Posted on 10/02/2015 12:43:04 AM PDT by naturalman1975
Two men have reportedly been shot dead outside a police headquarters in a Sydney suburb.
Multiple shots were fired just 700m from the main station in Parramatta after two armed men allegedly stormed the headquarters, according to reports.
Witnesses have reported seeing two bodies lying on the ground covered in white sheets.
A NSW police spokeswoman said a major operation was underway and 'something's definitely going on out there'.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Caution should be taken with any news story in the immediate aftermath of an incident, but there have been definite threats of Islamist terrorism against police and there was an incident last year where a Muslim extremist shot and seriously injured a police officer outside a police station in outer Melbourne before being killed by another police officer (who was also wounded, if I am remembering correctly).
Oh yes, but its our gun laws that are the problem.... riiiight
I’m trying to get news off Australian television about what has happened in Sydney and most of what I am getting is about what has happened in the US - and sport (this weekend has both of our major football codes finals - the National Rugby League is Sydney, and the Australian Football League in Melbourne. Both of which are a huge deal to the media. And both of which are also potential terror targets).
Further reports - gunman was ‘Middle Eastern’ in appearance. Police had ‘intelligence forewarning’ of a possible attack.
How is that possible? I have been hearing about how awesome Australia has been without guns that they banned. It is paradise where birds chirp and money grows. Everything is tranquil.
I am confused. How did they manage to shoot someone with a gun?
Guns aren’t banned in Australia. Yes, I’ve seen some of the reports from the US saying that - it’s not true.
We do have restrictions, and some stupid restrictions at that - but guns remain legal and there are millions of them in private hands.
Anybody trying to use Australia’s “gun ban” as a model for America is not being truthful - but I’m sure that’s hardly a surprise.
“Guns aren’t banned in Australia...there are millions of them in private hands.”
Nothing personal, but I believe what is published, rather than what’s written on this site. There is a guy in England who has the AUDACITY to claim that there aren’t many Muslims in England and that self-defense is actually legal there.
But then when I started college at an out of state school, I always bragged about how wonderful my home state was (and it wasn’t), just like everyone else...so I’m not any better.
Gun control totally work you guys!
“Most people own and use firearms for purposes such as hunting, controlling feral animals, collecting, security work, and target shooting.”
The above is from Wikipedia. Maybe it’s more of a terminology clash. When we, at FreeRepublic, speak of a gun ban, we are talking about whether civilians can buy, own, and carry guns for personal defense, without a demonstrated need. We know that every society has guns for the above purposes...there’s no debate there, especially given Australia is not a city-state, like Singapore, for example.
In any case, life will get much more interesting for all of us, given the Jihadists supposedly fleeing Syria these days.
Wikipedia is not particularly accurate on this type of issue but it’s true that most gun owners in Australia do not primarily own a firearm for self defence purposes - at least on paper. You are wise to give another reason for official purposes.
Australia’s gun laws are complicated and it can some work to navigate the bureaucracy - but talking about a ban is completely misleading and I think it just plays into the hands of those who’d like a true ban or something closer to it in the US, because it allows anti-gun politicians to get away with misrepresenting Australia’s gun laws. The real lesson of our low gun crime rate is that it wasn’t achieved by banning guns - the decline began before they were even being subjected to increased restrictions and we have a low gun crime rate even with millions of guns in the hands of law abiding citizens. I’m not saying Australia should be used as a model for the US, because we do have some dumb gun laws here, I wouldn’t want anybody to copy - especially how long it takes to buy a new firearm for nothing even close to a good reason, and utterly pointless rules on barrel lengths of handguns for example - but the big lesson is that a ban wasn’t necessary and most of the restrictions had no real impact either. If American politicians say they want to copy Australia, make it clear that Australia still has plenty of guns - and that the current trend is actually to relax the laws (though they are still nowhere near as relaxed as they once were).
The big picture, though, is similar to something suffered in the USA.
Complicated gun laws are exactly how you get a populace used to doing a government’s will rather than vice versa.
This is the type of handgun that a lot of published sources will tell you is banned in Australia - but it isn't. The fact it is for sale is the clearest sign of this. What is published is really not that accurate in so many cases. There's a bunch of reasons for that - one of the main ones seems to me at times to be that there are parts of the government that would like to make people think they've 'banned' weapons that they haven't, so many people don't even try to get them.
Getting a handgun licence or a C category licence is needlessly complicated and bureaucratically complex. And that's a problem. But it's possible. I've done it. Getting a D category licence is extremely difficult, and I'd call that close to a ban, but there's a lot you can own with a handgun licence, and a C licence - and an A/B licence is really quite easy. A lot of people have the impression that they can't get more than an A/B licence and I think that may even be true in some parts of the country, but only in some parts.
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