Posted on 07/12/2024 4:22:15 PM PDT by naturalman1975
An Australian who travelled around the country asking other Aussies if they would fight to defend the nation has received some surprisingly mixed answers.
Surfer and journalist Fred Pawle took his camera and mic to locations including the NSW Central Coast, Sydney, Melbourne, Byron Bay, the Gold Coast and Brisbane in recent weeks posing the question to people on the street.
'My initial motivation was whether you would be able to judge the responses based on where you live, so which areas would be more or less likely to defend the country,' Mr Pawle told Daily Mail Australia.
He said the responses for the most part aligned with his expectations, with those in Melbourne - perhaps jaded at having endured the world's longest Covid lockdown - less inclined to fight than those in Sydney.
'In Sydney the percentage of those saying they would defend the country was up around 80 per cent and in Melbourne it was around 60 per cent.
'I was pleasantly surprised by Byron Bay. If you live in paradise wouldn't you defend it? I had to debate a little to get it out of them, but most said they would.'
Mr Pawle said he wasn't entirely surprised that some were so open about admitting they wouldn't defend Australia given increasing polarisation in society.
'The ''greatest generation'' won the World Wars 80 and 100 years ago through willpower, strength and unity - it can seem like those qualities are much less apparent than they were,' he observed.
In the videos, many of the men who answered said they would not hesitate to pick up arms should the nation be attacked.
'I sure would. I live here,' replied one man in Brisbane.
'100 per cent,' replied another. 'Best country in the world, mate.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Bill Bryson wrote about it in one of his books, but there's a lot more around about it.
Doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo tested sarin gas at Banjawarn station before Tokyo subway attack
Notice how the big brave globohomos and neocons tell us the Russian drive on Lisbon, beginning here in Ukraine, is an American existential threat. They tell us that but sit on their cowardly butts 5000 miles away. If I believed the crap they are peddling and saw how badly things were going in Ukraine, I’d volunteer. Of course, that Russian “threat” is a lie and any American volunteers would be dying only to increase the obscene profits of the DC MIC oligarchs.
Talk about fun facts. LoL learn something new every day.
Google isn’t always accurate. Partly because a lot of the old figures weren’t always accurate. But these ones don’t look too bad. And as your first comment shows, as I said, there are more firearms legally held in private hands in Australia than at any time in our history.
Is the number per capita down - yes, probably, although it’s hard to be certain of that because a lot of the old data wasn’t accurate. I do think less people choose to own firearms than used to, but that is largely a matter of choice.
I know what I’m talking about and it’s not because I google stuff. I live here. I know what is and isn’t going on.
The thing is, Australia has never had a particular strong gun culture. Firearm ownership in Australia has always been dominated by things like .22 rifles and basic shotguns.
That’s got very little to do with laws, or anything, but with a different history.
Americans have been fed a narrative about Australia that suggests there was some huge seismic shift in the attitude towards firearms here in the late 1990s. There really wasn’t. Very few people had ever owned anything particularly heavy duty. It’s just never been part of the culture.
We don’t like in the outback, Crocodile Dundee style - well, very few of us do. That’s the Australian mythology but it’s not the reality.
As we settled the interior - and we didn’t settle all that much of it - the police went with the settlers. A ‘frontier mindset’ like that that developed in the lot of the US didn’t develop in the same way here.
I read you can’t carry, are subject to most of the preliminary crap the Democrats want to inflict on us, and you have to have a license from the state. Is any of that wrong?
Here’s an example of what we commonly get. Where are they lying? I wouldn’t doubt that they are, but I’m interested.
https://lsj.com.au/articles/gun-control-what-makes-australian-and-us-laws-so-different/
“Of course, that Russian “threat” is a lie and any American volunteers would be dying only to increase the obscene profits of the DC MIC oligarchs.”
I don’t buy into the ‘profit’ motive as the main driver, although it is a secondary ‘benefit’ of destroying millions of lives in Ukraine.
It’s more a sick, Globohomo, and ESPECIALLY Climate Change agenda.
If Russia prevails, our governments are looking at being on the losing side of Cold War 2, with the sides reversed, as Russia will be a rich, relatively free, hydrocarbon-fueled, country with strong moral values (just today there was a thread about Russia not permitting child molesters to adopt kids, imagine that!), while the West is a decrepit, corrupt, Fascist, dictatorship, overrun by the Third World and headed for the dustbin of history.
The people in the West will be looking with envy at Russia, if they prevail, while we’re forced to live in “15 Minute Cities” and get on buses with people who knife us for sport. We will want to be like the Russian, and, eventually, the masses will simply OVERTHROW their Western dictatorships. So, just like Cold War 1, the only option is for the decrepit side (the West, this time) to try to take down the beacon of hope (the Russian side), so people have nothing to strive for.
*The Banjawarn Bang. Bill Bryson*
Thank you.
There were changes in the 1990s - there was a big buyback which allowed people to get market value for firearms in a way they hadn't been able to before that, and a lot of people took advantage of it - most of the guns handed in were still legal, just excess to people's requirements - Americans seem to have been told that most of the guns handed in had been banned. That wasn't so. There were also efforts at the time to try and make inconsistent state laws more national. That succeeded to some extent at the time, but since then, a lot of that has actually been undone.
As I say, a lot of it is propaganda. It seems designed to make Americans think Australia did something dramatic in the late 1990s that made the country safer, and the US could do the same. Fact is, nothing particularly dramatic was done - and if Australia became safer, it's not because of those changes.
Is it true that self defense is not an acceptable reason for the authorities to allow citizens to possess a firearm?
Australians have a common law right to self defence. That law does not specifically specify what weapons can or cannot be used in self defence.
What it says is that self defence must be proportionate to the threat faced. To use deadly force, a person must genuinely believe their life (or the life or another) is in danger, or that there is a risk of significant serious injury.
If those conditions are met, you can use a gun in self defence.
Now, where this gets confusing is that in certain cases, people need to demonstrate a particular reason why they need to own a particular type of firearm - if you say ‘self defence’ in that situation, your claim will almost certainly be denied (there are actually a few exceptions to this but that’s generally true).
So, yes, that can be interpreted in the way you describe.
But only an idiot would write such a reason down on the form.
I am licenced to own both handguns and semi-automatic weapons. Would I be able to use those in self defence if I had to - if I genuinely believed my life was in danger. Yes, I would be.
But that isn’t the stated reason I own them. And it really isn’t the reason I own them, to be very clear. I’m a member of pistol club, and I hunt.
People learn how to navigate the laws, so they can own firearms legally.
Does it take a bit of effort? Yes, it does. But frankly, I think that makes people take the laws more seriously.
There are some genuinely difficult to get around regulations and laws concerning very powerful firearms. Some of those come close to being actual bans in practice.
But there’s a lot less of that than people seem to think.
Would you defend the US if Los Angeles was invaded by China? North Korea? Russia? South America?
What a minute. we are being invaded by South America. If we are not doing anything, why concern yourself with China, North Korea, or Russia? Are you racist?
"placing a complete ban on semi-automatic rifles and shotguns."
That's not true. In some states, it's almost true, in others it is less so (the NFA is far weaker than this article suggests).
Take a look at this page from Cleaver Firearms, a gun store in Queensland - https://www.cleaverfirearms.com/Products.aspx?Category=Category%20C%20and%20D&Brand=44
I haven't quite taken the page at random, but close to it.
Semi-automatic rifles openly for sale. So - the 'complete ban' in the article is just not true.
Now, you'll note these are low calibre - because it becomes much harder to get such weapons in higher calibres. And they are all category D firearms, which do require a quite hard to get permit to own - I have had a Category D licence in the past, but today, I have decided I only need a Category C for my purposes and that is much easier, and I still own a semi-automatic rifle on that licence (same type of rifle I carried on occasion when I was in the Australian Defence Force, actually).
The way they treat their citizens, I wouldn’t fight
Everything is Ukraine with you
“Does it take a bit of effort? Yes, it does. But frankly, I think that makes people take the laws more seriously.”
Do you favor these types of gun restrictions?
I agree, I'm on a couple of gun forums here in the USA, and there are several gun owning Aussies that are members.
“Everything is Ukraine with you”
Should be with EVERY conservative, considering what’s going on there.
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