“Semi-semi-automatic” – Gun Control Australia and David Shoebridge hit peak desperation over Verney-Carron speedline

The memes write themselves: From their ABC:

“Mr Casagrande said when the Australian Federal Police inspected the gun, instead of giving it a classification they listed it in a special schedule of prohibited items, banned from importation into Australia.

“Things like machine guns, mortars, any of those military-type weapons that are actually used in war … they can’t come in under any consideration whatsoever,” he said. Mr Casagrande applied for a judicial review in the Federal Court and is awaiting the judgment.

He believes the AFP got it wrong, that the Veloce is a typical lever-action shotgun and should be classified as a category B firearm, one of the two least-restrictive categories.

It (hilariously) continues:

Gun control advocates disagree. They say the Veloce is a dangerous new style of “rapid-fire” gun. Gun Control Australia chair Samantha Lee says it fires faster than typical category A and B lever or bolt-action firearms.

“With this particular firearm the concern is the rapid-fire mechanism. The ability for cartridges to be loaded at a very quick capacity,” she said. It’s been described as like a semi-automatic firearm. It’s quite a different mechanism to what’s been imported into Australia before.”

But far more troubling, according to Ms Lee, is that a rifle version of the shotgun is already available in Australia as a category B gun. It is called the Verney-Carron Speedline.

“We’ll be meeting with the Federal Justice Minister this week and we’ll be raising this issue, our concerns about the import of rapid-style firearms into this country,” she said. Any rapid-style semi-automatic type firearm should not be available to recreational hunters. Any firearm that is rapid style should be at its highest category possible — a category C or D.”

New South Wales Greens MP and gun control advocate David Shoebridge said the guns potentially needed their own unique category.

“This is effectively a new category of weapon, a new dangerous category that a number of firearms experts have described as a semi-semi-automatic weapon, with a high rate of fire. It doesn’t fit neatly into any of our current categories,” he said.

Mr Shoebridge said the Verney-Carron Speedline and Veloce firearms are a step up from the controversial Adler lever-action gun. And he does not understand how the Speedline has achieved a category B rating.

“This weapon though has an even more rapid rate of fire action. It’s designed for an extremely rapid cycling through of shot after shot, after shot, after shot,” he said.”

You can go read the rest for yourself but you get the drift. The same, tired old non-outrage from Shoebridge and Lee.

Gun Control Australia have tried the exact same technique with the Adler, the Pardus and now the Verney-Carron: pick a random firearm, ascribe some arbitrary and non-defined adjectives to it, whinge about how it circumvents the non-legally binding national firearms agreement and then use it as an excuse for more bans.

The ABC also didn’t run this on their social media threads for obvious reasons.

There are several obvious reasons for this latest salvo from Gun Control Australia:

– Trying to drum up as much hysteria as they can in regard to the Tasmanian Firearm Proposals which are open for public comment from 2^nd June 2018.

– Are upset about the relationship with GCA Non-Executive Director Piers Grove and the Betoota Advocate/Three Rivers being made public last week.

– Was also cynically timed to coincide with the funerals of the victims of the Osmington mass shooting for maximum emotive value, because grave standing is Gun Control Australia’s standard modus operandi – because a mass shooting in the state with the strictest laws in the country really helps your case for more?

They are also reeling from constant daily examples of our gun laws being proven useless, particularly when criminals in Melbourne are now using grenades.

This also goes to show what a monumental waste of time the firearm classification process is. It would be a far better approach to remove the licence categories completely for those already licenced.

Considering the absolute debacle that Australian Border Force and Peter Dutton had with the Riverman OAF, it would be wise for them not to repeat it.

Funny also what the Australian Federal Police said three years ago about the Adler:

The usual consistent inconsistency from our national law enforcement agencies pertaining to firearms. How is the Verney-Carron any different? How does a firearm that requires manual chambering of a round get anywhere near the definition of a semi-automatic?

An also pressing question is: on a matter currently before the Federal Court, a commercially uninvolved prohibition activist organisation gets a face-to-face meeting with a Federal Minister?

But above all, what the hell is a “semi-semi-automatic?”

Guess all those Category B centrefire bolt actions in circulation might have to be reclassified as semi-semi-automatics:

I actually agree with Shoebridge: the non-legally binding national firearms agreement has got to go. It serves no purpose.

It’s not as if three lawyers working for an anti-firearm lobby would know that though.