This article has some huge issues.
As mentioned already, the type of gun matters a lot. No mention of how many are semi auto, but I am guessing it won’t be many.
Also no accounting for population growth over the last 30 years as a factor in total gun numbers.
This paragraph was absolutely journalistic garbage.
“NSW firearm registry data shows that in Sydney there are more than 70 individuals who own more than 100 firearms, including one person who owns 385 guns. The register notes that this is not a collector or a dealer.”
Clearly this is a hobby/interest and the person is a collector with too much time and money (good for them I guess). What they don’t have is a “collectors” licence that effectively means they cannot ever use their guns. A licenced collector will usually have inoperable firearms on display (think museum).
All that said, the SSAA and others do have a higher than normal concentration of right wing nuts that continuously lobby the government to weaken our excellent (imo) gun laws. It’s why I stopped giving them any of my money.
As mentioned already, the type of gun matters a lot. Not mention of how many are semi auto, but I am guessing it won’t be many.
As far as I’m aware, semi-auto guns are illegal to own, aren’t they?
You can get them with the right licence. It’s only for professional hunters I believe but I have never looked into details. They are rightfully much harder to get than a typical class A/B licence.
Category C (semi auto .22LR + miss-categorised shotguns) is for farmers.
Category D (centre-fire semi auto + miss-categorised shotguns) is for specialist pest controllers.Professional hunters tend to use Category B (manually cycled bolt/lever/pump centre-fire).
You’re not wrong, I just wanted to add more info.
There’d be like a thousand people that qualify in the entire country for a real Category D.
Number of firearms is not a useful metric. The ban had an exemption for bolt-actions used for farming.
When grandma has a handgun for catching the bus, there’s a problem.
The Australian gun lobby is comparatively the size of the NRA. The only reason we don’t hear as much is because culturally they have much higher hill to climb.
Realistically though the increased ownership are unlikely to be all farmers. And that’s a massive concern. Because the kind of person who wants a gun in Australia is generally the kind of person who shouldn’t have one.
I’m not really sure what “winning” in this picture is. I wasn’t aware there was a contest going on about this topic. I remember having a discussion with someone on this site a few months about gun control, my perspective mostly boiled down to “I don’t think about guns much”. I do remember being surprised that even after the laws coming into WA that it was still going to be possible to have handguns in suburbia - I thought they needed to be kept at the shooting club.
In May a group of national shooting bodies met in the Australian capital to discuss how best to respond to what they describe as a “growing attack” on firearm users, and the need for a unified position. The group met again in late July.
The lobby is alarmed especially by new firearms laws introduced in Western Australia, which have – among other measures – limited the number of guns that an individual licence holder can own.
If five guns isn’t enough for you in suburbia (rural people can have more), I’m not really sure you’re the sort of person I want to see licensed to own firearms in the first place.
“Politicians are going to pay attention because politicians respect numbers, and the last thing they want to do is to irritate big blocks of people.”
Yeah - the number of firearms owners is totally dwarfed by the majority of people who are happy that guns/shootings aren’t an everyday thing in Australia. You want to see a block of irritated people, start changing this fact.
I mean most families don’t need more than one car, but some people like to buy lots of them.
I grew up rural and it was very rare to see a farm with more than five guns, most would never “need” more than two. If someone registers and properly stores a large collection through legal channels then I have trouble taking issue with it regardless of their location. Most rifle ranges are in or near cities and even if you were aiming for a single arm per modern calibre, you are talking about dozens of guns.
@Nath When I lived on a property out bush, we had a rifle and two shotguns (one newish, one legacy). They served us well. I learned to shoot the rifle at home, the shotgun at the old man’s gun club. Loved the old side-by-side shotty.
When I moved to the big smoke, I had zero interest in having any sort of firearm. In my security job, I had to carry a pistol and it occasionally went home with me between shifts; I hated having it there, even though it was secure.
There’s a place for firearms, and it’s not in a city or town.
You took it home?!? And that is the done thing? Do they pay you to install a handgun safe??? Pistols are scary, it’s too easy to change your line of fire.
It was the done thing at the time, if you squinted sideways at the regulations (which my boss did when it suited him). It was always unloaded before I walked inside and the bullets kept separate from the pistol until I walked back out the next night.
Our kids never even got a look at it. Dirty great S&W .357 magnum — nobody but me was going to get anywhere near it!
I can’t help but start guessing at the sort of security job this was,
My first thought was as personal security to some politician, maybe even Big Brows Howard himself! Kind of relevant to the article.
But i reckon your job must really have been driving the Armaguard, (money trucks), to and from the banks and casinos, etc.
In which case, wheres the AMA?
Did any drongos ever try a heist?
Neither. Armed security, regularly at an apartment block, irregularly at various offices, manufacturing plants, a Mercedes-Benz establishment, and lots of uniformed but unarmed jobs around the place.
It was an interesting job, but when one of my workmates was shot when he walked into a drug deal one night while doing his rounds (in the apartment block), my wife got twitchy so I gave it up.
That’s some heavy shit man!
I suppose thats an understandable position for your wife to have taken. Sorry about your workmate.
But, damn! I was so sure it was Armaguard.
Didn’t even know armed security guards for buildings/premises was a thing in Aus. But then i don’t tend to hang around fancy places when they’re closed to see.
I still reckon theres an IAMA in this.
Remember when when the NRA promised $20m in political donations to OneNation if they promised to oppose Australian gun control? What do you think they did with all that cash?
remember when it was found the NRA was backed by Russia?
This is just another example of Russian aggression against the democratic west
I’m not gonna deny foreign meddling exists but don’t underestimate the “democratic West”'s ability to shoot itself in the foot. Russia (or whoever) might encourage the errors its perceived foes make, but it’s not forcing anyone to commit those errors in the first place.
We had an attempted home invasion in our street in the wee hours of Saturday morning.
The good news is that they didn’t get inside; The other good news is that everyone in the street has cameras and we all have extensive footage of the car and the individuals.
The bad news is that the car we saw on the cameras was stolen and the police can’t do anything due to lack of evidence.
In answer to the question that every Fascist is asking; they were caucasian adult males.
