Posted on 01/09/2016 10:34:18 AM PST by Olog-hai
The White House says Australia's prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, will meet with President Barack Obama on Jan. 19 as he makes his first trip to Washington since being sworn in last September.
The White House says the two leaders will highlight the wide scope of the U.S.-Australia alliance. They'll talk about a wide range of issues that include the conflicts with the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Australia has provided air power to the coalition efforts. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
On the agenda: (1) spreading the word about the religion of peace and the benefits of diversity; (2) acceptance of Islam and the benefits it brings to the world; (3) fine mini wafer crackers on which to serve caviar, cheese or pate.
Also....Obama asking the Prime Minister, “Just exactly how did you take away their guns, because I’m havin’ a heck of a time here?”
Queen Putt, the Marxist, Mooslim, Kenyan, Steaming Pant Load Sissy Boy needs to brush up on the Australian language...
“Just exactly how did you take away their guns, because I’m havin’ a heck of a time here?â€
Yup. ISIS my ASIS, it’s about the guns. This guy is on a mission and the whole rest of the world is a sideshow to the topic of the moment. This week, it’s guns.
Obama wants his support for his bid for UN Secretary General
Gun Control Morons
Gun Control Morons
Turnbull is not a true conservative, but I don’t think he’s a lightweight by any means. He’s an extremely intelligent business man who made millions of dollars off his own bat, and a brilliant lawyer who took on the Australian and British governments in one of the most significant freedom of speech/freedom of the press cases in both country’s histories and won.
I see people also leaping on the ‘gun control’ idea as well. As I’ve said many times, Australian gun laws really aren’t as bad as some Americans have been lead to believe, although they are not that good either, but even what was done had nothing to do with Malcolm Turnbull. He wasn’t even a Member of Parliament, when John Howard introduced changes to Australian gun laws, post Port Arthur in 1997/98. Turnbull entered Parliament in 2004, and only served very briefly as a junior Minister during the last year of the Howard government.
He has had basically no role concerning Australia’s gun laws.
Tell me the good/bad about Australian gun laws. If they took the guns of law abiding citizens, that can’t be the good part. Also, I wasn’t meaning Turnbull, himself, took the guns away, I was meaning his government in general.
There are millions of firearms legally held in private hands in Australia, but somewhere around a million gun owners (and the country only has a population of around 24 million).
We have universal licencing and registration but any law abiding citizen or permanent resident has little difficulty getting a basic firearms licence which allows for the ownership of basic rifles and shotguns (non semi-automatic) (Category A/B). Getting a handgun licence (Category H), or a licence that allows the ownership of 'non-military' semi-automatics (Category C) is a little harder (how hard differs from state to state somewhat) but can be done if you really want to. Getting a licence for 'military style' semi-automatics (Category D) is difficult unless you have a specific narrowly defined reason for owning one. But there's a wide range of firearms available within the law.
Cleaver Firearms is one of the best gunshops I know of in Australia, and if you have a look at that, you'll get a reasonable idea of what type of guns are around in Australia.
In terms of the supposed mass confiscations - following the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996, the Howard government did introduce some changes to Australian gun laws - mostly in terms of trying to make laws more uniform across the country. Semi-automatics did become more restricted at that time and some people - nobody can be sure how many - lost the right to own them at that stage. Generally this was because they had an old criminal conviction - in Australia, most criminal convictions are spent after ten years of law abiding behaviour - they are no longer considered relevant unless you commit another crime - so people with old convictions can get A/B licences in many cases - but they generally can't get a C licence or higher. Some people who had owned semi-autos under an A/B licence could not keep them when they were moved into Category C. You can say these people had their firearms confiscated - but there weren't that many of them. But at the same time, this was happening, the government also decided to have a voluntary buyback where people could hand in any firearm and get a fair market price for it, no questions asked. Over 600,000 weapons were handed in under this scheme, and that's where you see the photos of big piles of guns coming from - but what often isn't made clear is most of those firearms were not confiscated - but voluntarily sold. Why were there so many voluntarily handed in? Basically because the laws governing the sale of firearms in Australia at that stage made the chance to get a fair market price for a second hand firearm very unusual. People were handing in guns they hadn't used in decades but had never sold because it wasn't worth it for the pittance they would have got. So you got a lot of guns handed in. And that was the idea because those unused firearms were the ones most likely to wind up stolen and in the hands of criminals.
As for Turnbull and the changes in gun laws, I get why you might think he'd have some sort of relevance - after all, he's a Prime Minister of Australia and we are talking about the Australian government, but honestly, he doesn't. He wasn't part of the ministry or Parliament that changed Australia's gun laws. It was nearly twenty years ago, and he wasn't even a junior Member of Parliament yet. Australian governments get defined very much by who is 'in the Ministry' at the time, and while you do get some institutional memory because of overlap, Turnbull just doesn't have an overlap with that period. He'd have no insights, and probably very little knowledge.
I understand what you’re saying about Australian gun laws, but I don’t believe that’s what’s going on here. He’s bringing the Prime Minister here to show us how wonderful it is in Australia with fewer guns. Obama has a one track mind and the track he’s on right now is to reduce the # of guns we americans have. I couldn’t trust Obama any farther than I could throw him concerning our gun laws. He’s already been quoted as saying we americans shouldn’t have guns. Remember “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”. I don’t believe a word he says!
Australian Prime Ministers generally visit the US between three to six months after taking office. That’s what this visit is. Yes, President Obama may well try to exploit it for domestic political purposes, but a meeting like this would have happened whatever the circumstances - and Turnbull is exploiting it as well - he has to show Australian voters that he is somebody who does have access to ‘the Leader of the Free World’.
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