Michael Keenan announced that starting July 1st there will be a three month national firearms amnesty where unregistered and unwanted firearms could be handed in “no questions asked”.
Here's the thing though Michael Keenan failed to mention one significant point. This is no different to the already permanent amnesties in many states that exist already.
Is it useful & good? Yes, if you have an unlicensed firearm, think about handing it in. You can do that before, during or after the official National Amnesty. If you live in the eastern states you can take it to a police station and it will be destroyed or you can take it to a gun dealer where it can become a licenced firearm...licenced to you or someone else if you want to sell it.
Now the media fell for the lop sided sell, or perhaps they're to blame for it but the claim stated is this is the first amnesty since 1996.
1996 was different it was a buy back amnesty. It took an awful lot of registered & unregistered firearms and destroyed them. Are we safer? Well the mass shootings decreased, the gun violence decreased but what we're not often aware of is those crimes were falling BEFORE the Port Arthur Tragedy. They continued to fall at the same rate after the buy back was implemented. Many unwanted and non working firearms were handed in for a cash return. Not such a bad thing & nor is this amnesty.
Its just that if you have a 1915 .303 rifle in the back of the closet or wrapped up in the shed you can hand it in now without being charged and fined $200,000.
Now be sure if you are planning to hand in a firearm and/or ammunition, RING THE POLICE AND MAKE AN APPOINTMENT. Not just to secure a time, but so they know its coming and all is legit. Paperwork, yep there maybe some but its easy so don't fret. If you want the firearm disposed of properly its easy. That's going to be the case before, during and after the amnesty.
Now the only issue I have with the Amnesty is it's potentially being sold or inferred as an anti-crime or anti-terrorism action, its not even close. They're pointing to "grand dad's old .22" well really, that's not going to be the criminal or terrorist's weapon of choice.
The real problem is the matter of firearms coming through our porous borders. The recent "Post Office Glocks" was a perfect example of 100s of firearms being smuggled in by less than sophisticated means. Now its great they caught the culprits, the trouble is all the firearms that already made it through and that are amongst us on the streets.
Not Granpa's old .22
The Port Arthur shooting details are now well known. He had several firearms, one wasn't fired but facts remain, the shooter was a deranged psychopath who's prison health worker (a professor no less) said Bryant has difficulty discerning reality from fantasy. He had no gun licence, no driver's licence but the access to reasonably large amounts of money and just went and bought what he wanted.
It was a serious mental health issue that caused one of Australia's worst murder sprees.
$500 million dollars was sunk into buying back guns, no extra money went into filling the cracks that serious mentally ill people fall.
Lindt Café, well that inquiry is just tragic fact after tragic fact. If the legal system were tighter it might have been averted but thing is, another person with violent extremism in his mind went & secured an illegal firearm. He had no gun licence.
The shooter who murdered police worker Victor Cheng, again radicalised by terrorist ideology had no gun licence. The origin of the firearm is that its thought to have been legitimately sold in the USA, then disappears & somehow ends up on the streets in Paramatta.
In these 3 high profile tragedies, licenced shooters are not the problem. People with access to illegal firearms is the problem. In all 3 cases "Granpa's old .22" is irrelevant and unconnected.
The difficulty we face is there are illegal gun smugglers and illegal gunsmiths operating in Australia. Illegal gunsmiths making all sorts of firearms. A cache of shed made mm machine pistols with full auto have been seized more than once. Forget 3D guns, crims will go for real ones.
The 260,000 illegal firearms in Australia that Michael Keenan quoted comes from a senate report that goes onto say its impossible to know how many illegal guns there are.
The reaction to the 1996 tragedy was big and was largely ill directed however it did roll out some net safety benefits for the community. Gun safes are now normal, higher security is deemed responsible whereas in the old day firearms were often stored behind a door or in a cupboard.
Troubling is if we're to reach a point that's closer to a solution we need to look at the wider facts.
I often hear we don't want to get like America, we don't want to go down the path of the USA.
Watch this...you'll see how facts are funny things and as a result we're not tracking properly on problem solving yet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz8po5E_Kfg
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