Right on cue, a slew of journalists, politicians and hack lobbyists have used the murder of two teenage children in Sydney as an opportunity to shill for “muh more gun laws”:
“The shooting followed an ongoing divorce and custody dispute between Mr Edwards, 68, and his estranged wife Olga, 36, a north shore solicitor.
It is understood Ms Edwards and the two young teenagers had left the former family home in Normanhurst, where Mr Edwards took his life last Thursday, and were living in hiding in a rented house in West Pennant Hills. Last week police confirmed there were no current Apprehended Violence Orders against Edwards in place, however, he had been subject to an AVO more than a decade ago.
In order to obtain a gun licence in NSW a person must not have been subject to
an AVO within the past 10 years. The Herald understands the 10-year anniversary of the historic AVO against Edwards had only just passed when he successfully applied for a firearms licence last year.”
Then the destroyer of Sydney herself weighed in:
This was after Nick O’Malley slyly inferred that the SSAA were the ones responsible for pushing approve on the killer’s licence:
“The NSW Firearms Registry informed the Ku-Ring-Gai Pistols Club in January last year that under no circumstances should John Edwards, who shot dead his two children on Thursday night, be given access to a firearm, an official from the club has told Fairfax Media.
Later Edwards was able to join the St Mary’s Indoor Shooting Centre, owned by the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia, the country’s largest and most powerful gun lobby. He then obtained a firearms licence and permit before legally buying his weapons.”
O’Malley is a repeat offender when it comes to misrepresenting anything to do with firearms. What would you expect from a journo who also used an interview with a fake professor and two Gun Control Australia lobbyists? But balance and all that.
The question no-one wants to answer: If Edwards was already flagged by NSWFAR after being rejected by one pistol club and was already a known concern to NSW Police because of a past AVO, then why did they approve his licence and approve two separate PTA’s for a handgun?
Acquiring a handgun in NSW legally is already a nigh on 12-month process of red tape, hoop jumping and then some more red tape. Or you could cut out the middleman and go and get yourself a Golden Gun, or order a Glock directly through a post office.
This is nothing to do at all with St Mary’s Pistol Club.
If someone is that determined to go through that long and arduous a process just to commit that kind of atrocity, it tells you it was pre-meditated and that if he was denied a licence he purely would have chosen other means.
No law would have stopped it.
We all know that we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if it was any other method. We certainly didn’t when Luke Batty was murdered with a cricket bat, or when Darcey Freeman was thrown off the West Gate Bridge, when a mother drowned her kids in a Wyndham Vale lake or when 8 children were butchered by their mother with a kitchen knife in Cairns in 2014.
If Man Monis can source an illegal pump action shotgun on the streets of Sydney for $570 and Curtis Cheng’s killer can do likewise with a revolver, then it’s a completely absurd statement to think that “muh tightening the laws” will do anything except really annoy 13,025 Cat H licence holders who had nothing to do with it.
If you missed the point, then I’ll spell it out: if there is anyone to blame for this sordid affair then it is NSWFAR and NSW Police for approving his licence.
Which leads us to the ultimate question: why are we spending millions on a firearm registry if they are making decisions like this, among all their past indiscretions? Even more valid a question considering NSWFAR just shed a whole heap of jobs.
Note to Troy Grant: don’t even think about supporting any changes to the law, because we will guarantee it will be the end of the already crumbling Nationals at the 2019 NSW election.
Good article FOU!
They certainly are really good at writing articles! I wish I knew about this site years ago. People should share their articles so as get the truth out there so as to cut through the filthy lies of the mainstream media. This site is like some detox program… That’s why this site should be more well known! FOU should get interviews on radio and TV (or discuss matters with various organizations) so that clear, logical arguments are brought forward, rather than blaming law abiding citizens all the time. FOU have an obvious talent — SMART PEOPLE NEED TO BE HEARD!
About the most charitable thing one can say by way of giving the benefit of doubt, is that between NSWFAR and NSW Police, someone was asleep on the job.
How can the NSW government be cutting staff at the FAR yet expect the FAR to efficiently handle the extra workload that will come from requiring approval from former partners before gun licence applications are approved?
Over at the SFFP website, Robert Borsak says 30 FAR jobs are going. What is that as a percentage of the overall staff numbers?
It’s not that I approve of the existence of the FAR, I’m just trying to figure out what the government is trying to do.
Who knows, maybe some in the government want to reduce the range of firearms needing to be registered or even abolish the FAR entirely? I don’t want to get my hopes up but you don’t usually cut back on a part of the machinery of government you want to give more powers to.
Paul wrote:
“About the most charitable thing one can say by way of giving the benefit of doubt, is that between NSWFAR and NSW Police, someone was asleep on the job.”
Absolutely. Just for lolz, what would be the least charitable thing that could be said?
from the sound of it, it looks like they are trying to save money with the added bonus of increasing the delay and stuffing around factor of dealing with firearms branch, they just didn’t think it through and are now falling back on the time honoured tactic of shifting the blame.
@Politenessman
You’re probably right about the reasons for the cutback of FAR staff.
Still, I wonder how much they can cut back before the FAR becomes so inefficient that police start turning up at the homes of people who don’t even have a gun licence.