Posted on 04/21/2011 5:29:15 AM PDT by marktwain
Should Australia be contributing to the gun toll in the USA?
It’s a timely question for the Defence Export Control Office in the Department of Defence in Canberra, says Adjunct Associate Professor Philip Alpers, of GunPolicy.org at the Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney.
Philip Alpers writes:
If Canberra follows precedent, around 10,000 surplus Australian police firearms will soon be for sale in pawn shops and gun shops across the United States.
To save cash, police forces in South Australia and Victoria have signed contracts with US arms dealers to export thousands of surplus Smith & Wesson .357-calibre police revolvers for re-sale on the US civilian gun market.
Every deal like this has to be approved by a dedicated federal arms export licensing section in Canberra. But on past performance this shouldn’t be a problem for the arms dealers.
When US gun maker Smith & Wesson won two recent tenders to re-equip 14,500 frontline police in South Australia and Victoria with modern semi-automatic pistols, the company also bargained a back-end bonanza for themselves — buying back their old revolvers. It’s common practice in the arms trade to offer military and law enforcement clients a ‘new for old’ gun swap.
A trade-in like this might save Australian police millions of dollars off the purchase price of brand new pistols – but then Smith & Wesson gets to sell Australia’s sturdy old police revolvers on the streets of New York, Los Angeles and anywhere in between.
Most easily concealable handguns such as these, sold from US pawn shops, and with decades of lethality left in them, might never be misused. But some will surely be used in domestic violence, suicide and armed crime. And that’s a risk to public health.
These venerable .357 S&W revolvers, rarely fired, well maintained, each one with Australian police markings and decades of history in law enforcement — and perhaps the added cachet of coming from a country where such weapons are largely prohibited in private hands — should fetch a good price among the 62,119 licensed gun dealers in the United States.
It’s a bit strange, really. Australia leads the world with gun buybacks and destruction programmes — and of course when our law enforcement officers and Customs seize illegal guns, they always destroy them — yet here we have police and federal government licensing the export of several tonnes of concealable handguns to the only developed nation which suffers Third World rates of gun death and injury.
Australian police routinely ask US authorities to trace American-made guns seized in local crime. How will they feel when the traces go the other way – when they’re asked how an Australian police revolver came to be found at a homicide scene in Chicago?
Australia is almost alone in doing this
Most of the governments we admire already prohibit this behaviour. At the United Nations, Australia takes a leadership role in several campaigns to curb global gun running. Encouraging the export of thousands of used handguns to the United States seems to be a Canberra blind spot.
Countries in which the declared government policy[i] is to destroy surplus state-owned small arms rather than to re-sell them on the secondary arms market include:
United States,[ii] United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, India, China, Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Latvia, Croatia, Georgia, Moldova, South Africa, Burundi, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Guyana, Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, Antigua & Barbuda, Trinidad & Tobago.
All participating states of the OSCE (56 Northern Hemisphere developed nations) have also agreed that “the preferred method for the disposal of small arms is destruction… Any small arms identified as surplus to a national requirement should, by preference, be destroyed.”[iii]
Countries which have not yet declared such a policy include: Australia, Namibia, Uganda.
The federal agency charged with licensing or denying all exports of arms and ammunition is the Defence Export Control Office, Department of Defence, Canberra. In recent years, Australian policy has been to stringently control, choke off and prohibit firearms and ammunition exports to its neighbours in the Pacific, and to carefully calculate the risk of arms misuse or human rights violations in countries further afield. Many of these suffer per capita gun injury and death rates far lower than those of the United States.
It’s been going on for years
1997-2000: In a deal worth $10.5 million, NSW Police bought 13,000 Glock pistols. Under public pressure in the aftermath of Port Arthur, the NSW government then agreed to destroy the old revolvers they replaced.
1998-2002: Queensland Police bought 8,600 Glock pistols, then in return for a million-dollar saving, and with permission from Canberra, traded 3,674 of its old Ruger and S&W revolvers onto the foreign secondary arms market.
Commenting later on the Queensland deal, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said:
When the AFP went from Smith & Wessons to Glocks we actually destroyed the Smith & Wessons. Other agencies, for purely economical reasons, did trading deals with the firearms suppliers so there is no guarantee where those weapons ended up.
2007-2011: South Australia Police first thoroughly trialled, then signed a contract to buy enough new Smith & Wesson M&P (military and police) .40 calibre semi-automatic pistols to arm its 4,000-officer frontline force. The fate of thousands of S&W .357 calibre revolvers now surplus to requirements at SAPOL has yet to be made public.
2007-2011: After a long debate, in April 2010 Victoria Police signed a $7 million deal with Smith & Wesson to deliver 10,500 new S&W M&P .40 calibre semi-automatic pistols for deployment to all front-line officers by the first quarter of 2012. The fate of 7,513 surplus Victoria Police S&W .38 calibre revolvers has yet to be made public.
Victoria is the last of eight Australian jurisdictions to re-arm with semi-auto pistols.
Time to reconsider
Australia’s long-standing policies and world leadership in the reduction of armed violence by way of export control deserve to be applauded by all but despots, tribal fighters and criminals.
Yet Canberra’s assessment of potential risk seems almost colonial – commendable concern for developing nations, but less for outwardly wealthier communities whose residents face a higher day-to-day risk of gun violence.
One has to ask: What is it that makes shipping thousands of handguns to the streets of America less of a public health and human rights risk than sending the same weapons to say, Bosnia, Palestine, Vanuatu, Uganda or Myanmar – all of which have lower per capita gun homicide rates that the United States?[iv]
They COULD sell them to their own populace....
But we’ll be glad to take them....
Pics???
- How the exercise of free speech threatens public health in the USA
- How warranted searches threaten public health in the USA
- How trial by jury threatens public health in the USA
- How the lack of cruel and unusual punishment threatens public health in the USA
- How the abolishment of slavery threatens public safety in the USA
- How voting by women and non-whites threatens public health in the USA
Oh, never mind. It's only the 2nd Amendment RIGHT that's evil and should be infringed upon.
>> export thousands of surplus Smith & Wesson .357-calibre police revolvers for re-sale on the US civilian gun market
Yup, a six shooter - the gun of choice for mother rapers and father stabbers worldwide.
Australia`s Gun Ban, Crime & Video Tape
http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?id=30&issue=015
SWEET! I want one ... like, yesterday! I want to know where I can buy one & how soon? The cash is burning a hole in my pocket...
This is one of the stupidest screeds ever written. It is beyond comprehension a sentient being ever was paid squat to deposit this drivel in public venue.
Melissa Sweet is a useful idiot, a politically-correct bedwetter.
Hey, Melissa, did it ever occur to you that these guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens will prevent thousands and thousands of rapes, assaults, murders, thefts, and kidnappings over the coming decades?
Why is it that clueless libtards such as Sweet are always singing the praises of government-mandated preventive health care services, yet they are blind to the massive public health benefits of preventing thousands and thousands of rapes, assaults, murders, thefts, and kidnappings through private ownership of life-saving weapons such as these?
Nope, no bias there.
Thanks.
I had supposed there was a gun ban and I was being a bit sarcastic...should have so noted it.
But the link was most informative.
excellent, I’ve been in the market for a 357 wheelgun ever since I mistakenly traded my model 19 combat masterpiece for a mini 14.
Liberalism is a mental disorder.
As usual the gun banners use this as a health matter.
It is unhealthy to be a liberal.
America, don’t repeat Australia’s gun control mistake
By Ben-Peter Terpstra 11:01 AM 01/19/2011
After the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, media hysteria and bipartisan political support for punishing gun owners increased. As a consequence, our gun laws were tightened.
We could have all responded like rational human beings and grieved for the deceased (35 in all). Instead, militant anti-gun activists viewed the massacre as an opportunity, and set out to punish freedom.
Hitler supported gun control. So did Stalin. Still, our activists were bent on portraying the gun-tolerant United States as the real menace. “Australia doesn’t want to end up like the Wild West,” went one common argument.
Yet, in 2011, I’m compelled to ask: When will we learn from our mistakes and admit we were wrong? And I ask this question because many Australians are victims of violence. In contrast, for criminals and their enablers, “gun control” is the gift that keeps on giving.
Take Melbourne, Australia’s second most populous city. Between January 16, 1998 and April 19, 2010, 36 criminal figures or partners were murdered during the Melbourne Gangland Killings.
Alas, family environments, from businesses to parks, were drawn into the mess.
The passage of gun control laws fueled our illegal arms market, and gun-hungry gangs multiplied. The significance: many gangland deaths/wars involved bullets. The tribal fights exploded after the Port Arthur massacre-inspired gun laws, against mainstream media predictions.
To concerned Victorians, too, it felt like our criminal class was running the state. The problem though (in Australia at least) is that campaigning newspapers and television networks are never wrong — no matter how many people are killed or threatened by guns, there’s always a “complex” excuse.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/19/america-dont-repeat-australias-gun-control-mistake/#ixzz1KAIGI000
Ben-Peter Terpstra is a freelance writer based in regional Victoria, Australia. He has lived and worked in the Northern Territory, Melbourne, Kyoto and London (England).
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/19/america-dont-repeat-australias-gun-control-mistake/#ixzz1KAHxdNnU
Yep, US gun manufacturers just send a guy out with a bunch of guns in the trunk of his car to sell "on the street."
/Do I really need the tag?
What a load of crap.
Sales on Saturday night only.
Do they post a schedule? Does he have a good selection? Does he take orders?
Am I a despot or a tribal fighter?
Are they L-frame or K-frame? Inquiring minds want to know.
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