Observing the social and mainstream media attack on gun owners this past week, consistent patterns of behaviour that most gun owners in Australia are accustomed to have re-emerged.
The Australian media’s hate campaign against the NRA, while completely ignoring the now established facts that the Broward County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI both failed numerous times to prevent the preventable, at the forefront.
Further examples being this sophist drivel from Caroline Overington in The Australian, or this from The Bendigo Advertiser. Apparently, Americans are supposed to not only know where Bendigo is, but care for what high school students in Bendigo think of their firearm laws.
Some Australians’ weighing in on America’s “arms race” are in their own arms race – to establish the most likes, shares and dopamine from vacuous and uninformed opinions on firearms and related issues. Their main battle cry has been “why don’t you adopt Australia’s gun laws?” or a derivative thereof.
Riddle me this – how many non-firearm owning Australians can honestly say they know what our gun laws are? How many people have actually studied the statistics? How many people actually know what the gun laws are in the United States or anything reasonable about their culture and socioeconomic issues?
The answer – many have absolutely no clue.
Firearms aren’t a Tier 1 issue for most people in Australia politically speaking for a number of valid reasons, so it’s understandable that many are indifferent or apathetic. However, ultracrepidarianism seems to be the rule, not the exception when it comes to journalists, social media and indeed, the George Soros-funded clowns at Gun Control Australia.
If you do not know what Australia’s firearms laws are that’s fine, but how can you have a strong opinion on them if you don’t know what they are?
For example, we often hear that we “banned automatic and semi-automatic firearms in 1996” which is patently false. Automatic firearms were banned way back on the mainland in the 1930’s and the only state to have them was Tasmania under strict conditions until 1996, despite them not being used in crime. Semi-automatic longarms were never banned – they were put into Category D along with the infamous 7-shot Adler, and completely nonsensical, arbitrary restrictions placed on them. Semi-auto handguns are legal in Category H and have similar nonsensical, authoritarian laws governing them.
Meanwhile, over in New Zealand you can get these “evil, high powered machines of death” on the lowest level of firearm licence and no mass shootings there in 21 years:
Another example is the effect the 1996 laws supposedly had, often served up as a simple binary argument with no real investigation. We had a 46% decrease in the firearm death rate from 1980 to 1996 independent of law changes but this is always spurned in favour of Howard worship:
There’s also the ranting about the US and it’s gun laws and gun culture. You’ll find the average Australians’ view point is that the 2nd amendment is this vast, consistently applied law right across the US and there’s little to no legal variance at the federal, state or county level. Of course, that is incorrect.
However, in the US, there’s been a 49% decrease in the per capita homicide rate since 1980 despite record levels of firearms and concealed carry holders:
There’s very little investigation of those two points. They require it.
Sure, the Australian media has played a huge part in ensuring people don’t even know these facts because (a) they’ve reduced the debate to a simplistic, binary representation of the issue, much like the general comparison of the United States and Australia and (b) they’re paid to do exactly that. In the age of the internet with a variety of perspectives and information however, that excuse is becoming moot.
As for the media, when it comes to Australia’s gun laws, you’ll generally find journos have nothing more than their obligatory Googling of Australia’s gun laws for the result of two lines in an article before it hits their sub-editor, and that’s if you’re lucky. That’s generally after 5 paragraphs of opinion dressed up as fact, moralising about America and throwbacks to Port Arthur ad nauseum.
So if you’re a complete newbie and know nothing about Australia’s gun laws, then before you read them ask yourself three basic questions:
- Do you think it’s reasonable and evidence based to ban items on what they look like but not how they function?
- Do you think it’s reasonable and evidence based to classify a paintball marker as a firearm and require a licence and storage for them?
- Do you think it’s fair to ban non-lethal self-defence items such as pepper spray and tasers?
These are just three of numerous potential examples, but if you answered no to all or any of the above, then you’ll likely agree in some way that Australia’s gun laws are not very good.
Because generally speaking they are complete bureaucratic, authoritarian nonsense that gives good people a hard time and bad people a free ride.
If you don’t know what Australia’s firearms laws are or don’t want to familiarise yourself with them, then that’s fine and you are, of course, free to have your own opinion on them. However, I or anyone else in the firearm community don’t have to take it seriously, as it really contributes nothing at all to the debate among the existing noise already out there.
There’s only so many times you can post the same vapid monologue from a number of late night television comedians with exactly the same opinions, before I decide not to bother.
I’m so sick of the mainstream media spreading propaganda and lies. There is no such thing as investigative journalism anymore. They are bought and paid for just like our corrupt polititians. They are UN prostitutes who are desparately trying to disarm the people. No dictator can successfully take over a nation while the people are armed. Think critically about any mass shooting. Most likely it is a false flag with crisis actors. Look at Robbie Parker from Sandy Hook. His daughter had supposedly just been shot, yet he walks up to the press confernce laughing. These are not the actions of a grieving father. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GO1jRnmh68&t=3s
The adler is a cat b.5 gun not cat d
The 7 shot Adler is a Cat D as we said in the article.
Yes – and the crowning insanity is demonstrated by the least penetrative thought: How do shots six and seven have any more ‘dangerosity’ than shots one through five … which must be fired prior to the last two?