A rare moment of clarity on the firearm debate in Australia from Simon Breheny on Paul Murray Live on Friday:
.@Simon_Breheny: Most of the people who have gun licenses take gun ownership seriously – @TasLiberal are making a sensible decision regarding greater access to firearms.
MORE: https://t.co/BYPMKG0MCE #pmlive pic.twitter.com/6qLEchHUJV
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) March 2, 2018
Spot on.
The current debate in Australia is dominated by a biased, agenda driven media machine that is overwhelmingly anti-firearm, ranging from subtle bias to outright slander. Sure, they throw a bone every now and then with a somewhat balanced article but it is skewed toward anti-firearm as the default setting.
However as Breheny points out, they really aren’t very good at it. Continuing to use fake Professor Philip Alpers, paid liars such as Sam Lee and Roland Browne who don’t even know what end of a firearm the bullet comes out of and usually having no pro-firearm counter balance in the argument, is the general modus operandi. This also usually involves an obligatory mention of Port Arthur and a false binary comparison to the United States and voila, argument over.
They are, however, good at hoodwinking the uninformed and emotionally malleable section of Australia and that is exactly why the debate is always deliberately slanted towards the emotive side, at least as far as the media and government is concerned.
The non-stop articles we have seen from Newscorp and the loonies at the ABC and SBS this week over the NRA being a case in point – completely bias, relying on emotion and verging on outright defamatory. In other words, the usual standard we are used to.
We’ve also seen that in the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the same outlets over the Tasmanian Liberals proposals to sensibly alter the Firearms Act, and make minor changes to a non-legally binding agreement that does not make sense at all.
David Leyonhjelm, Bob Katter and Fraser Anning have been the lone voices of reason on the firearms debate in federal government. They’re unfortunately surrounded by a tri-partisan machine of status quo, pro-civilian disarmament robots who aren’t up for anything more than paying lip service to firearm owners in exchange for votes while standing on the graves of Port Arthur. This is also true at the state level however the balance is a little bit more in favour of firearm owners, and when I say little I mean being marginally better.
The mainstream firearm debate in Australia draws parallels to the current immigration debate from those on the pro Big Australia side – name calling, victimhood, emotional blackmail and false binary arguments being the order of the day.
A proper debate on firearms is needed and it needs to come back to the sensible centre without the sensationalist drivel we have seen in the past two weeks and indeed, the last 21 years.
The upside of the Tas ALP/Greens publicly wetting their pants about a few changes to firearms legislation (that have been available for weeks) is that they can’t complain now that the Govt didn’t get a mandate to follow through on it – the public were comprehensively made aware of the changes via the ALP/Green tantrum and then elected a Liberal majority Govt. over to you Mr Hodgman.