstream media journalists are nothing more than wage slaves writing clickbait to generate ad revenue and support a failing business model, Tom Snowdon of the Courier Mail decided to continue this trend and launched a neurolinguistic attack on firearm suppressors:
“A MAJOR southeast Queensland council wants its pest assassins to use firearm silencers — which are banned alongside rocket launchers — to help control a growing feral deer population.
Logan City Council wants the State Government to provide a Ministerial exemption, or change the laws, to permit local governments to use silencers or noise suppressors to kill local pests. Both devices are category R weapons, placing them alongside bazookas or antitank rifles as banned weapons in Queensland.
The move is the latest ploy by a local government to control rampant suburban pests after and an application by Brisbane City Council to use silencers or suppressors last year was refused by Police Minister Mark Ryan.”
The usual deliberate use of language to craft thought around firearms. Total garbage. Guess what? That doesn’t work anymore. You know what does work? Actual arguments, which this article is completely bereft of.
Honestly speaking, this is also from the try-hards at Queensland Labor and their anti-gun platform at the upcoming Queensland election.
Quick Layman’s guide as to what firearm suppressor actually achieve:
A few basic questions that this article could have asked is:
Why is a small piece of tubular steel that (on average) reduces a 160db rifle shot to about 120db considered illegal?
Why are suppressors legal in most other western countries including New Zealand and are mandatory for private hunting in the UK?
Why are suppressors classified in the same category as explosive ordnance?
Why do only government contractors have access to them and not every licenced firearm owner?
Why are semi-auto rifles and suppressors still being restricted in Australia when it is quite clear that our invasive species problem is growing worse by the day?
Furthermore, Edith Cowan University conducted a study in 2011 entitled “An Investigation Into The Use Of Sound Moderators On Firearms For Game And Feral Management In New South Wales” and in it’s conclusion stated the following:
“New Zealand holds the view that moderators are merely non-critical devices designed to lower the sound report of an otherwise noisy firearm. They hold no sentience and discount the possibility they are criminally ‘contaminated’ by proximity to the crime portrayed in popular fiction. In New Zealand firearm sound suppression is viewed as something that has physical, community and animal welfare benefits.”
It continues:
“One only needs to consider the lack of evidence of criminal misuse in New Zealand (of a concerning amount), or of crimes facilitated by the use of moderators over the years. This coupled with New Zealand continuing to find no issue with the item and one then is entitled to beg the question of the Australian authorities who granted, have not had an imperative (until now) to re-evaluate the status of moderators, what level of crime justifies the continued denial of the benefits provided by a moderated firearm?
It is the opinion of the report-panel that when the documented advantages of sound moderators are compared against a perceived amount of crime that criminalisation of the device purports to prevent, then it is argued that continued denial of the benefits is no longer in the public interest.”
Another question for you to ask yourself is: why are New Zealand different and why do they have actual common sense in their firearm laws?
So, the challenge to Tom Snowdon and the Queensland Weapons Licencing Branch is: make your case why suppressors should remain restricted?
And above all, have some professional pride in your work instead of writing this lowest common denominator garbage.
One week removed from Lesley Podesta’s disgraceful comments on firearm ownership, the Australian media have been in overdrive trying to desperately sell the national firearms amnesty this past week.
Yesterday, both NSW Police and Malcolm Turnbull indulged in a spot of virtue signalling by both having press conferences about the amnesty. Turnbull made sure he had the token shot from the cameras of being shown a display of firearms by a Police member, that were either Airsoft replicas or firearms that could be owned legally anyway. Good thing Turnbull wasn’t asked to explain this shooting of a car dealership the day before.
NSW Police forgot to mention the last time they had an amnesty that hundreds, if not thousands, of guns went missing because they were being sold to criminals instead of destroyed. This was right after a barrel-less MP40 was seized in Sydney. We’re told the owner was just eager to get in early for the firearm amnesty.
Peter Overton stated on Nine News Sydney on June 21st that there were “250 million illegal firearms” in Australia. Now, while we put this down to a slip of the tongue, the most amusing thing was that Channel Nine immediately pulled the video and have not put it back on air on their Nine News Now website (probably because Overton feared being memed out of existence). Don’t worry, we screen capped it:
The Daily Telegraph also deliberately tried to blur the lines between legal and illegal firearms, by claiming there were nearly 1 million firearms in NSW, and that somehow it was a bad thing that they were owned by law abiding citizens.
The Courier Mail went for the “think of the children” angle with a very poorly researched article about firearm accidents in the USA, completely avoiding talking about gang involvement being largely responsible for claimed deaths of children 17 and under, and concentrating on making everyone’s favourite pretend professor Philip Alpers feel important.
Roland Browne also popped up out of irrelevance on ABC Radio to state that he was “appalled that firearms could be sold during the amnesty.” Yes, the horror of firearms being sold legally. From the same guy that refused to disclose the membership and financial background of Gun Control Australia when asked to provide said details at the Senate Inquiry in 2015.
No one actually cares what you think, Roland.
However, it was this claim from Channel 7 Adelaide which had to be the pick of the bunch. A day after a drive by shooting in Adelaide, Channel 7 claimed that 365 firearms were stolen in South Australia last year and that 113 were recovered by Police. Well, that’s interesting because we went out and dug up the number of legally owned firearms in SA:
Cmmr STEVENS: In terms of the breakdown over financial years I do not have that information available, but I can say that at this point, the establishment for Firearms Branch as at 30 June 2016 is 25 sworn and 22.03 nonsworn.
Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Thanks, commissioner. Minister, how many registered firearms owners are there in SA as of 30 June 2016?
The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS: Just for the sake of clarity, what was the question again?
Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: How many registered firearms owners in South Australia as of 30 June 2016?
The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS: This may not specifically answer your question but I think it will give you a pretty good indication. To 1 May 2016, I am advised there were 65,559 firearm licences and 300,510 total firearm registrations.
Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN:Was the last number 300,510?
The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS:Correct, as at 1 May 2016.
Bear in mind, those are also last year’s numbers.
Yes, quite the “epidemic” with not even a fraction of 1% of the total of all firearms being stolen, and even less of those are being recovered by Police. Really makes you appreciate the “effectiveness” of that firearm registry.
It wasn’t all the usual negativity and stupidity though. There was a positive acknowledgement of volunteer shooters efforts in the fight against feral cats in South Australia.
There was also this from the Border Mail which recapped the proposals that came out of the recent public land inquiry in Victoria:
Most surprising to me however, was Andrew Bolt’s position on the use of firearms for self-defence. You may recall the article we posted a few weeks ago where the Herald Sun praised an undercover Victoria Police officer for thwarting a carjacking with her handgun. Well, Bolt asked the question: why not the public?
Given Bolt’s recent dispatching of Antifa members that assaulted him outside a café in Carlton, it’s not hard to see where he stands on self-defence. The comments under the article are also overwhelmingly in support of self-defence.
As the weeks roll on, I’m sure there will be more of the same nonsense from the Australian Government via the media, desperately trying to sell this blatant admission of failure of our firearms laws as some kind of “fight against terror”, with no attention being paid to our borders.
That, and Malcolm Turnbull desperately needing a distraction from his tanking poll numbers.
Another wave of anti-firearm propaganda has been unleashed onto the Australian public in an attempt to sell the new National Firearms “Agreement”.
It began a couple of weeks ago with this paid for hit piece from The Guardian’s Paul Farrell, with Gun Control Australia attempting to target NIOA for importing a perfectly legal firearm. GCA’s angle was purely an import restrictions one, apportioning blame to Australian Border Force for GCA’s abysmal 18 month campaign to completely ban a legal shotgun based on pure lies.
The Gold Coast Bulletin then tried to deliberately conflate lawful firearm ownership with firearm crime on the Gold Coast and attempted to smear two politicians and a journalist who attended a pistol range organised by the good folk at Shooters Union. As usual, the “ooga booga NRA” reference just had to make an appearance to compensate for the sheer lack of journalism.
Roland Browne also popped his head up in between breaks from checking George Soros’ regular transfers into his bank account and his general sheer irrelevance, to hopelessly push the false 3D printing narrative to sway Police Minister Rene Hidding and the ongoing review into Tasmania Police’s dogs breakfast changes to the firearm laws.
The Courier Mail also decided to weigh in on the issue by trying to create alarmist hyperbole about an increase in firearm licences in the state of Queensland. The horror of more Australians’ deciding to do the right thing and apply for a firearm licence and not break the law. It’s Ragnarok I tell you!
The (anti) climax though had to be this “special” report by Channel 7 Perth claiming that over a thousand guns had been stolen last year in Western Australia. As usual, no actual evidence was provided and a sit down with a Police officer that may or may not have any firearms experience or knowledge, with a few scary videos of firearms that may or may not have been actually seized in WA, passed as an argument. Well, as we pointed out to Karl O’Callaghan a few weeks ago – what better way to make your case for the “success” of Australia’s firearm laws than alleged rampant firearm theft in the state with the strictest laws in the country. And as always, another sterling argument for the “usefulness” of a firearms registry running off the back of millions of dollars of tax payer money a year. Don’t worry they will track them down.
While all this is going on, Police in two separate jurisdictions are demanding semi-automatic self-loading rifles in order to combat “an increased risk of terrorism.”
Has anyone stopped to think what message this is sending? So in other words, apparently the National Firearms “Agreement” is so great that we’ve got out of control crime and an elevated terrorism threat, so we need to ensure the population is further disarmed and further dependent on an increasingly militarized police force which can’t keep us safe in the first place.
Nothing suss.
The real reason for this new wave of anti-firearm propaganda seems to be an attempt to influence the result of the upcoming Queensland election. Queensland has a real chance of breaking the National Firearms “Agreement” should it decide to reject the new NFA and Adler restriction. Hence, why the authoritarians are focusing their efforts mainly on QLD. Wouldn’t the irony be great if the state that was financially blackmailed into accepting the NFA in 1996 became the same state that told them to go shove it? It is in the realm of possibility should Queenslanders want it bad enough.
Of course, let’s not talk about citizens defending themselves as the lawlessness continues in Victoria. That would just be damn inconvenient and a further waste of Mr Soros’ money.
Firearm owners United is a grass-roots movement dedicated to uniting the Australian Shooting community, and to help provide a voice for their concerns.
