Australia’s Once Rugged Gun Owners Reduced to Criminals by Anti-Gun Nanny State

Manassas, VA --(Ammoland.com)- I’ve long been fascinated by Australia and its people.

A visit to that country has been high on my bucket list since I was just a kid, but more and more as I read about present-day Australia I am disappointed and saddened.

It seems that the days of rugged individualism and self-determination are gone from the land down under and the heroic characters of the past like Ned Kelly and Banjo Patterson have faded into the realm of myth and fairytales.

It wasn’t so long ago that the reputation of Australia included the belief that one Australian could easily – and happily – pommel any two men from any other country – more if she put down her baby. And Australian men had an even hardier reputation.

Sadly that’s no longer the case as Australia has apparently devolved into a namby-pamby society of effete urbanites, hen-pecked by anglophilic nannies and socialist, world-citizen politicians who revel in Australia’s rugged history while criminalizing and quashing any hint of such thought or action in present day.

My disappointment in Australia turned into outright disgust recently when I happened upon two stories in Australian media, both dated August 10. The first, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the government of New South Wales had revoked the firearm license of Richard Hawkins, an 89-year old veteran of World War II, because the tool chest in which he locked up his two .22 rifles did not meet the government’s security standards. This was discovered during a routine “safe storage audit.”

Hawkins then disassembled the rifles and gave them to a local locksmith – the son of a war buddy – for safe-keeping until he could get a more secure storage container. Unfortunately one of the rifles was a semi-auto and therefore a “Category C” firearm requiring a special license to possess – a license the locksmith did not hold. The hearing officer cited these errors as proof of Hawkin’s inability to understand the rules of firearms ownership. The magistrate expressed further concern that the old vet was only able to shoot from a supported position due to back and neck injuries he sustained fighting for Australia’s freedom against Nazi and Japanese aggressors.

“In my opinion, it is not in the public interest for a person to hold a firearms license if that person does not have the physical capacity to safely use a firearm, including use in unexpected or emergency situations.”

Unexpected or emergency situations? These are .22 caliber rifles which are required to be locked, unloaded, in a government approved storage container at all times except when actually being used for government approved purposes. Mr. Hawkins, who lives alone on secluded land out in the country, explained that he used the .22s for pest control. What response to “unexpected or emergency situations” is this judge possibly referring to? Certainly not self-defense.

Then ABC Newcastle reported that during another routine “safe storage audit,” a loaded gun and ammunition were discovered locked in a farmer’s government approved firearms safe.

The nanny from the gun control coalition explained: “There’s a reason why firearms and ammunition are separated and that is for safety, particularly because guns are kept in the home. We need to ensure the persons that are in the home are as safe as possible. This is because of accidents or suicide or potential domestic violence situations.”

Clearly the farmer in this case, the husband of Pru Goward, a member of the New South Wales Parliament, like the battle-hardened veteran and life-long gun owner Mr. Hawkins, needs this nanny to keep him and his family safe. His case was scheduled to go to trial later this month.

Mr. Hawkins asked an important question when the police advised him that they were revoking his firearm license: “Haven’t you blokes got anything better to do than going around harassing war veterans?”

Seriously, how much time, money, and manpower is wasted in registering, inspecting, and confiscating guns from law-abiding citizens – and prosecuting those good citizens? Australia has spent Billions of dollars on this nonsense while their crime rates soared. At this point their violent crime rates are in decline, as they are in the US and Canada, but they are declining from record highs set after the people allowed themselves to be disarmed.

What could have been accomplished if all of that money and energy had been focused on criminals rather than law-abiding gun owners?

What’s most disheartening is that the Australian people are not outraged and revolted by stories like these. Sadly, the beautiful “land down under” has followed the UK into a true-to-life Monty Python joke.

About: The Firearms Coalition is a loose-knit coalition of individual Second Amendment activists, clubs and civil rights organizations. Founded by Neal Knox in 1984, the organization provides support to grassroots activists in the form of education, analysis of current issues, and with a historical perspective of the gun rights movement. The Firearms Coalition is a project of Neal Knox Associates, Manassas, VA. Visit: www.FirearmsCoalition.org

GUN REGISTRATION IS GUN CONFISCATION (old but good)

The holy grail of the anti self defense and anti rights special interest groups is gun registration. This is because once your gun is required to be registered, it is in effect, already confiscated. Only a little thought will reveal to you why this is so. The Government will know who has legal possession of each firearm. They will know where the firearm is stored. When physical possession of the gun is desired, they can order you to turn it in. This has happened repeatedly. The historical examples include NAZI Germany, Soviet Russia, Red China, and Cambodia. Recent examples include Kosovo, Great Britian, Australia, New York, and California. Not having possession of the firearm registered to you can be grounds for criminal action. If you have reported the gun stolen, and it is then found in your possession, you can be charged with obstruction of justice.

It is a truism that once all guns are required to be registered, the only people who will legally possess guns will be those who have registered them. If you choose to follow the course of civil disobedience, and not register your firearms, mere possession of an unregistered gun can put you at grave legal risk. Civil disobedience has been the most common course of action in California and Canada, where it has proven impossible to enforce the laws requiring registration. If you choose this course of action, you would now be at the mercy of any informant who discovers that you possess a gun illegally. Children in the public schools are already being trained to tell the police if there is a gun in the house. Doctors are being urged to ask children if there are guns in their home. A warrant was issued in California for a SWAT raid based on the mere picture of people holding unidentified guns which were legal. The picture had been sent to the police by an informant in the film developing company. If you are not on the list of those who have registered, you have become a criminal. If you are forced to use the gun for self defense, you will have committed a serious crime. It will become extremely difficult to train your children in firearms safety or to bring friends or relatives into the gun culture. In a few years, the number of people with personal knowledge of guns will be much smaller. The people who urge gradual or immediate gun registration are attempting cultural genocide of the gun culture.

The common practice, once guns are required to be registered, is to gradually tighten the requirements of registration to reduce the number of gun owners. When the number is low enough to limit effective political action by the members of the gun culture affected, the remaining guns can be confiscated with little effort.

Gun registration has proven to be universally ineffective in reducing crime. In fact, crime is likely to increase because of the transfer of police resources from crime fighting to administer and police the political requirements of the gun registration scheme, and because of the reduced number of people willing or able to use their firearms for self defense. Self defense is never acknowledged by the anti rights special interest groups because it trumps their arguments for disarming the people. The primary purpose of gun registration has always been to reduce the political power of the people rather than reduce the crime rate.

The current attempt at requiring gun registration started in 1968, when congress required gun dealers to obtain a federal license, and purchasers of guns from federally licensed dealers were required to fill out a form 4473 to take possession. Congress forbid the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from constructing any national gun registration list from this data, although a registration scheme of purchasers of more than one handgun within a week has been kept on the grounds that it was started before the congressional action forbidding such, and is therefore "grandfathered". In 1994, Congress passed the Brady bill, which required handgun purchasers to undergo an instant check or a five day wait to purchase a handgun. While parts of this act were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, a little known part of the bill went into effect in 1998, requiring all purchasers of firearms from licensed dealers to undergo an "instant check" before taking possession. Two safeguards had been built into the bill to insure that it would not be used to develop a national registration of firearms. First, the FBI was forbidden to keep any records of instant checks that allow purchase. Second, the instant checks only applied to dealers, not to private sales. Since any gun owner could sell their firearm whenever they wished, without government permission, no registration list could effectively be developed, and effective gun confiscation was prevented.

During the last year, both of these safeguards have been under attack. The FBI has refused to immediately destroy the instant check information, although required to do so by law. Recently a three judge panel in Washington, D. C. has voted two to one to uphold their ability to do so. Both judges voting for gun registration are Clinton appointees. The Clinton administration has been vociferously promoting the elimination of the other safeguard, private sales, which they call the "gun show loophole". Once private parties are forbidden from selling guns without government permission, it is only a matter of time before all guns and gun owners who are not registered are illegal.

I find particularly troubling the emphasis during the last decade on guns that are seldom used in crime, but are quite useful in military service. The same people who stated that they were only interested in limiting handguns, now call for limiting the ownership of military style rifles. Many models of guns which are almost never used in crime, are now illegal for people to own in some locations. The latest outrageous attempt to remove power from the people is to place severe restrictions on the sale of .50 caliber rifles. The authors of this bill don't even claim that these guns are used in crime. They want to ban them because they have a military purpose! The clearest reason for the Second Amendment to the Constitution is to insure that the people retain a large measure of military power, to balance the power of the government. The republic is in grave danger when congressmen openly state that they fear military power in the hands of the people.

The only purpose of gun registration is gun confiscation, whether it is done individually and piecemeal, as the legal requirements to own a gun become more and more difficult, or en mass, when the government feels the necessity to disarm its citizens in order to further its control.

Governments that push for gun registration distrust their people, and have earned the people's distrust.

BRIEF HISTORY OF US GUN CONTROL...

1961. We don’t want to take your guns away, we only want to register handguns. Long guns will not be affected. -Thomas J Dodd & Emauel Cellar

1964. We don’t want to take your guns away. We only want to register all of them! -Dodd -Cellar

1968. We don’t want to take your sporting guns away. We ONLY want to register them and ban ONLY the import of foreign Saturday night specials and five shot WWII military bolt action rifles!

1968 “Today we make America safe by taking the guns out of the hands of criminals!”...LBJ when he signed the 1968 gun control act into law.

1971. We don’t want to take your sporting guns away, we ONLY want to ban Saturday night specials.

1976. We don’t want to take your long guns away. We ONLY want to ban all handguns!

(From the original Handgun Control Inc group)....”We only want to control handguns. Long guns will not be affected.”

1981. The NRA is a rifle organization! They should give up their handguns! And they can keep their rifles! -Actress Lee Grant on GMA the day after Reagan was shot.

1989. We don’t want to ban your hunting rifles and shotguns. We ONLY want to ban handguns AND Assault rifles and shotguns.

We ONLY want to ban assault rifles and shotguns AND all fifty cal. rifles and handguns!

What stopped this mad rush for gun control was when 19 muslims flew planes into the WTC and Pentegon, and America woke up that the threat was within our own borders.

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