ACT Police Minister Mick Gentleman, the same Labor genius who came up with a law to make drive by shootings illegal, has decided to introduce legislation to restrict magazine capacity on centrefire bolt action rifles to ten rounds and “tighten up” on storage laws.
The Canberra Times reports:
“Police Minister Mick Gentleman will introduce laws to tighten up regulation around how guns are stored in the ACT when the Legislative Assembly sits this week.
The draft legislation will require licensees with more than 10 category A or B firearms to store them in a metal, concrete or brick safe. Currently, owners of weapons in that category could store their gun in a container made of hard wood, regardless of how many guns they owned.
The bill will also outlaw knifes or blades that are disguised as another item, like credit cards. It will ban centre-fire rifle magazines with capacity for more than 10 rounds.
A spokesman for the minister said the draft bill had been developed in consultation with ACT Policing and gun owners”
Gun owners were consulted? Really? Certainly not us. Must have been some of that “behind the scenes” consultation we keep hearing about.
The latest statistics available show that firearm ownership in the ACT is approaching 20,000 legally owned firearms. In 2015, there were only 51 offences with firearms recorded and surprise surprise, nearly all of them with illegal firearms. Theft statistics show that between 2008 and 2011 only 65 firearms were stolen in the ACT. Yes, run for the hills everyone.
So, not even 0.01% of all legally owned firearms used in crime in the ACT but that’s apparently justification enough for Mick Gentleman to come down on law abiding firearm owners? And more importantly – what correlation or relevance does magazine capacity have to do with any of this?
Gentleman has absolutely no basis or evidence to bring this in and he knows it. Make no mistake about what this is, it is purely Gentleman exploiting an opportunity to continue a pre-defined agenda. Gentleman knows he also can’t stop the spate of shootings with illegal firearms because he doesn’t have the courage and it is not his true intention to begin with. Hegelian Dialect-Collective Punishment formula right on cue.
It’s also really not surprising in the Labor/Greens authoritarian cesspool that is the ACT. Tuck it in Mick, your agenda is showing.
It’s also more from the death by a thousand cuts playbook – alarm systems for firearm owners drive up cost, not to mention provide no security benefit whatsoever. Good luck getting already overstretched Police to respond to an alarm on time – ask Barry’s Firearms in Western Australia about that. Or you can see how many non-firearm offences ACT Police are currently dealing with for yourself, then add the expectation of responding to potential firearm theft alarms on top of that. Good luck.
FOU is currently investigating this further and we have since learned that the ACT Firearms Consultation Committee were allegedly involved in this latest piece of legislation. As to what extent they were involved or what objections they raised, we do not know at this stage. ACT firearm owners who wish to raise their concerns about this latest proposal would be best advised to contact the members of the FCC and find out what exactly they are doing about this, if anything.
You also should contact Mick Gentleman and ask him why he continues to completely undeserving of his surname.
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