Guns in the City !

Lurid newspaper headlines warn us that this state is fast approaching eight million citizens - and gun ownership is steadily rising and has now exceeded the one million mark.   It is a sobering thought to imagine that one in every eight people we pass in the street is probably a gun owner.

It took the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in 1996 to enact laws that severely restricted the right to own a gun.  A disturbed young man with a powerful gun calmly walked through that historic site shooting men, women and children at random.  When the police and medics arrived thirty-five were dead and a further twenty-three wounded.  It was a disaster of almost unimaginable proportions.

At that time our gun law were lax. There was a huge number of unregistered guns in the community and that massacre convinced hundreds of thousands of people to voluntarily hand in guns that had been in the family - unused - for years.  Guns were not totally banned, but gun security and storage laws were tightened and a need to have a gun license became very specific.   Where one was required for " hunting " it required the written consent of a property owner on which the hunting would occur.

Access to ammunition was also tightened. A licensed gun owner needed to produce that license to buy bullets and this was restricted to the type and calibre of the individual weapon for which the license applied. Hand guns have always been subjected to tight restrictions, but now this extended to rifles and shotguns.

This new law appeared to be working well.  Those with a need for a gun had little problem with the licensing laws.  Farmers needs for vermin control and the merciful euthanasia of stock where necessary were being met and such firearms needed to be stored in gun safes to avoid theft during burglaries.  Gun crime in our cities usually involves hand guns which are either locally produced or smuggled in by bikie gangs.

In many respects, these gun statistics are misleading.  We tend to assume that when a gun license is issued that means someone owns just a single gun.  More than a hundred NSW citizens own an arsenal of at least seventy guns and that seriously dilutes the concentration  of guns in citizens hands. In fact every gun license holder usually owns on average four weapons, hence this further restricts the overall ratio.

We need to ask ourselves if the present gun laws are working and providing the safety aspect we need ?   That brings the question of why someone in a city like Sydney needs a gun ?   It is surprising to find that target shooting is becoming a very popular sport and attracting a vast number of junior members.  It is permitted from the age of ten.  This is a sport that involves the many rifle ranges around the city and now includes low velocity ranges in suburban buildings.

There is  no doubt that guns fascinate some people.  Obviously the police would need to carefully examine the credentials of anyone amassing an arsenal but we do not appear to have a crime problem with long arms.  Gun crime seems restricted to hand guns which are easily concealed.  Unfortunately, as we have learned with the drug trade, our borders are porous when it comes to smuggling and are easily subjected to the law of supply and demand.