Posted on 04/30/2006 10:06:16 AM PDT by neverdem
After Port Arthur, Australia set off a universal gun-control revolution
TODAY we remember the Port Arthur murder victims in church services and vigils, prayers and concerts, books and documentaries. The cross listing their names overlooks the memorial garden, a quiet place for contemplation and tears in honour of those so brutally slain on April 28, 1996.
Another memorial to those killed and wounded on that awful day is less visible or tangible but powerful nonetheless: Australia's nationally uniform gun laws. Out of horror and insanity, something positive and rational was forged.
Ten years later it is hard to believe the indifference to public safety embodied in the old gun laws. In those days civilians could buy military weapons and there was no limit on the number of guns an individual could stockpile. NSW, Queensland and Tasmania had no registration for rifles and shotguns, so it was impossible for the police to know if someone had a gun (or 10).
A judge in a domestic violence case might order that firearms be seized, but in the absence of registration the perpetrator could claim not to have any guns and the matter would end there. In other states and territories the laws were stricter, but could be evaded simply by travelling to one of the three permissive states to shop for weapons.
Throwing out this rickety framework was a pioneering step for Australia alongside Canada, which was also overhauling its law in the wake of a massacre by an alienated and angry young man with easy access to military assault rifles. Both countries have experienced a drop in gun violence as a result.
In Australia and Canada, policy-makers involved in the reforms said they were reading "the mood of the nation". During the past decade this same mood has spread throughout the international community, with significant gun law reforms passed or proposed in dozens of parliaments.
Gun law reform now is similar to domestic violence reform in the 1980s, when country after country realised their policies were antiquated and indefensible. South Africa, Britain, Nicaragua, Montenegro, Germany, Cambodia, Mauritius and Brazil have recently toughened their gun laws. In Belgium, Paraguay, Liberia, Guatemala, Burundi, Portugal, Senegal, Macedonia and Argentina (among others) the reforms are under way.
Particularly striking is the case of Brazil, which has one of the highest rates of gun violence, with nearly 40,000 gun deaths in 2003. That year the gun law was tightened, with spectacular results. Gun deaths dropped for the first time after 13 years of rising continuously; by the end of 2004 the rate had fallen by 8per cent, which translated into more than 3200 lives saved.
The gun control revolution has also reached the UN, where a process to reduce the proliferation and misuse of small arms kicked off in 2001. The UN process is developing global norms to regulate the world's estimated 650 million guns and has produced an international agreement on the marking and tracing of weapons. We expect further progress from the five-year review conference to be held this June in New York.
These UN conferences are attended by government officials, non-governmental organisations supporting tougher firearm regulation and the National Rifle Association of America.
One of the most powerful lobby groups on Capitol Hill in Washington, the NRA appears to be no less influential on the US delegation at the UN. Even very modest declarations on small arms are opposed by the US. For example, a resolution expressing concern about the effect of weapons proliferation on humanitarian activities and development was passed with 177 votes in favour and one (the US) against.
The NRA has characterised this small arms process as a mission "to confiscate civilian firearms worldwide and impose on Americans the lesser, inferior, global standard of freedom". The UN and my own organisation, the International Action Network on Small Arms, are known as "the enemies of freedom".
According to NRA board member (and former congressman) Bob Barr: "That's really their ultimate agenda: to bring the United States down from the pinnacle of freedom to simply being another one of these socialist states." This last is a reference to Britain, Australia and Canada, countries dubbed by the NRA as "formerly free nations".
Such ranting by American gun loons may seem to be a long way removed from Australia, unless you remember our own Gympie-based version screaming on television in May 1996: "The only currency that you can purchase freedom back with is blood!"
Then and now, whether in Queensland, Tasmania, Texas or elsewhere, we have paranoid, hate-filled people living in our societies. All the more reason to have strong controls on guns.
Rebecca Peters is the director of the International Action Network on Small Arms. She led Australia's National Coalition for Gun Control from 1992 to 1997.
Good idea! Let's make sure no one can protect themselves from the paranoid, hate-filled people (aka Liberals)!
Does that revolution that is claimed include the liberalizatoin of the CCW laws here in Michigan, as well as many other states?
his week's CBS miniseries Hitler: The Rise of Evil tries to explain the conditions that enabled a manifestly evil and abnormal individual to gain total power and to commit mass murder. The CBS series looks at some of the people whose flawed decisions paved the way for Hitler's psychopathic dictatorship: Hitler's mother who refused to recognize that her child was extremely disturbed and anti-social; the judge who gave Hitler a ludicrously short prison sentence after he committed high treason at the Beer Hall Putsch; President Hindenburg and the Reichstag delegates who (except for the Social Democrats) who acceded to Hitler's dictatorial Enabling Act rather than forcing a crisis (which, no matter how bad the outcome, would have been far better than Hitler being able to claim legitimate power and lead Germany toward world war).
Acquainting a new generation of television viewers with the monstrosity of Hitler is a commendable public service by CBS, for if we are serious about "Never again," then we must be serious about remembering how and why Hitler was able to accomplish what he did. Political scientist R. J. Rummel, the world's foremost scholar of the mass murders of the 20th century, estimates that the Nazis killed about 21 million people, not including war casualties. With modern technology, a modern Hitler might be able to kill even more people even more rapidly.
Indeed, right now in Zimbabwe, the Robert Mugabe tyranny is perpetrating a genocide by starvation aimed at liquidating about six million people. Mugabe is great admirer of Adolf Hitler. Mugabe's number-two man (who died last year) was Chenjerai Hunzvi, the head of Mugabe's terrorist gangs, who nicknamed himself "Hitler." One of the things that Robert Mugabe, "Hitler" Hunzvi, and Adolf Hitler all have in common is their strong and effective programs of gun control.
Simply put, if not for gun control, Hitler would not have been able to murder 21 million people. Nor would Mugabe be able to carry out his current terror program.
Writing in The Arizona Journal of International & Comparative Law Stephen Halbrook demonstrates that German Jews and other German opponents of Hitler were not destined to be helpless and passive victims. (A magazine article by Halbrook offers a shorter version of the story, along with numerous photographs. Halbrook's Arizona article is also available as a chapter in the book Death by Gun Control, published by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.) Halbrook details how, upon assuming power, the Nazis relentlessly and ruthlessly disarmed their German opponents. The Nazis feared the Jews — many of whom were front-line veterans of World War One — so much that Jews were even disarmed of knives and old sabers.
The Nazis did not create any new firearms laws until 1938. Before then, they were able to use the Weimar Republic's gun controls to ensure that there would be no internal resistance to the Hitler regime.
In 1919, facing political and economic chaos and possible Communist revolution after Germany's defeat in the First World War, the Weimar Republic enacted the Regulation of the Council of the People's Delegates on Weapons Possession. The new law banned the civilian possession of all firearms and ammunition, and demanded their surrender "immediately."
Once the political and economic situation stabilized, the Weimar Republic created a less draconian gun-control law. The law was similar to, although somewhat milder than, the gun laws currently demanded by the American gun-control lobby.
The Weimar Law on Firearms and Ammunition required a license to engage in any type of firearm business. A special license from the police was needed to either purchase or carry a firearm. The German police were granted complete discretion to deny licenses to criminals or individuals the police deemed untrustworthy. Unlimited police discretion over citizen gun acquisition is the foundation of the "Brady II" proposal introduced by Handgun Control, Inc., (now called the Brady Campaign) in 1994.
Under the Weimar law, no license was needed to possess a firearm in the home unless the citizen owned more than five guns of a particular type or stored more than 100 cartridges. The law's requirements were more relaxed for firearms of a "hunting" or "sporting" type. Indeed, the Weimar statute was the world's first gun law to create a formal distinction between sporting and non-sporting firearms. On the issues of home gun possession and sporting guns, the Weimar law was not as stringent as the current Massachusetts gun law, or some of modern proposals supported by American gun-control lobbyists.
Significantly, the Weimar law required the registration of most lawfully owned firearms, as do the laws of some American states. In Germany, the Weimar registration program law provided the information which the Nazis needed to disarm the Jews and others considered untrustworthy.
The Nazi disarmament campaign that began as soon as Hitler assumed power in 1933. While some genocidal governments (such as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia) dispensed with lawmaking, the Nazi government followed the German predilection for the creation of large volumes of written rules and regulations. Yet it was not until March 1938 (the same month that Hitler annexed Austria in the Anschluss) that the Nazis created their own Weapons Law. The new law formalized what had been the policy imposed by Hitler using the Weimar Law: Jews were prohibited from any involvement in any firearm business.
On November 9, 1938, the Nazis launched the Kristallnacht, pogrom, and unarmed Jews all over Germany were attacked by government-sponsored mobs. In conjunction with Kristallnacht, the government used the administrative authority of the 1938 Weapons Law to require immediate Jewish surrender of all firearms and edged weapons, and to mandate a sentence of death or 20 years in a concentration camp for any violation.
Even after 1938, the German gun laws were not prohibitory. They simply gave the government enough information and enough discretion to ensure that victims inside Germany would not be able to fight back.
Under the Hitler regime, the Germans had created a superbly trained and very large military — the most powerful military the world had ever seen until then. Man-for-man, the Nazis had greater combat effectiveness than every other army in World War II, and were finally defeated because of the overwhelming size of the Allied armies and the immensely larger economic resources of the Allies.
Despite having an extremely powerful army, the Nazis still feared the civilian possession of firearms by hostile civilians. Events in 1943 proved that the fear was not mere paranoia. As knowledge of the death camps leaked out, determined Jews rose up in arms in Tuchin, Warsaw, Bialystok, Vilna, and elsewhere. Jews also joined partisan armies in Eastern Europe in large numbers, and amazingly, even organized escapes and revolts in the killing centers of Treblinka and Auschwitz. There are many books which recount these heroic stories of resistance. Yuri Suhl's They Fought Back (1967) is a good summary showing that hundreds of thousands of Jews did fight. The book Escape from Sobibor and the eponymous movie (1987) tell the amazing story how Russian Jewish prisoners of war organized a revolt that permanently destroyed one of the main death camps.
It took the Nazis months to destroy the Jews who rose up in the Warsaw ghetto, who at first were armed with only a few firearms that had been purchased on the black market, stolen or obtained from the Polish underground.
Halbrook contends that the history of Germany might have been changed if more of its citizens had been armed, and if the right to bear arms had been enshrined it Germany's culture and constitution. Halbrook points out that while resistance took place in many parts of occupied Europe, there was almost no resistance in Germany itself, because the Nazis had enjoyed years in which they could enforce the gun laws to ensure that no potential opponent of the regime had the means to resist.
No one can foresee with certainty which countries will succumb to genocidal dictatorship. Germany under the Weimar Republic was a democracy in a nation with a very long history of much greater tolerance for Jews than existed in France, England, or Russia, or almost anywhere else. Zimbabwe's current gun laws were created when the nation was the British colony of Rhodesia, and the authors of those laws did not know that the laws would one day be enforced by an African Hitler bent on mass extermination.
One never knows if one will need a fire extinguisher. Many people go their whole lives without needing to use a fire extinguisher, and most people never need firearms to resist genocide. But if you don't prepare to have a life-saving tool on hand during an unexpected emergency, then you and your family may not survive.
In the book Children of the Flames, Auschwitz survivor Menashe Lorinczi recounts what happened when the Soviet army liberated the camp: the Russians disarmed the SS guards. Then, two emaciated Jewish inmates, now armed with guns taken from the SS, systematically exacted their revenge on a large formation of SS men. The disarmed SS passively accepted their fate. After Lorinczi moved to Israel, he was often asked by other Israelis why the Jews had not fought back against the Germans. He replied that many Jews did fight. He then recalled the sudden change in the behavior of the Jews and the Germans at Auschwitz, once the Russian army's new "gun control" policy changed who had the guns there: "And today, when I am asked that question, I tell people it doesn't matter whether you're Hungarian, Polish, Jewish, or German: If you don't have a gun, you have nothing."
— Richard Griffiths is a doctor of psychology with research interest in gun issues. Dave Kopel is a NRO contributing editor. The latest: Arms Alive 11/03 Voting On Target 11/02 The Torch of Freedom 10/07 Bait-'n'-Switch 09/13 Previous Articles Waco Wakeup Dave Kopel & Paul Blackman reveal what's wrong with law enforcement in No More Wacos. Buy it through NR Seipp: Reality Bites 12/09 8:27 a.m. Holtsberry: The 100-Yard War 12/08 8:14 a.m. Harris: A Distorted Legacy 12/06 8:02 a.m. Fowler: David & the Hollywood Goliath 12/02 8:35 a.m. Harris: Failing to Deliver 10/19 8:47 a.m. Waters: Duran Duran 2.0 10/18 8:49 a.m. Mathewes-Green: Blankets & Big Questions 10/12 8:40 a.m. Mathewes-Green: Rom Com Zom 09/27 8:20 a.m. Leigh: Michael Wilson Loves America 09/21 8:24 a.m. Gersten: Basketball's Girly Boys 08/23 8:37 a.m. Hibbs: Mia Must Marry 08/13 8:13 a.m. Seipp: At Home with Style 08/11 8:22 a.m. Waters: Right Here, Right Now 08/10 8:45 a.m. Q&A: W., Beyond the Caricatures 08/09 8:55 a.m. Looking for a story? Click here
This author lives a long way from the "NRA infested" US, doesn't she? The laws here have been getting looser and better for us gun owners (hence my tagline - why are all the OTHER rights being taken away?).
According to NRA board member (and former congressman) Bob Barr: "That's really their ultimate agenda: to bring the United States down from the pinnacle of freedom to simply being another one of these socialist states."
Bob Barr is absolutely correct. How did we ever let this guy out of the Congress anyway? We sure need him there now.
I wonder why she gave some statistics for Brazil and neglected her own country's results?
After reading this tripe I said, "this has to be written by a woman", sure enough - Rebecca Peters.
Previously I believed it was only a US Journalist Union Rule that all gun articled be written by some ditz reporterette, but I guess it's now a world wide ' journalist union rule'.
Anyway, Rebecca read and understand this:
And tell this to all you friends at the U.N. too.
Gun laws are only effective with law-abiding people. Since criminals by definition are not law-abiding, what do gun laws accomplish, besides disarming the wrong people?
We all know domestic violence accusations are never fake.
Walmart and Sam's club aren't lib controlled like Costco.
Walmart Drops Gun Sales in Some Stores
Walmart's becoming PC too. They can play politics like anyone else. The bottom line is job number one!
Oh you loon, you hate filled paranoid son of an unmarried female dog, how could you threaten Rebecca Peters? Rebecca feels all safe warm and fuzzy since these gun laws went through.
Of course nothing the gun laws did had any effect on the safe warm and fuzzy world Rebecca lives in, but that really isn't the issue is it, and of course you knew who wrote it. It was just too obvious.
Just don't tell my wife she gets upset when I genderize bad drivers, much less loose cannon journalists and Directors of International Action Network on small arms. Now there is an organization I'd like to sink my fangs into.
I'm wondering when they will realize that doctors, hospitals, alcohol, tobacco, and car accidents, are worse killers than small arms, and when you do away with small arms, have you really done away with what causes people to commit murder?
Of course not, but please, please don't try to inject any common sense into someone devoid of it. The shock might just be too much for her to handle.
The Muslim paradise of Indonesia is not far away, maybe they can shake up her world with the application of some sophisticated explosives to take her mind off of small arms.
The arrogance of a loon calling you a bird. She just doesn't know any better. By the way, you got a picture of this female? I need one for the gallery.
Rebecca, we have love-filled, strong minded people toting a compassionate attitude toward self preservation and the annihilation of those hate filled people you refer to that WE call terrorists.
I love the smell of a dysfuncional liberal in the morning....
Curiously absent from this "gun control success story" is any mention of the fact that Brazil later went on to overwhelmingly reject a national referendum which would have banned most firearms and ammunition.
Here's to hoping that the global disarmament movement achieves similar levels of "success" in the future!
Sigh! Rebecca is a moron.
"Does that revolution that is claimed include the liberalizatoin of the CCW laws here in Michigan, as well as many other states? "
I don't think Ms Peters even knows what Michigan is doing - after all, it is about 15,000 km from Australia's East Coast.
"Rebecca Peters is the director of the International Action Network on Small Arms. She led Australia's National Coalition for Gun Control from 1992 to 1997".
Rebecca Peters is a commie lacky, nothing more than a useful idiot. She is against freedom.
It is amazing how many groups take up a cause for no higher ideal than to project their self-loathing onto others. This is evident in the anti-gun lobby. The fact is that criminals don't bother to register their guns and can obtain them irrespective of what laws are in place. If people are inclined to kill they will find other and even more deadly means as was evident at Oklahoma City, 9/11, and the ongoing car bombings in Iraq. What the world needs is better human beings.
Actually she's a smart cookie who realized she could ride this isssue to becoming First Prime of System Lord KofiAnnan
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.