Another mass shooting tragedy has unfolded, this time in Darwin:
“Four men have been shot dead and a woman injured after a gunman went on a rampage across Darwin’s CBD before being arrested by Northern Territory police.
The 45-year-old suspect, who witnesses claim was armed with a pump-action shotgun, started his shooting spree at a motel in Woolner about 5:45pm before travelling in a ute to four other locations, including to the outskirts of the city and back again.
He was arrested after calling NT Police and trying to enter police headquarters in what Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said may have been an attempt to hand himself in.
The man was known to police, having been released on parole in January, and was wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet.
NT
Chief Minister Michael Gunner told a media conference the incident was not
believed to be terror related.”
So to sum up: a man known to Police, out on parole with a monitoring bracelet for previous offences and only released from prison a few months ago, obtains an illegal firearm and proceeds to shoot at least 5 people unchallenged.
Now obviously, more information will come to light in the coming days about what happened and there will no doubt be an inquiry, but until then this tragedy raises the usual questions.
On face value, there is no way this man able to obtain a firearm legally, let alone a cut down Category C pump action shotgun, as he is alleged to have used – a similar situation to Man Monis.
We already have apologists online claiming that it “doesn’t qualify for a mass shooting because it wasn’t in the one location” and that it was a revenge hit, etc. Philip Alpers is more than likely already nursing a back injury from moving the goal posts yet again.
Not only do we have a failure of firearm and self-defence laws, we also have yet another failure of the justice system and parole board.
All this has proven yet again is that illegal firearms are accessible to anyone in Australia who wants one, mass killings will continue to happen and Police can’t protect you from these incidents. If the offender’s motive was to enter a school or shopping centre and do the same he could have done it with impunity.
No doubt Gun Control Australia and the usual suspects are already on the phone to the Guardian and will be out in force over the next couple of days, using this as an emotional catalyst to try and bring in pre-drafted restrictions or legislation. How exactly they are going to spin this is the question, as it pretty much defeats all of their own arguments.
Won’t stop them or any politician from trying. We’ll keep an eye on this as it continues to develop.
Wearing a monitoring bracelet and the police took an hour to apprehend him, keeping in mind that he called them to come to him – the police didn’t stop him, he chose to stop.
How does a “Gold Standard Gun Law” fail with an “illegal Firearm” and “Unlicensed & Prohibited person”? Laws don’t stop criminals or criminal activities.. Time you become educated with the difference!
Education doesn’t rate particularly high with this writer, I suspect.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/us-should-adopt-australia-s-gun-laws-pyne?fbclid=IwAR0VR34rkpSzJwLRxE2FkOTs3lEikI4e6b5UpFEPvjRdLMyAHI6XMSzTCSA
Agreed 100 time over!
WTF are you on about with that headline “The AUSTRALIA’S “GOLD STANDARD GUN LAWS” FAIL AGAIN”
B/S.
Do you support trump a well?
A one off occurrence in Australia vs a daily occurrence in the US. You can keep your guns you redneck yank yokels.
Was there a shooting in Australia today ? No . Bet there was in good old America
It didn’t really fail, as in essence he used a 1000 year old sorn off shot gun. Not 217 automatic weapons out of a scene from Lethal Weapon 6 ! – In reality as a terrorist he is even more of a hopeless loser, as he probably would have been more effective with a machetti and a chainsaw! Noting clearly the monitor bracelets seem to have been a tad of a failure… In saying all of the above, as the world police, full of Jews that escaped government genocide, the concept of keeping your own personal supply of weapons doesn’t seem so odd.
Sorry one more comment, the Chief Ministers name is somewhat inconvenient isn’t it.
You morons have schools being shot in every week… we here in Australia don’t even bat an eyelid anymore when the land of the slaughter has another child being murdered when they should be getting an education.. and don’t get me started on your gang culture with the homies. And their.machine guns… you have one fkd up.country.. focus on the United States of gunfire…
Scott
They fail because one purpose of our Gun Laws here in Australia is to keep criminals from getting and using guns. Since this man was a criminal, had been in jail, was on parole he the wouldn’t allow someone like him to own a gun. Yet despite this he was able to obtain a firearm which he used for criminal purposes. So in this case as well as others our Gun Laws failed.
Any person with a brain would know you can never fully stop the access to illegal firearms no matter what country or law. If australia had gun laws like the USA there would be a bigger chance of firearms falling into the wrong hands. The laws here have worked to a degree and I support those laws. We are allowed to own guns here but the laws do make it a lot harder to access.
You say you support current gun laws in Australia. It follows that you don’t support toughening those laws. Is it your position that you favour neither strengthening nor loosening our gun laws? If this is the case, then you would be against making gun laws tougher as a result of this kind of event. Is this true?
The pro-gun lobby will grab at any isolated incident, grab any straw, to support irrational thinking. Of course, there will be isolated incidents; but what we don’t have are regular mass shootings, with many victims killed and wounded, perpetrated by gunmen carrying assault weapons.
Last year (2018) the US had 108 shooting attacks in schools alone. This year, a tweet from a Sheriffs office advised people not to be concerned if they hear gunshots from a local school as their officers were using blanks in a student training exercise at the school. A mother told a story about her 9 year old daughter who had met a new friend at school, the new friend comforted her when she was having a panic attack during Active Shooter training at school.
Our children have never heard of Active Shooter training. 108 shootings at schools, more than one a day, and you dare compare Australia to yourselves after one tragic event of an adult shooting people in a jealous rage?
We never said we had no gun issues. But you Americans are so ignorant that rather than even temporarily reducing gun availability to allow your community to address the issues that lead to gun violence, at least try to reduce the numbers, you think that a modern intelligent response is to do untold damage to entire generations by having cops at schools shooting blanks at students and training pre-school children how to use a bullet proof blanket? That’s the best solution? Not even bright enough to look at reducing the number of guns sold without licence and background checks?
Wow, you don’t even realise the rest of the World cry’s and feels sad for you when you ignore the obvious and you make ridiculous comments to justify your stupidity. The right to bear arms to form a militia against an unjust government. Now that your gun lobby money and taxes have allowed your military to develop advanced weaponry, I can’t wait to see how far across the Whitehouse lawn your militia gets before being taken down when you attempt that uprising. Another brilliant argument used in your attempts to pretend you have gun violence under control.
No wonder all you are left with is stories like this one, again not realising how sad and confused the rest of the world is when you can’t even see how pathetic these attempts are. Wake up America, or at least stop reporting your daily gun violence. It’s just too frustrating to see. Can you imagine how ridiculous you look standing there after one event in Australia going “See, it’s not our gun laws”? Your embarrassing yourselves.
Can you cite your source of your 108 shootings claim?
‘NPR reporters looked into the 235 shootings reported by the U.S. Department of Education and were only able to confirm 11 of them.’
https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/02/20/the-us-has-the-most-mass-shootings-and-other-bogus-gun-research/
31 women murdered in Australia. https://www.mamamia.com.au/women-murdered-in-2018/
Do you think any of them should have been able to defend themselves with a gun? I do, and all of them.
Do you see some morality in these women being unarmed and murdered? I don’t.
This is a pathetic piece from a group in a country that has had 80 mass shootings THIS YEAR compared to a country that’s had ONE mass shooting in 23 YEARS!
What is failing is not the gun laws, as much as you would like them to be because it justifies your twisted love for a lethal weapon, but the overworked & excessively understaffed law enforcement of Australia.
Which multiple shooting are you claiming was the only one in the last 23 years, the 4 shot in Darwin in June or the 7 shot in Margaret River in March? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-11/seven-people-found-dead-in-margaret-river-murder-suicide/9751482
Making up your own facts doesn’t enhance your argument or credibility.
Couldn’t disagree more. Our gun laws didn’t fail anyone here. He broke the gun laws, meaning the gun laws are pretty much irrelevant. In fact, it’s because of our good gun laws that he only had access to the guns he did, not more lethal firearms.
The only failure here was by the Police and Prison system, that he wasn’t monitored closer or refused parole. But the bottom line is no amount of laws can prevent people committing horrible acts. Take away our guns and people will kill with knives (UK), give us more guns, people will kill with more guns (US). The only difference is our gun laws meant this is the first mass shooting in decades, and a much smaller number of people died than in recent shootings in the US.
‘The only difference is our gun laws meant this is the first mass shooting in decades.’ Except his one –
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-11/katrina-miles-with-her-four-children/9753454
And here is another 26 mass murders since 1996, including using knives and fire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia
You correctly understand that ‘the bottom line is no amount of laws can prevent people committing horrible acts.’ Yet you incorrectly think, and contradict yourself, by writing that that disarming innocent Australians is good..
Every innocent Australian has the right to defend him or herself with whatever means are required, including firearms.
Do you think there is some sort of morality in being unarmed and murdered, and possibly raped in the process?
None of the victims could defend themselves.
Most Australians think it is morally superior to be murdered than to carry a gun.
All Australians should be able to defend themselves, not just the police.
Anti gun zealots always make a basic mistake, you never ask what causes mass murders? to know that you need to look at what has changed since the 1950s and earlier, when mass murders were vanishingly rare – it certainly isn’t availability of firearms in the US, they were easier to get then than now.
So what has changed and in pursuit of your purported goal of ending mass murders are you really prepared to do the work (hint, the answer is “not a hope”) –
1. The virtual end of organised religion, in the 50s attendence at a church was routine, aside from believing a divine being had told you “thou shalt not kill”, it also made you part of a community, something universally lacking from the lives of mass murderers.
2. Huge decline in marriage rates, few mass murderers have a partner. A partner gives you a focal point outside your own life.
3. No fault divorce. the ability of fathers to leave easily or mothers to toss them out means that there has been a huge surge in boys growing up without a strong male role model and no father in their life is another almost universal feature of mass murderers.
So, do you REALLY want to end mass murders, are you prepared to accept a reintroduction of organised religion into schools and compulsory sunday school/church attendence for all?
Laws that criminalise sex before marriage (as an incentive to marry).
No divorce.
or are we going to pretend that going after the tools will help?
As an aside, I’m an athiest and don’t want any of the above, but then I’m not frantically virtue signalling at the expense of leaving the general public at the mercy of criminals.