If “Rambo Culture” wasn’t enough, Sam Lee was at it again in the Herald Sun pushing for more storage requirements for firearm dealers:
“POLICE should urgently check how Victorian gun dealers are storing firearms, a national gun control group says.
Following Monday’s firearms theft from a Thornbury gun dealer, the head of Gun Control Australia is pushing for a legal requirement that storage units be made of high-grade steel and fitted with an alarm linked to a security firm.
Sam Lee also told the Herald Sun new laws were needed under which the licence of a gun dealer or gun owner who breached storage rules would be immediately suspended.
GCA says that according to data it obtained under Freedom of Information, Victoria was the state in which the most firearms were stolen in 2013-15: 1451 weapons were taken.”
The usual from Sam Lee.
It seems the Herald Sun did their research and actually googled what the gun laws are in this article. That doesn’t mean they understand them, and only comes after months of us prodding them. Better late than never I guess.
Dealers are already required to have an alarm in their store, among a slew of other measures required to comply with the strict licence conditions.
Further, the security industry in Victoria is currently the target of disarmament of Labor’s new firearm law proposals, with a plan to disarm up to 90% of security companies. I wonder what that will do for already vulnerable businesses and crooks who are running the streets?
This is classic GCA opportunism and as usual, Lee and Roland Browne have no clue what they’re talking about but that’s the rule, not the exception.
Putting more requirements on dealers is just lazy victim blaming and political opportunist nonsense. It’s also anti-jobs and anti-business but that’s Labor. If any other business is targeted by criminals we blame the criminals, but because this is Australia and it’s a gun store, ideological screeching about guns trumps logic apparently.
And as Daniel Young of the SFFP has pointed out, the greatest security in the world would be negated by a gun to the victims’ head. This is what happened at O’Reillys and even happened on an Australian Navy ship in Darwin were firearms were stolen from the ship’s armoury.
As we said previously, the easiest solution to prevent dealers being targeted is to arm them. Firearm dealers being armed were commonplace before 1996 (although not all of them were). Its guaranteed that this would not have even been tried had O’Reilly’s been carrying
Reminder of how gun store robberies are dealt with in the US:
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Victoria Police have their hands full with the crime wave at the moment. Their focus should be on apprehending and punishing the perpetrators of this crime, not punishing a legitimate business for being the victim of crime.
The only alarm we recommend is a permanent one for anything coming out of Sam Lee or Roland Browne’s mouth.
We don’t envy anyone who wants that job.
According to the Age, in Mid 2014 there was 1 gun for every 9 people in Victoria –
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/one-gun-for-every-nine-people-in-victoria-20140630-zsr0f.html
Victoria Police says there are more than 690,000 firearms registered in the state.
To keep it simple lets call it just legally owned firearms (they have no count of the criminal ones).
So, over the 3 year period that the duplicitous clown mentions, 1451 weapons were stolen ie 483.6 (round up to 484) per year or, a 0.07% theft rate per year.
No surprise she ran with the number and stretched it over 3 years rather than just mentioning the percentage.
Given Victoria Polices issues with losing firearms, it would be interesting to compare their loss rate/how many they have to that of the “rambos” out in the badlands of Vic.