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Report Gun Owners with "Problems"
The Age (Australia) ^ | October 28, 2002 | Mark Forbes

Posted on 10/28/2002 9:03:02 AM PST by 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."


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Extended News
KEYWORDS: aussielist; australia; banglist; guncontrol; gunregistration; rkba; secondamendment
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To: riri
Yea, I belive the word you're looking for is "stukatch". Loosely translated it means "dirty informer". I prefer democRAT myself... Now I could be wrong and in fact this word could mean "peace loving fellow socialist", but I have it from a good source...
21 posted on 10/28/2002 2:33:32 PM PST by cavtrooper21
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To: Billthedrill
Wanna bet that the guy who got turned in by his neighbors now understands why all kinds of folks are paranoid as can be about who & what they tell others that they own
22 posted on 10/28/2002 3:01:48 PM PST by Nebr FAL owner
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To: mondonico
I'll agree to that the day politicians are subject to the same reporting and required to undergo independent psychological evaluation on a regular basis. That's probably work better than term limits. Probably keep most of them to one term.
23 posted on 10/28/2002 4:07:34 PM PST by PsyOp
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