Desperados: AMF, GCA and David Shoebridge

Just when we thought it couldn’t get any lower.

The Herald Sun, at the behest of their Alannah and Madeline Foundation connected board members,  released a hitpiece targeting Shooters and Fishers MP Daniel Young claiming he had been “caught” (despite it being on his fb page the whole time he was there) misusing public funds to fund a shooting “junket” in the United States.

Yes, how dare a democratically elected MP from the SHOOTERS and Fishers Party undertake a research trip into firearms to better serve his constituency.

As expected the Alannah and Madeline Foundation, who are totally a charity and totally aren’t Australia’s largest gun control lobby group, had CEO Lesley Podesta weigh in with the usual emotive, buzzword filled response. Podesta now seems to have assumed spokesperson duties after John Bertrand told us he had his feelings hurt by firearm owners retorting their claims back in April. Again the token US reference card was played, completely ignorant of the futility of comparison and the facts surrounding such. Podesta obviously taking her cues from Roland Browne to “keep emotion in the debate” after a previous rant in the Advertiser.

The Herald really outdid themselves with this piece of agitprop, headlined with their constant use of their favourite neurolinguistics gun control buzzword, “semi-automatic”, which has become the go to NLP phrase to demonise firearms in Australia. Strangely enough, AMF, GCA and Shoebridge were completely silent on the source of this illegally acquired semi-automatic SKK thanks to footage of an Armaguard robbery in Sydney being released last week. Semi-auto rifles have no place in society – for the law abiding. There you go, fixed it for you Lesley.

From where I sit, this is the latest in a string of increasingly desperate plays from the anti-gun crowd to maintain the fear as their narrative continues to fall apart, after a string of embarrassments and the NFA review draws near.

This latest stunt comes off the back of David Shoebridge’s desperate attempt to hatchet the shooting community, this time going after Shooting Stuff Australia over a youtube video by writing to NSW Police Commissioner Anthony Scipione, who has no jurisdiction over the Queensland based SSA. This is not the first time Shoebridge has called the Police to police Youtube, when he previously went after The Sydney Militia over a completely legal firearm review. We were since told by TSM himself that NSWPOL were completely unhappy about a Greens MP wasting their time with a firearms inspection.

Ah Shoebridge. Who complains Mike Baird is creating a Police state in NSW but doesn’t think twice when he wants said Police state to do his bidding. Nothing to see here.

Further, no matter where you sit on the SSA issue (I personally didn’t have a problem with it), it’s really an example of how irrelevant Shoebridge is becoming, with even comments from his own supporters on his own FB page expressing their dislike of his antics. You know it’s bad when even your own party doesn’t like you. Which might explain why NSW Greens are in such disarray right now. Although we do know now that they have a leak inside the NSWFAR.

What we have seen by this latest play here is that the Alannah and Madeline Foundation have essentially outed themselves for what we’ve always known them to be: a gun control lobby group hiding behind its proper charitable work, using dead children to push it’s narrative and as it’s battle cry. Yet, they remain silent on the issue of their corporate donors and said sources, much like Gun Control Australia are about their offshore financiers.

Greens MP Greg Barber’s two cent chip in at the end of the article genuinely brought the LOL’s for myself, as it’s not as if Sarah Hanson Young generating ‘junket’ bills of over $1.1 million or Scott Ludlam spending $11k to charter a private jet to a protest in WA, resemble any misuse of public funds on the Greens behalf.

Overall, the increasing desperation from the anti-gun crowd shows to me that the facts cannot be stopped and that LAFO’s recent efforts are really starting to have an effect on the previous one-way traffic of the anti-gun crowd’s grip on the public consciousness.

Is there a long way to go? No doubt.
Will GCA/Greens/AMF stop coming? Nope.
Do they play the long game? Of course.
Will they get even more and more outlandish in their stunts? Yup.
Should we rest easy now and drop our guard? Absolutely not.

Should we instead continue to put the pressure on and keep fighting the good fight, given our recent response to the Tasmania Police proposal?

Yes. Yes. And yes.