The farce of the National Coalition for Gun Control

Posted on 25 January 2012 by Content Manager

Tonight I speak about the gun prohibition lobby group, which emerges from time to time to launch its predictable tirade against legal firearm owners. It criticises also anything the Shooters and Fishers Party does to make our gun laws more sensible and more workable. I refer, of course, to the so-called National Coalition for Gun Control – "national", hardly!

The group is actually a coalition of two people and, as far as I can determine, was created to serve the ego of the self-styled next leader of the Federal Greens, our old friend Lee Rhiannon. As far as anyone knows, the coalition is made up of a Tasmanian lawyer based in Hobart and Samantha Lee, the grandly titled chair of the group.

If the coalition were properly constituted it would no doubt have a constitution, a registered address and, indeed, a membership list. We should be able to apply for membership. I do not believe the group has any of these community-based organisational attributes.

It is a straw dummy, a coward's soap box filled with froth and no substance.

I must admit that, with the same Ms Rhiannon about to join the Federal Senate, I have some trepidation at what draconian rules and regulations she will seek to impose on the legal firearm owners of Australia. She will now have a national field in which to meddle; she will no longer be limited to just mucking up New South Wales.

At every instance of someone doing the wrong thing with a firearm, not only here but anywhere in the world, members of the National Coalition for Gun Control seemingly cannot help themselves. They trot out their same tired old mantra and somehow try to blame legal and licensed firearm owners for any and every incident. Crooks and villains do not register their firearms; they do not get a firearms licence; nor do they submit themselves to scrutiny by police who come to their house regularly and inspect the storage of their firearms.

It is crooks who perpetrate the firearm incidents and drive-by shootings that the gun control coalition is so keen to blame us for. We all know it is impossible to legislate to control a mentally ill person or to prevent someone who is bent on murder actually going ahead and doing it.

The Shooters and Fishers Party supports workable firearm laws and legislation. Indeed, we promoted a bill that imposed extra sentences for anyone using a firearm in a crime, but we won no support from the major parties. We believe that we have sufficiently sound laws in Australia. They do not need further tightening, but they could do with further fine tuning to remove some of the more silly provisions and red tape.

We have a fine tradition of sporting shooters, who are the backbone of our community and who, by definition and licensing, are the cream of our society, otherwise they would not be licensed to carry firearms.

The same cannot be said for the boosters of the anti-legal gun ownership lobby – this turgid and shadowy group of fellow travellers bent on social change and control at all costs.

Our current laws withstand the unwarranted scrutiny of the self-interest group, the National Coalition for Gun Control. There are many examples of how dishonest and deceptive the anti-gun lobby can be, but let me give just two examples.

A couple of years back the so-called National Coalition for Gun Control issued a joint media release with Lee Rhiannon's other darling, Animal Liberation. They were trying to shut down a hunting and outdoor lifestyle expo, an event in the Albury-Wodonga area. They claimed:

“The expo is illegal and breaches a number of serious provisions under the Firearms Act.”

This was a dishonest claim, as the police were quick to confirm. However, gun prohibitionists do not deal in facts; they like to talk about gun crime and blame it incorrectly on firearms theft from licensed owners. They stated:

“The only way to stop drive-by shootings is to reduce the number of guns in the legal market.”

As we recently heard in this place from the Minister for Police and Emergency Services, the guns used by thugs to enforce their control over the drug trade come from overseas, just like the drugs. Backing that, the Australian Institute of Criminology shows that firearms stolen from private owners seldom turn up later in crime.

People in the community often ask, "Why can't we pay for more teachers? Why can't we afford more nurses or police?"

It is simple: Past governments have unquestioningly yielded to the shrill and misleading demands of anti-gun extremists. Those dollars could have been spent meeting the needs of the community rather than the whims of the Greens.

I sincerely hope the New South Wales Government will take a more responsible approach to the spending of taxpayers' money in the future.