Posted on 04/18/2012 11:04:58 AM PDT by GILTN1stborn
PRIME Minister Julia Gillard needs to step in and work with the states to ban semi-automatic handguns in response to Sydney's plague of drive-by shootings, a gun control group says. *******
Ms Lee said it was "crazy" that semi-automatic handguns were legal while semi-automatic longarms are banned.
"It's an anomaly in the laws that really needs to be addressed," she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at theaustralian.com.au ...
Yup, just elimiate those semi-autos and all gun crime will stop.
No wait, we need to elimiate all guns, then all gun crimes will stop.
Not.
Yup, that’s “elimiate”.
Wanna make sometin’ abowdt it?
Those guns? They fell off the boat, Mate!
My brother-in-law is an Aussi and according to him it is neigh on to impossible to buy any gun in Australia and the red tape involved in a gun purchase is horrendous. Long sporting guns must be disassembled and stored at licensed shooting clubs not in one's own home. So where are these scofflaws getting their guns? Gee could it be that there are illegal sources of guns and the only people these gun laws disarmed are the law abiding citizens?
I quite agree. There's no reason to ban semi-auto long arms. That's what she meant, right?
Aussie Ping.
Aussie Ping.
lol.
No wonder Labour is getting their butts kicked
If drive-by shootings are the problem then ban cars. Same logic applies, right?
Dude went ape-sh*t on me, telling me he (and most conservatives) were thrilled with the gun bans, and wanted to see more. He hated guns, all his countrymen hated guns, so on and so on.
They'll simply never get it.
That was probably me and you’ve misunderstood my position just as you misunderstand the situation concerning Australian gun laws. I’m not anti-gun. I’m pro-gun and pro-gun ownership. I own guns. And Australian law allows me and other law abiding citizens to own guns. Idiots in America who try to insist we’ve had all our rights taken away simply make it more likely that that we will actually lose the ability to legally hold firearms. Every time an American conservative complains about Australian gun laws, they encourage anti-gun left wingers in Australia to try and turn this into an issue again.
Among Australian conservatives, changing Australian gun laws is not a major issue because our existing laws allow us to own firearms. Most changes that a government makes to the law is more likely to limit our rights especially if it is done in a highly public manner. We’ve just succeeded in my state in having the laws concerning certain people’s ability to own handguns loosened but we did that by working quietly behind the scenes and not attracting public attention. Massive campaigns because the conservative side of politics won an election to change gun laws won’t work. A backbench MP putting forward a private members bill without fanfare, or even a Minister presenting a departmental bill to the House in a way that doesn’t attract media attention is what works.
Well, the government didn't 'confiscate and ban guns years ago'. That's a myth spread by certain American gun rights groups who seem to think that lying about other countries laws will somehow help their cause in America, and then other people who believed in all innocence what they were told repeat the lies.
A significant number of guns (600,000) were voluntarily sold by their owners to the government for a fair market value in the late 1990s in a program designed to remove unused and unwanted guns from the community. That's the source of the famous photos of big piles of guns. People who wanted to keep their guns generally could do so, if they didn't have a serious criminal record. But plenty of people were willing to sell rifles they hadn't used in years given the prices they were offered - quite a few people used the money they got by selling a pile of old .22s to buy something more up to date. There was also some administrative hassle if you wanted to keep semi-automatics and higher and people had to decide for themselves whether it was worth that hassle to keep a gun, or easier just to sell it for a good price. Different people decided different ways. There were a small number of guns handed in that people were required to hand in - generally speaking these were people with criminal records who were legally disbarred from owning firearms because of that record, who were offered amnesty at the same time as the buy back (and in many cases, were also able to sell the weapon - there were almost certainly cases of guns that had been used in crimes being sold to the government as a risk free way of disposing of evidence, because the terms of the amnesty and buy back meant they would be destroyed without being tested in any way.)
My brother-in-law is an Aussi and according to him it is neigh on to impossible to buy any gun in Australia and the red tape involved in a gun purchase is horrendous.
Well, he's wrong about the first - it's actually reasonably easy to buy a gun. The red tape can be considerable - about the same amount of paperwork as is needed to transfer ownership of a car but people do it every day. If you want an semi-automatic long arm or a handgun, getting the first one can be complex (about as complicated as buying a house), but after that it's not difficult.
Long sporting guns must be disassembled and stored at licensed shooting clubs not in one's own home.
Again, not the case - although the rules on storing a firearm in your own home (the type of safes and security required) mean that for a lot of people it does make more sense to store them at a gun club. That's certainly easier and cheaper. But I store mine at home legally because it matters to me that they are accessible.
So where are these scofflaws getting their guns? Gee could it be that there are illegal sources of guns and the only people these gun laws disarmed are the law abiding citizens?
A large number of guns in the hands of criminals in Australia are weapons that were stolen from law-abiding gun owners, which is one reason why the rules on storage are so strict. There's not a lot of smuggling of guns into Australia - smuggling drugs is so much more profitable for criminals - so in most cases, criminals who manage to get firearms are carrying something stolen from a legitimate source.
“Well, the government didn’t ‘confiscate and ban guns years ago’. That’s a myth spread by certain American gun rights groups”...
BS
“A significant number of guns (600,000) were voluntarily sold by their owners to the government for a fair market value in the late 1990s
More BS....
tell you what... to make sure you all know what your reading as “knowledgeable fact”
I call F’N BS to the whole posting... it is a prefabricated.... “millions of Jews were not killed in concentration camps” fabrication...
ANYONE, who wants to believe this mis-information... come speak with Me....
“voluntarily” sold..... HUGE BS statement....
Back your statements with facts...... not propaganda.... this is the Communist Labor Party re-writing history.
bring it on... your in My sand box now.... and I am the Red Back Spider...
EL
I don’t think it was you. You aren’t the otherwise-conservative-but-damned-antigun soul I remember. In a land with no Second Amendment, I understand your need for relative quiet in securing and keeping your gun rights.
BTTT
No, it isn't. It really isn't. But I don't know how to convince somebody who simply seems to dismiss things in such a simplistic fashion.
I have discussed this possibly hundreds of times on this forum in the past at times in some detail, explaining exactly what happened. But I'm not going to bother doing so again, when I come up against this type of attitude.
What I will say is simple. I own a semi-automatic rifle. I own a couple of handguns. I also have number of .22s but they don't really count. I do this entirely legally. They are currently sitting less than twenty metres from me in my house in suburban Melbourne - totally legally. I have a C category licence which I acquired in the normal way, and a handgun licence which I acquired in the normal way.
Law abiding Australians can own guns. It's pretty trivial to own an A/B longarm (which is why I said above they don't really count in my opinion) and it's entirely possible to own more than that with some effort.
I really don't like our handgun laws - they meant I only had a small choice of handguns that met all the criteria for a non-prohibited category licence (I probably could get a prohibited licence, I think, but have decided not to try).
Back your statements with facts...... not propaganda.... this is the Communist Labor Party re-writing history.
Why would the Labor Party rewrite history? They generally like what happened in the late 1990s and think it didn't go far enough.
I am - and was - a member of the Liberal Party. I was one of many gunowners who worked within the party (and importantly within the National Party) to limit what John Howard (who never understood guns) would have, at least initially, liked to accomplish. We're the reason why the 'reasons to own' category is as broad it is for many firearms. We're the reason why, in some states, Police Commissioners have so much discretion to licence people even when a strict reading of the law suggests they shouldn't be. We're the ones who have recently had gun laws relaxed in Victoria (nowhere near enough on that point yet, but it was very important to some target shooters that we get a partial solution this year rather than a better solution in two years time (which we still hope to get) and there are similar moves afoot in New South Wales and Queensland to my knowledge (and it should be easier there - Victoria still has only a very marginal coalition government).
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.