The press reports here state that the Austrailian gov't ceased .22 rifles, handguns, shotguns ... ect. ect. ect.
Is this information wrong? Or, do you have a special permit for our handgun? From what I read, over 60% of all weapons were forcibly removed from the private citizen. Is this untrue?
I'm up here in Texas, where we are LEGALLY ENTITLED to blow a person to kingdom-come for walking in an unlocked door of our home. If we see someone stealing something out of our car; he'd better be able to out run a .45 or 9mm. We lead the nation in killin' killers; and are darn proud of it. It's one of the things I love most about living here; because there is no pity-party for the criminals.
http://www.nrawinningteam.com/auresult.html
http://www.gunsandcrime.org/auresult.html
http://www.jpands.org/hacienda/comm8.html
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~confiles/
Yes, basically, it is untrue. Australia's gun laws have been seriously exagerated by some people. They're not good by any means - there are some real problems. But we can own quite a wide range of firearms.
Back in the mid-to-late 1990s, after the Port Arthur Massacre, the states of Australia reassessed all of their gun laws, and some of these laws were tightened. There were a lot of stories around about how extreme these laws were going to be, but what were actually introduced were nowhere near as harsh as some people claimed.
A fair number of people had to get new higher level licences to continue to own their firearms - a basic gun licence was no longer enough - but most people could get those licences if they wanted to. Some people couldn't - generally people with old criminal records (in Australia criminal records over ten years old generally don't affect you anymore unless you reoffend - but they do effect whether you can have a high level gun licence - so some people with old convictions who could have basic licences reportedly couldn't get advanced ones). Some people chose not to get the higher level licences though they could have. Because at the same time as the laws were changed, Australia had a gun buyback where the Federal Government paid for virtually any weapons people wanted to hand in. A lot of people chose to hand in weapons they could have kept for various reasons. Some people used the cash from the buyback to buy new weapons.
Altogether about 640,000 guns were handed in - most were guns people could have kept, but they decided they'd rather have the cash - people like my elderly neighbour who hadn't been hunting in over a decade, for example - he got me to hand his guns in and took the money. A small number were weapons people couldn't keep - but only a small number.
There are still millions of legally held firearms in private hands in Australia.
Basically, the way it is here, is that it's easy to get a basic longarm licence - for a basic rifle or shotgun. If you want anything more powerful, or you want a handgun, you do need a higher level licence and that's a bit harder to get - it takes more paperwork, basically - but it's still not that hard. Getting fully automatic weapons and the like - that starts to get difficult, but it's actually possible.
My licences are nothing unusual - until recently I did have a special permit for the handguns that most people couldn't get (I had a military permit, basically), but I decided to get a civil licence to replace it.