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Nice try at sarcasm, mate, but I happen to be Category D licenced (also handgun licenced, with a few A/Bs as well).

That's bloody good for you, mate. You must be a prized subject there in your commonwealth to be granted such a rare privelage.

I live here. I know the laws. I know how they work.

It's funny how the privelaged in class-based societies unhesitatingly defend the laws that restrict the lower classes. The Australian government wouldn't what all those aboriginies and the poor to get the type of guns you have, would they mate?

I know a lot of people who have Category C and D licences - 99.9% of applications for such licences are approved.

That's a terribly indefensibe statistic for someone who "lives there and knows the laws" like you do.

There are a lot of people who complain about not being able to own Cat C or Cat D, and frankly, I've never been able to figure out what they're talking about. Unless they have old criminal convictions, they should be able to be able to get a C or even D licence.

The Australian government claims to have confiscated (the government can't "buy back" what it never owned) over 600,000 firearms as a result of the 1996 law. By your logic there must be a large number of criminals down there for some odd reason.

My impression is that most of them have never tried and frankly I find it hard to have any sympathy for somebody who isn't willing to make the effort and instead whinges about not being able to own guns that other people have done what is necessary to own.

I am afraid my friends were unable to "satisfy" the authorities that they had a "genuine reason" to hold a class D licence like you do. They apparently didn't qualify since they don't live rurally or exterminate animals for a living. What "genuine reason", may I ask, did you give for acquiring your Class D firearms permit and how much did all your permits cost you?

A lot of people seem far happy whinging about having rights taken away than going out and doing what they have to do if they want to exercise those rights.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but without a constitution with any explicit rights guarantees Australians don't have any real "rights" in the legal sense of the word. Also, is a registered firearm licensed with an arbitrarily granted permit really a freedom? I would think Australians would know better than most that a registered firearm is just something the government owns but hasn't gotten around to confiscating yet.

I apologize for my sacrastic or combative tone, but your dismissive statements about the damage wrough by your 1996 law is very contrary to the Australians I know. I have great admiration for Australians and I wish more of them, especially the ones who are willing to fight for real freedom rather than minimize its curtailment, would emmigrate to the US and help us fight the battle here.

That's bloody good for you, mate. You must be a prized subject there in your commonwealth to be granted such a rare privelage.

No, I'm not. I'm an ordinary citizen who takes the trouble to exercise those rights I consider important. As firearms ownership is one of those, I've taken the trouble to get the licences I need to do so. It really wasn't that hard, once I decided to do it.

You're sounding like a socialist to me with this focus on class. Australia isn't immune to social class, certainly, but we're far less of a class based society than most. And, incidentally, just for the record, I have indigenous heritage and as far as Australian government definitions are concerned, I am an Australian aboriginal. I don't particular consider myself to be one, because I don't choose to be defined by my 'membership of a minority group'. But I meet the tests they use to define aboriginality and could take advantage of that if I chose to. I never have.

That's a terribly indefensibe statistic for someone who "lives there and knows the laws" like you do.

No, it's the actual statistic on how many applications are refused. It's a statistic that the gun control lobby hates, because they regard it as a sign the laws aren't working to restrict firearms ownership in the way they like. Personally I think it's a good statistic. Only one in a thousand applications for high level licences are rejected.

No, because while I agree that the term 'buy back' is inaccurate in this case, so is the term 'confiscated'. The most accurate term would be 'purchased' or 'bought'. The vast majority of the 640,000 guns taken in, in the buyback were weapons their owners could have continued to own if they had chosen to. Instead they chose to hand them in in exchange for their fair market value - far more than a gun dealer would have paid for them in most cases. My next door neighbour is an example. He had me take in his firearms - basic hunting weapons in his case - because he no longer hunted due to age, and he preferred having cash to having guns he was never going to use again. His guns weren't confiscated - they were purchased. Most of the weapons obtained in the buyback fell into that category.

Of the roughly 640,000 firearms handed in the 'buyback', approximately 330,000 were A/B longarms which just about anybody who doesn't have a recent criminal record can own and which were mostly held by people who had a right to continue owning them. Most of the remaining 210,000 were C/D longarms - most of those owning them would have had to get a new licence to keep them, but those licences are possible to get.

I will not disclose what reason I put on my applications, because doing so would expose a security concern for myself and my family, but it wasn't farming or work related - while those are the exemptions everybody knows about and the only ones that get most publicity, there are a lot of other valid exemptions - that's why most people can get a C/D licence if they do the work.

How much did all my licences cost me? It wasn't particularly cheap, but they last a number of years. Averaged out, it winds up costing me just under $200 a year for my licences - in US dollars, at current exchange rates about $165 a year.

I'm afraid you are wrong. While we don't have an explicit bill of rights in the sense that the United States does, that does not mean we don't have rights. In fact, large numbers of Australian conservatives oppose the idea of a bill of rights for Australia, because we know it would serve to restrict our existing rights, and nearly all pushes to do so come from the left, because they want rights restricted to that small group of rights they believe are important (any Australian bill of rights designed by the left would include a right to marry anybody you wanted, but wouldn't include the right to bear arms.)

Australian rights are guaranteed under the Common Law. Our right to bear arms comes from the Bill of Rights of 1689, which when coupled with provisions under Section 116 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia constitutes a general right to bear arms. Our right to self defence comes from Common Law and has been upheld numerous times by the courts. The protection of common law is more abstract than that provided by a codified bill of rights within a Constitution, but we certainly do have rights guaranteed by legal principles.

I would think Australians would know better than most that a registered firearm is just something the government owns but hasn't gotten around to confiscating yet.

Why? I don't, personally, agree with firearms registration, although I do follow the law, but my experience is that the only people who have had their registered firearms taken off them by the government with no way they could have kept them, are those who have been charged or convicted of serious crimes. I'd prefer that such confiscation only occured after conviction, and not just after somebody has been charged as I believe in the presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty, but I have no problem with the idea that a person who commits a crime can have certain of their rights infringed.

I spent over twenty years in uniform serving my country and protecting its freedoms and those of its allies, including active service in the first Gulf War. When it comes to firearms ownership, I exercise my rights as a citizen of the Commonwealth of Australia by choosing to take the trouble to own firearms, even though it's not as simple as just walking into a shop and buying one, rather than just complaining that it's too hard to do this. I am, frankly, baffled by those who don't do so, but instead complain about the laws.

I can only speak to my own experiences. I've always owned basic firearms, and it's only in recent years that I decided I wanted to own more than this. When I decided to do so, I found out the law and I found out what I needed to do to own them, and I went out and did it. It wasn't the simplest process in the world, but it was no harder than buying a car, and nowhere near as hard as buying a house, in terms of the administrative effort involved.