Australia: SWORDS TO BECOME PROHIBITED WEAPONS

Swords will become prohibited weapons from July 1, carrying penalties of up to $12,000 or six months in prison for illegal use or possession, the Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Andre Haermeyer said today.

Mr Haermeyer announced new sword regulations today, saying they would assist Victoria Police to crack down on incidents involving swords.

"The Bracks Government is implementing these new regulations to help Victoria Police overcome this culture of young people arming themselves with swords," Mr Haermeyer said.

"From July 1, swords will be made prohibited weapons, making it illegal to use, possess or carry a sword."

Mr Haermeyer said the elevation of swords from controlled to prohibited weapons would also impact on vendors attempting to sell swords.

"It is illegal to sell prohibited weapons other than in limited circumstances. Vendors will only be legally permitted to sell a sword to an individual who can produce evidence that they fall within an exempt category or have a specific approval from the Chief Commissioner," he said.

"Vendors will be required to register who they have sold swords to, the nature of the buyers' exemption and the type of sword or swords.

Mr Haermeyer said the Government would establish exempt categories to ensure legitimate sword owners were not disadvantaged.

"There are some cultural, religious, military and collector groups that have legitimate reasons to own swords," he said.

"Such groups will be able to apply for an Order exempting their members from the need to obtain individual approvals. Also, individuals who do not fall into those categories will be able to apply to the Chief Commissioner of Police for an individual approval."

"Legitimate sword owners understand the importance of ensuring that their swords do not fall into the wrong hands," Mr Haermeyer said.

"Our intention is to ensure that security requirements provide a level of community assurance without being too onerous for legitimate sword owners."

Mr Haermeyer said the Government had issued a Regulatory Impact Statement regarding swords last year and had assessed feedback from a range of stakeholders.

"It's clear that the majority of Victorians back the push to keep swords off the streets," he said.

"The feedback we have received from stakeholders has been valuable and will help to ensure that we achieve this aim while not unfairly disadvantaging legitimate sword owners."

Mr Haermeyer said the Government had given police 480 metal detectors and late last year introduced new search powers, to enable Victoria Police to search people they reasonably suspect are carrying weapons.

Also, in the Autumn 2000 session of Parliament, new legislation was passed to restrict the sale and possession of knives and other weapons.

"So, what's up w/ the pics we saw several years ago of steam rollers crushing mountains of confiscated rifles?"

What's up with that is that most of the rifles in those mountains were not confiscated. They were voluntarily surrendered.

As part of the gun law 'reforms' of 1996/1997, the federal government decided to try and reduce the number of guns in the community - not by making them illegal, but by given people the opportunity to easily voluntarily dispose of them if they weren't using them any more.

Because Australia doesn't really have the same gun culture of the US, there's never been that much of a second hand market for firearms (unless they were in some way unusual). So, if you were dealing with someone who had been duck shooting for 40 years, there was a good chance they had 6 or so firearms lying around the house that were unused, because over the years they'd replaced the weapon they used, but they really couldn't sell the old ones for anything like what they were worth, and the hassles you needed to go through to dispose of a weapon properly were pretty pointless.

These weapons were of concern because they were the ones tending to wind up in the hands of criminals - gun owners generally took care of the weapon they actually use, and they are not stolen very often. But they take less care of something they stuck in the garage in 1985, and haven't looked at since.

So it was decided to try and get those weapons - weapons that were surplus to requirements, that responsible gun owners weren't using anymore and didn't really want anymore, but they hadn't bothered to dispose of.

They had a buyback - where people could voluntarily surrender surplus weapons and receive the commercial value of that weapon in return.

Most of the weapons seen in those mountains were fully legal, they just weren't being used anymore. They hadn't been confiscated - they'd been voluntarily sold by people who no longer used them - either because they no longer went shooting (my next door neighbour was 97 at the time, and got rid of two old shotguns he hadn't used since 1976) - or because they'd upgraded to more modern weapons. 99% of the weapons in those mountains were still legal, and people could have kept them if they'd wanted to.

There were a small number of weapons that became harder to own - and quite a few people surrendered those as well, rather than go through the process of getting a higher level licence. A few people found themselves unable to get a higher level licence even though they were able to hold the licence they had - typically these were people with criminal convictions that were more than ten years old - in Australia, for minor crimes, after ten years without committing another crime, your conviction is often considered 'spent' - no longer relevant. The rules for a basic licence in some states allow people with non-violent spent convictions to own basic firearms - but the higher level licence requires no convictions ever.

There were a very small number of weapons that became so hard to own, they pretty much became illegal. But that was less than 1/10th of one percent of the weapons collected.

People *chose* to surrender *some of* their weapons if they were no longer the weapons they used.

As for the violent crime rate, Australia doesn't really have accurate figures from before 1996 on many violent crimes. It looks like the level of violent crime initially rose slightly (mostly caused by drugs, in my opinion, - from around 1999-2002, Australia's drug problem got out of control) after 1996 - but the rise started before 1996 and continued at about the same rate after. It was already going up and it kept going up at the same speed. It is now starting to decline.

But the violent crime rate really is a pretty separate issue from gun control in Australia. Very few criminals use guns, very, very few citizens ever use a gun to defend themselves.

Really, Australia's gun laws weren't intended to deal with general crime - they were specifically aimed at stopping another massacre like Port Arthur, and on that specific issue they seem to have worked - Australia had a single gunman massacre on average once a year from 1987-1996.

It hasn't had one since then. That's why they introduced the laws - because frankly the laws we had before 1996 made it way too easy for a total nutcase to get a gun. Martin Bryant, the gun who killed 35 at Port Arthur, was obviously mentally deranged to anyone who knew him, and was already under suspicion of having committed two murders - and the laws in his state in 1996, let him buy high powered weapons, without any real controls at all.

The simple fact is, while we have more controls than we had in 1996, Australians who want to own firearms can still do so quite easily. The number of Australians who own a firearm is still about the same as it was in 1995.

I live here. I own guns.

Unfortunately, voting is compulsory here - everyone has to vote.

This means that the poorly educated and ill informed (who tend to be the poorer people) cast their votes.

Many of these people know virtually nothing except that the Labor Party is meant to be the party for the poor.

So they vote Labor.

Without compulsory voting, we'd have a lot less Labor governments.

In the specific case of Victoria, the way we wound up with our most recent Labor government was quite interesting.

All the polls indicated that the Kennett (Liberal - actually conservative, the name of the party is an historical relic) government would be returned comfortably.

Many people therefore voted Labor as a 'protest' against a few Liberal policies - they wouldn't have voted Labor if they though Labor would get in - but they wanted to send a message to Jeff Kennett, that they weren't entirely happy with his government.

The election turned out to be a lot closer than the polls indicated.

Even worse, on the day of the election, my local Member of Parliament - an independent who had been a member of the Liberal Party and who supported them on most issues dropped dead. He would have been elected.

The end result wound up being

Labor 41
Liberal 39
National 3
Independents 3
Undecided (due to death) 1

The Liberal and Nationals had a coalition agreement so it was functionally, 41 to Labor, 42 to the coalition, with 3 independents.

If the Member for Frankston East hadn't died, the Liberal party would have retained power in coalition with the Nationals and at least two of the four independents. 44-41 with two left over.

We had to had to have a special election to fill my local seat.

The problem was that we (that is the Liberal party - I am a member) had been quite happy to let Peter McLennan win. He was an independent but he supported 99% of our policies and he was almost certain to win - whereas it's a working class electorate, which we would have a hard time winning ourselves.

So the candidate we'd selected for the election wasn't someone really likely to win - she's a nice lady, and I hope she'll get into Parliament at the next election, but she was really running in this one just to gain some experience of campaining.

How we had to have the special election - we decided to go with the candidate we already had and try to win with her.

But the big local issue was a freeway we've been waiting to have built for over twenty years.

Labor promised that if elected, they'd build the freeway.

And a significant proportion of voters believed them.

Labor now held 42, to the Coalitions 43 with three independents.

And one of the three independents - with a personal hatred for Jeff Kennett - made it clear she would never support the coalition. That made it a tie. A second had been elected on only one issue - diverting water from farms to a river - and Labor promised to give him what he wanted. The Coalition said they'd only support it if studies found it was a good idea.

The third independent was now irrelevant - even if he joined the coalition, it wouldn't have made a difference.

One death on one day changed everything.

Total votes cast for Labor: 1,289,696
Total votes cast for the Coalition: 1,330,928

It's not the overall level of support that counts - it's where you get it.

I'll answer your questions in reverse order.

I don't actually agree with Australia's 1996 gun law reforms. I think they were ridiculous and were mostly unjustified - there were a couple of minor points that I think were reasonable, but overall they were something I opposed, and they are something I don't like.

I made that clear back in #37 - that I don't like the laws.

What's my interest in the board? I'm a conservative and I have been since I was 10 years old (and that's going back about 38 years now). Most of my adult life was spent in the RAN, and I stayed out of active politics while I was in the military. Since leaving the Defence Force, I've become a teacher, and also a University lecturer - both environments that expose you to lot of liberals, and a lot of socialists. I'm frankly starting to get seriously worried about where these people want to take us.

I support the rights of gun owners - I'm an Australian living in Australia, so the US Second Amendment isn't incredibly relevant to me personally, but the basic principle that citizens should be allowed to possess weapons is important to me.

But as an Australian, so is people telling the truth about my country. That's important too. I suspect you don't like it when foreigners lie about America, in the same way I don't like it when people spread incorrect information about my country.

Unfortunately, reading Free Republic over the years, I've noticed that there's a lot of Americans who really believe Australia's gun laws are far worse than they are. There seem to be a lot of Americans who believe Australians have been disarmed - and that simply isn't so. I don't like the laws. I think they go too far. But by no stretch of the imagination, have Australians been disarmed.

Any Australian citizen over the age of 18, who doesn't have an active criminal record, is very unlikely to have a hard time getting a gun licence and getting a gun.

Australian citizens who want to own firearms, own firearms.

We're not disarmed, we're not defenceless.

My interest in this board is to discuss conservatism and conservative issues with other right-minded people. But that, to me, means, telling the truth - and correcting misinformation about my country when it occurs for whatever reason - I'm not claiming, by the way, that's anyone is lying - it's easy enough to be mistaken and misinformed about what is happening on the other side of the world. But if nobody ever speaks up to correct the misperceptions, it keeps happening.

As to specific licencing.

Firearms are divided into categories - category A to category E.

A basic licence - very easy to get unless you're carrying convictions - allows a person to own and use Category A and B longarms. Basically that's most single action rifles.

Category C and D are semi-automatic longarms, shotguns, and pump action shot-guns (I am simplifying of course). Getting a licence for C and D is slightly more complicated - basically you have to give a reason for owning the weapon - hunting is the most common reason - but it's still not hard to get a C and D licence.

Category E are machine guns, weapons that fire tear gas, and short barrelled rifles and shot guns (under 30 inches total length, I think). Getting an E licence is fairly hard - but there are ways and means of doing it.

Handguns are handled seperately - basically you need a specific handgun licence - and again, it takes a bit of work to get that, but most people could do it if they chose to.

Now, as I've said, I don't think the laws are good ones - but they haven't disarmed us. They've just added some more bureaucracy.

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