WA's Firearms Regulation Oddities

Yes these are pretty odd, worse still is they're no secret, they're widely known and complaints about them have been loud and lingering now for many years with no corrections. Some have turned into political footballs, well one has, but common sense and facts evade many of the federal MPs over it. Yes its a state based regulation not Federal, but the Sovereign Over Reach by the federal Liberal Government made it a federal football.

1. Station Owners/Pastoralists in WA can apply for a side arm, or pistol as a tool (and largely a safety device) of their every day work. A large and even medium calibre pistol can be a life saver with rogue animals at close quarters. Seems logical and sensible so far. It is.
   
   It is until that pastoralist decides he or she would like to compete at a pistol club. Only have to go minimum 6 times a year, but the upside is, they pick up skills of handling, maintaining and firing the firearm in a good social environment. Meeting more people and mixing with others is always a good thing for people who live in remote locations especially when safety and adhering to the law is the priority.
   
   Where it gets nonsensical is the pastoralist cannot take and use his/her sidearm off the station, it cannot be used at the range. They have to actually apply for another firearm, identical perhaps to compete. If their station firearm is damaged, even then they cannot use the range approved side arm on the station, its only at approved pistol club ranges & events.
2. Co-Ownership. If you have a husband & wife situation or parents & offspring, they cannot share a gun safe. Both people have to co-own all firearms in the safe or have separate safes. If you have a visitor from a northern station owner stay with you and you're both competing the next day it gets funny again. The pastoralist is required to keep their gun secure at all times, but strangely they technically can't put their firearm in your safe. Even a non gun owning wife cannot have the keys to her husband's gun safe. There has been a problem already where police checked a gun safe, the husband was away and the well meaning wife got the safe keys and unlocked for the police officers to check its mounting nuts, washers & bolts. She had no gun licence, the guns were seized.
3. Appearance Clause - In some cases, there are firearms that are prohibited with good reason. Others get you wondering. Cat D which are primarily self loading centrefire rifles & pump action shot guns that hold more than 5 rounds are completely prohibited. Go to Firearms Regulations 1974, look up Scehedule 3 & find the listing for Category D firearms.
   "A self loading centrefire rifle designed or adapted for military purposes or a firearm that substantially duplicates such a firearm in design, function or appearance"So based solely on appearance, firearms have been knocked back, that is declared as being military like in appearance and have been seized or denied permission to own.
   Step further, some farmers can get a Ruger 10/22 which is a .22 calibre semi automatic rifle. In factory trim with normal every day wooden stock fitted, no worries at all. Now once you own it and you decide to make it safer and easier to handle you replace the stock with a lawfully bought after market stock you need to be careful. Some of the after market ones have a pistol grip. You have just rendered your rifle a "prohibited firearm", you're now breaking the law and getting caught with it you'll be in big trouble, have your firearms seized and probably not be able to own a firearm again. Strangely, if there's a section that connects the bottom of the pistol grip to the end of the stock, its no longer a pistol grip, its a "thumbhole" stock and quite legal. If it has a shroud over the barrel or magazine its prohibited even if the shroud is for mounting accessories like a scope or a torch. It gets worse, there is no objective standard for the police to go by, so its their discretion. If they think its scary & army looking, its getting seized, you're probably getting charged and you'll have to go and have your day in court to maintain your unblemished firearms licence.
4. Semi Automatic Centrefire. Legal in Queensland with an Ag Permit for the purposes of destroying vermin/ferals. In fact there's a couple of firms that operate in Qld that control pigs etc from a helicopter using semi autos. All good. Some WA Pastoralists sought these contractors to control vermin numbers, Ag Dept approved then the paperwork got to the WA Police who then declared if the contractors crossed the WA Border their firearms would be seized and they would be charged. All Cat D firearms are banned in WA unless its for military or police use. One of the better centrefire rifles is the Mini 14 Ruger Ranch Rifle. A good sturdy .223 semi auto rifle. Great for good follow up shots at ferals. Its banned. Its basically the big brother of the Ruger 10/22. Duplicates it in function & appearance. In Queensland a primary producer just has to apply for a Ag Permit and its 100% legal.
5. Lever Action Shotgun - Currently 100% legal in WA. They were first produced by Winchester 129 years ago. They can legally be imported as long as they have a maximum magazine capacity or 5 rounds. Ironically though, they're still Cat A in WA so you can go by one and extend the magazine legally to 7 rounds which is currently only banned from importation not ownership. Many 7+ round lever actions were here prior to the "Adler". Its a very bizarre political football that's being booted all over the place and after 12+months, common sense is having little success at creeping into the debate which appears completely closed off to the public. The actual threat of 7 rounds over 5 has never actually been set out in the sunlight for proper inspection and testing. Most of the fight to keep 7 rounds comes from shooters who are up for the fight to maintain the status quo on a firearm most won't buy. They're looking to combat their rights that are under threat from a ban with no defendable cause. Serious strange set up.
   Funny thing about the Adler, or any lever action shotgun, never ever been used in a mass shooting and no records of one being used in a gun crime to date. If a criminal were to cut it down into a sawn off shotgun, because of the tube magazine it becomes a single shot. Probably why its only used by hunters who "brush hunt" or hunt on foot.
6. Not so much another oddity but a statement that people should read, learn, know & remember regarding lawful guns that end up in criminals hands.
   
   "Senator McKenzie said a senate inquiry report found that only four hundredths of one per cent of all registered guns in Australia were stolen and only five per cent of those were used to commit a crime.
   Further, recreational shooting contributes $1 billion to the national economy not including the many social and environmental benefits."

The Adler _ What the Judge Roy Bean?

Judge Roy Bean was an eccentric US saloon keeper & law man who died in 1903. His name was used for decades in the phrase "What the Judge Roy Bean?" as an exclamation instead of using the words "What the hell?"

In his lifetime many new things came along, new railroads, automobiles and all manner of innovations.
Why in the year he died Harley Davidson began with Cadillac the year before

Also in 1903...
Edward Binney and Harold Smith co-invent crayons.

Bottle-making machinery invented by Michael J. Owens.

The Wright brothers invent the first gas motored and manned airplane.

Mary Anderson invents windshield wipers.

William Coolidge invents ductile tungsten used in lightbulbs

But the lever action rifle was pretty old by the time Judge Bean left this world. In fact the first ever lever action is thought to be Colt's 1st & 2nd Model Ring Lever rifles. Both were cap & ball rifles produced by Patent Arms Mfg. Co. in New Jersey between 1837 and 1841.

 

The first truly successful lever action 12 Gauge shotgun was the Winchester Model 1887 which had been around 16 years when Judge Bean died. So the earliest 12 gauge lever action shot gun is celebrating its 129th birthday this year. Lever Action Rifles are celebrating their 179th birthday this year.

 

IT IS THEREFORE NOT NEW TECHNOLOGY.

 

Its not rapid fire, all firearms fire only as rapid as the operator can fire and even then there are limitations. Some firearms cannot fire as fast as others, some operators cannot fire fast as others and some can't hit a barn door with their first shot let alone the less accurate follow up shots. You can access the Youtube video where 2 experienced shooters fired 10 rounds. One used an old style double barrel shot gun, the other a 5 shot Adler lever action. They claimed the double barrel won, maybe but for sure, there was pretty well nothing in it. Trouble is, you don't have a desk top with the 10 rounds sitting there when you're hunting pigs in the brush, on foot.
Aside from that lever action rifles (and shotguns), pump action rifles (and shotguns) and bolt action rifles are "repeaters". If the Adler is "Rapid Fire" then so is every firearm except single shot firearms and double barrel shotguns. Fact is the only "Rapid Fire" type firearm are sub-machine guns & full machine guns.

 

IT THEREFORE CAN'T BE CLASSIFIED AS RAPID FIRE.

Its never been involved in a mass shooting. NEVER. No cited recordings of a lever action being used in gun crime. They're not the most reliable gun, lots of moving parts, they didn't take long before they were superseded by pump action shot guns and semi automatics. They have been around for ages, but not been very popular at all in recent times. You cannot easily fire them in the prone position because the gun has to be raised to cycle the lever to eject the spent round and cycle in the next round. Or you have to roll onto one side & lever it. Or lift up if you're leaning on a roof of a ute spotlighting. They, like lever action rifles, come into their own as a "Scrub Gun" or "Brush Gun" where a hunter is on foot and is at close quarters with a pig or dog and several shots are needed.

 

IT IS THEREFORE UNABLE TO BE CALLED THE "WORLD'S MOST LETHAL SHOTGUN" AS ONE PRESS OUTLET FOOL PUT IT.

 

How did the Adler get so popular? Simple...simple and sad really.

Nioa is a very large importer of firearms and only sells wholesale. It helped designed the firearm for the Australian market because its very difficult for shooters in some states to get the pump action (invented in 1897) and semi auto shotgun (invented in 1898). There were 7+1 lever action shotguns already available & in circulation in Australia but they've earned their reputation as being less than reliable and prone to breaking parts that are hard to get. They had become almost a curio or oddity. Some of the brands that can have up to 10 round magazines are Winchester, Chiappa, Norinco, Emerald, IAC & others, although most are either 5 shot or 8 shot. So they're here, been here a long time & available under Cat A quite legally. Lever action shotguns weren't hugely popular, that is until the Adler showed up. To promote it Nioa did a Youtube video where they torture tested 2 slightly different Adler shotguns (different barrel lengths), both 7+1 firearms. How do you torture test them? By firing 5000 shots through both of them as quickly as possible. If they were going to fail, this would show where it would and how badly it would be.

They didn't fail.

 

The video then quickly went viral amongst shooters who quickly realised they could go pig hunting on foot without dogs and knives which is very dangerous. Its on foot in the bush (where a ute can't go) that this firearm, like any lever action, comes into its own as a hunting firearm. Except now there was a reliable 12 gauge to choose from. Some claim they're not that great and there other new brands in Australia now, like Pardus & others but the hype built fast. Adler orders started flooding in. All long before they'd hit full production past the first 2 they torture tested.

 

Then politics entered, the anti-gun lobby cranked up and Tony Abbott installed an Importation Ban,  due to still unknown fears about the firearm and supposedly because a shot gun was used in the Lindt Café siege. However, the Lindt Café siege had a gunman with no firearms licence and the firearm was an illegally modified pump action illegally bought on the black market not a lever action.

So now lawful gun owners can legally own & licence a 12 gauge 7+1 lever action shotgun (still can) they just cannot get a new one because although they're legal, they cannot be imported.

Yes its a bizarre situation where a licenced firearm owner can legally purchase a 5 shot Adler, then go straight around to the gun smith, get it converted to a 7 shot and not be breaking the law. Still under Cat A.
Tony Abbott's import ban was to stay in place until the states all agreed to re-classify it from the category that John Howard's firearms review put the 7 Shot Lever Action Shotgun in back in 1996.

And the advantage of the firearm is not a lot. In fact the huge groundswell of desire for a 7+1 may be mainly due to the threat of it being taken away. For me, if I were pig shooting a lever action rifle or shotgun is fine but then I'm not interested in hunting pigs. If I had a use for one & had a fondness for old western style firearms then maybe. Otherwise no, most of the ban hype actually increased desire and orders.

The ban, which had a sunset clause before Tony Abbott was dumped as PM, actually helped sell more Adlers than Nioa could have ever done with a normal advertising campaign. In fact when the political flares went up, Nioa removed their YouTube Videos straight away but sale orders continued to increase. Not so smart Mr Abbott/Turnbull.

They've been in the community since the late 1800s and never been used in a mass shooting, no not one. They are not the firearm of choice by criminals or terrorists. Short firearms are, but more on that in a minute. The Sydney police worker callously gun down outside a Sydney police station by a radicalised Muslim teenager, he used an illegal Glock semi automatic pistol. That kid also did not have a firearms licence, it came from the black market and its now said to have never been legally sold in Australia but rather it was sold in the USA and smuggled into Australia.
So what is the preferred firearm of the criminals? Hand guns or sawn off shotguns so they can be concealed when carrying. Thing is if you convert an Adler into a sawn off shot gun, it will be a single shot lever action because it has a tube magazine, once shortened, it doesn't work. You can cut the stock off, but it actually makes cycling the lever action more difficult. Criminals & terrorists won't choose a lever action. Its a hunting action these days, has been for well over 60 years.

Malcolm Turnbull, you are at some stage going to have address the cause of the issue and clamp down on the black market gun trade rather than ban guns that aren't new, nor related to crime?

Its been an embarrassing SOVEREIGN OVER REACH by the government and highlights their absence of knowledge on the subject & their reliance on emotional hype devoid of facts, figures or common sense.

And just what part have the media played in this glorious Python-esque cock up of gargantuan proportions? Well they were the first fooled, and they're still running with it.

Port Arthur gets mentioned and its worth remembering that gunman was a deranged psychopath who had trouble discerning reality from fantasy according to his prison mental health worker (a professor no less). He also had no car licence, no gun licence and bought all the illegal guns from the black market. Of his 3 firearms, none were lever action. He used a AR-15 & a L1A1. He did have a shotgun, didn't use it & it wasn't a lever action. 

 

You'd think John Howard would have poured $500 million into address the illegal gun trade, smugglers and serious mental health. Sadly no. There are more votes in fear campaigns, facts are not needed. Mr Howard was also protecting us all from Weapons of Mass Destruction when he sent our country to war in Iraq & turns out there were none there. Perhaps it would have been easier if Saddam's troops and hench men all used Lever Action Shotguns, but no they all used military automatic weapons.

One other point, the reason John Howard's 1996 review put lever actions shotguns in Cat A was pretty simple. You manually cycle a round into a chamber, you pull the trigger and it fire one shot & one shot only. Then you manually cycle the spent round out & manually cycle the next fresh round into the chamber. Its not automatic, its not semi automatic, its not rapid fire. The only firearms that are rapid fire are fully automatic firearms, which most people know as machine guns. Long as you hold the trigger in it keeps firing at a rapid rate. That's what rapid fire is, a full automatic firearm. They are 100% completely banned in Australia for civilian ownership.

Wake up, stop and think seriously for one minute.

How To Arrive At A Good Policy Position

Its seems normal enough but it seems too hard too often. We'll pick one area of policy that's had difficulty recently, due to sadly predictable reasons, all avoidable.

The Use of GMO Grains.

This saw a court case in Kojonup, set 2 neighbours against one another, said to have split the town in half and generally polarised the community, the grain growing community. The net result was a large amount of time, effort and money was spent by allowing the whole thing to go down the adversarial path, two sides slugging it out until one wins & one loses.

It recently also saw a representative from the Pastoralists & Graziers Association crow on ABC Radio about how they successfully fought for their member and how "Steve Marsh picked on the wrong person".

Adversarial slug out solidified.

The PGA and all others in representative groups, including political, not just agri-political could have taken the middle road but didn't. It could have been the opportunity the PGA needed to show real leadership in the field and go mediator, arbiter for both sides to arrive at a settlement without legal action. By settlement I mean not a pay out, but a position the PGA could have fought for, on behalf of both farmers, even though one wasn't a PGA member.

The thing is, both parties should have the right to grow either organic certified crops, traditional crops or GMO crops without penalty or threat of penalty via contamination. One thing is for sure, the contamination thresholds were clearly too low. If there is scientifically proven threat to health by say a contamination level of 1% then show us the science. If the grain is processed it may be that all health threats are already eliminated, if indeed they existed in an unprocessed state.

Legal action may have been needed if their was malicious intent, but by media reporting it seems both parties were not malicious in planting their own crops. The fault here lay mainly with the certification bodies and if they won't change, then a multi-peril crop insurance may need to cover this eventuality in the future.

In any case, it wasn't about ensuring a middle ground sensible approach that could avoid a community split, it was about 2 sides and the whiff of a legal triumph in the wind the PGA noticed and sought to capitalise upon. A trump rather than seek a solution via legislation in the state parliament.

And yes, there is fault to be found there with the WA Parliament too. This should have been nipped in the bud to allow leeway for 2 neighbouring properties to grow what they prefer without penalty but with some sort of safety net.

Its now developing into a pro GM & anti GM battlefield with the lines drawn and common sense is the first casualty. If we were to set policy, we'd need to look at this without bias and see how both parties can be able to plant which ever crop they choose, without great penalty. Clearly the GM threshold is too low for some certified organic crops and it leaves growers exposed to great loss if they exceed very low levels.

Is there a health risk? Answer I've found so far is there'd be no risk at 40% and if that were the cut off threshold, most growers would seek new certified clean grain once it got to 25% levels perhaps lower. The thing is, both the Organic Grower needs his/her crop protected to some point, and the GM neighbour needs legal protection to some point too.

This outcome pushed 2 sides against one another, split a community and derailed the chances of sensible policy amongst the PGA, the parliament and the community. Now we have 2 opposite sides, instead of 2 groups in the one industry. Divided neighbours who may never come together ever again. How that can be portrayed as any sort of good outcome I'll never know.

Policy setting in this instance was adversarial and not middle ground with the grain industry as a whole in mind. It was a prime chance to set 2 different parts of the grains industry as 2 parts of the same community. Instead one side went on the attack, the other went into siege mode & we saw a long protracted slug fest where no one except perhaps the legal community gaining any productivity out of it.

It should never have been a time to choose organic or choose GMO, it should have been a time to protect 2 parts of the same grain industry forever more.

This is a classic example where 2 pre-suppositional sides of bias went head long into battle with some people not directly involved keenly seeking out "facts" to back the position they'd already chosen,

Its very hard to avoid being pre-suppositional, but its a trait of good statesmen of times past...well if not good statesmen then at least good legislators. We were seen to be lacking in that department in WA with the PGA now copping (fairly or unfairly) some flak over getting involved to turn a big visual public relations boost.

The Organic/GMO stand off continues but it serves as a poignant reminder that debate without rigour is policy death. The destination is not your side winning, but the industry as a whole having a fair outcome.

If we don't return to traditional community supportive outcomes we will continue down the path of becoming American like where legal action is the first and last option and the wealthiest litigant will prevail whether they're right or not.

Policy has to be clear, well thought out, be in the nation interest or the interest that serves the best for the most in society or those involved. It must also have good science involved and yes sharp rigour from devil's advocates lest you end up with emperor's new clothes syndrome.

Once its arrived at, it needs to be widely known and as best as is possible, be widely understood. Agreement is not always widely found, but if its formed properly even I can go with policy I'm not in full agreement with because sometimes fairness is not found within pre-suppositional bias or ideology.

Ever seen bad policy?
Ever wondered why?

Ever wondered if there is a better way? There is...or there used to be.