Report Gun Owners with "Problems"

The Age (Australia) ^ | October 28, 2002 | Mark Forbes

[mondonico]

Doctors and other health professionals who have concerns about the behaviour of patients who own firearms should be forced to report them to police, Justice Minister Chris Ellison has said.

State leaders should support a proposal for mandatory reporting after the Monash University shootings a week ago, Senator Ellison said yesterday.

"There should be mandatory reporting by health professionals in relation to people who have a handgun where they see there may be a problem," he said.

A spokesman for Senator Ellison said anyone wishing to own a gun could be forced to undergo a health check, including a psychiatric evaluation.

Authorities should be forced to act on firearm owners who were reported by professionals, under a package of gun control initiatives to be debated by police ministers next week, the spokesman said.

The ministers would discuss giving doctors lists of firearm owners as part of the mandatory reporting scheme, he said. An education program to alert health professionals of their responsibility to report concerns about firearm owners is also planned.

Senator Ellison said all handguns unrelated to legitimate sporting activity should be "eliminated".

"We believe that there are many thousands of guns that will be caught by that," he said.

The minister also rejected claims that poor border controls were responsible for a proliferation of illegal handguns in the community, claiming the problem was a legacy of lax state laws.

"We are tightening border controls," Senator Ellison said. "This business about Australia's porous borders being responsible for all the illegal handguns in the community is a furphy.

"What we have is a hangover from lax state laws years ago when legal guns were converted into illegal guns for use by the criminal sector. They are still around."

The problem also stemmed from theft of legally owned guns, he said. "But don't try and blame-shift and say it is all about Australia's borders," Senator Ellison said. "We are willing to work on our area of responsibility, but we also want the states and territories to work on their areas of responsibility too."

Victoria's Police Minister Andre Haermeyer, who will meet other state and federal police ministers next month to discuss tougher gun trafficking legislation, said illegal guns would continue to flood into the country unless the Customs Service was better resourced.

"Four containers out of every 1000 that reach our shores get checked," he said.

"In that sort of situation it doesn't matter how many police you engage, it doesn't matter how tough you make the trafficking laws, unfortunately illegal firearms are going to flow in in their thousands."

"I don't want to see Australian cities turning into the Bronx or turning into south central Los Angeles, but unless we close up our borders our police forces will be fighting a losing battle."

[mondonico]

Watch for this if gun owner registration ever becomes the law in the US.

[riri]

Are they getting this stuff straight outta an old Soviet handbook?

[Vidalia]

OK, then I will turn myself in, for I have a real problem with other people who think I am problematic for owning firearms and knowing how to use them proficiently (see, I have ten toes and fingers, etc.)

[sheik yerbouty]

No. The 1984 handbook.

[OXENinFLA]

It is already in the works.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/774457/posts

[Billthedrill]

Coming next: "firearms ownership is a sign of mental instability." There are many on the antigun side who really, really believe this. I cite for an example an item I read last week on FR concerning the fellow in Maryland who was turned in by neighbors as a sniper suspect for no other reason than he was "known" to have firearms. Scary stuff.

[Free the USA]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[glc1173@aol.com]

"Watch for this if gun owner registration ever becomes the law in the US."

If Blue Nation really wants to provoke the final break, this is one way.

Many, many Red Nation citizens know they are terminally ill - and many more learn so daily; they are a nothing-to-lose class Blue Nation dare not provoke.

Blue Nation could barely even handle just two idiots operating in only one of its urban areas. How could it cope with many such people - operating simultaneously in many of its urban areas - while simultaneously totally dependent on Red Nation for food and toilet paper, plus largely dependent on us for fuel?

Brutal reality: Washington couldn't even take on a fistful of poor, unskilled black kids in the tiny region of Somalia around Mogadishu. How could it possibly cope with the huge contiguous region of Red Nation - that hates it - just seceding?

GUN REVIEWS free from ad-money bias - emphasizing woman-friendliness of tested guns!

[joesnuffy]

I wasnt sure how it was that fly over country got to be red and the urban sprawl areas got to be blue....
Red stands for Red Blooded Americans healty vibrant passionately patriotic...and Blue for the cynaotic americans...cold hearted...not gettting enough O2 in the brain...

[Freedom4US]

The Red/Blue electoral map is merely a function of whether democrats or republicans are the incumbent part in the white house.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Okay, turn off the lights! I admit it! I have a problem!

Sometimes I don't clean my guns right after I shoot them.

[Vidalia]

...But you do clean them...

[Blood of Tyrants]

Of course. Am I off the hook?

[Vidalia]

Hook, Hook? What hook?

I'm still guffawin' about the idiots who got their heads "scraped" while high and wavin' from the top of the bus (Limbaugh).

BTW, have you tried the "rope" cleaner?

[demosthenes the elder]

*shaking head in utter agogment*

As history clearly shows, whatever has shown useful to the antigunner cause in other english-speaking nations will be pushed for by our own home-grown Leftists. We can clearly expect this particular lunacy to crop up here - especially since the AMA has already weighed in on the side of the Left, by classifying firearms homicide as a "disease."
Let's see, now...
Physicians are not allowed to report to police authorities the names of known active prostitutes who are infected with HIV - and are thus guilty of commiting criminal negligence at the very least, perhaps negligent homicide, perhaps premeditated homicide - because that would violate the doctor-patient confidentiality rules and violate those patients' right to privacy. Despite the fact that this arguably makes the physicians accomplices to the crime. The Left will not permit such oppressive and intrusive public-safety "fascism."
On the other hand, doctors are supposed to report gun owners with "problems" to the police?

*agog, just... AGOG.*

Will the ever-spiralling complexity of the Leftist double-standard fandango never cease???

[Blood of Tyrants]

Yep. The rope with imbedded brush is THE way to clean a rifle bore.

[alphadog]

"How could it possibly cope with the huge contiguous region of Red Nation"

It can't ...so the slow death of freedom rolls on...as Yamamoto said (Paraphasing)..."Attack America, with a riflemen behind every blade of grass???"... YOOYFM?

[CWRWinger]

"We believe that there are many thousands of guns that will be caught by that," he said.

There they go again with their, "Guns got legs" mentality. (The personification of an inanimate object)

[demosthenes the elder]

good catch. that is a very telling phrase, as it indicates quite clearly that they are not interested in catching perps/preventing crimes but are instead solely concerned with removing firearms from the hands of civilians.

[Vic3O3]

ping