“It isn’t exactly easy to get a licence to own a semi-automatic firearm - but it is entirely possible. Saying they are ‘generally not legal for civilian use’ is not accurate. If somebody wants to own one, and doesn’t have a serious criminal record, they can do it.”
New South Wales, largest province, 32% of population, you have to have a “genuine reason” (and it explicitly says self defence is not a genuine reason )
“...In addition, depending on your genuine reason(s):
if you’re applying for a licence over and above a category A firearms licence, you need:
evidence that a ‘special need’ exists for a category B, C, D or H licence “
https://www.service.nsw.gov.au/transaction/apply-for-a-firearms-licence-individual
(cat D is semi auto rifle)
I’ll let people make their own assessment of whether this meets ‘generally not legal for civilian use’ .
I live in Australia. I can make that assessment.
I am telling you in plain English that the claim that semi-automatic weapons are ‘generally not legal for civilian use’ is crap.
It’s not all that hard.
There are people with an agenda who want to paint Australia as some ‘gun free’ paradise.
There are people with another agenda who want to paint Australia as some sort of dictatorship where Australian’s rights have been trampled into non-existence.
Neither are telling you the truth.
In 1996, there were about 3.5 million firearms legally held in private hands in Australia. Stricter gun laws introduced in the later part of that year after the Port Arthur Massacre lead to about 600,000 firearms being handed in a gun buy back. Most of those firearms were still totally legal - a minority of them were not (generally fully automatic or high capacity semi-automatic firearms) - exactly how many we don’t know. But even if it had been all 600,000 (and it wasn’t), that’s still considerably less than 20% of weapons being removed at that time.
Since that time, the level of firearms ownership has steadily increased and is now considerably over the 3.5 million number from 1996 - exactly how high, again, is unknown but the lowest estimates are 4 million. Given the increase in population, that would be a per capita decrease if it is that low - but it’s still a significant number.
This is the reality.
By the way, there are semi-automatic weapons in Category C. I am C and H licenced (and A/B as well) and my semi-automatic rifle is held on a C licence. D licences are genuinely difficult for ordinary people to get. I did have one at one stage, but gave it up because it wasn’t worth the effort for me to keep it. C and H really aren’t that difficult - but they are harder than I personally think they should be.