OzOne wrote:
On 30 Oct 2006 14:50:05 -0800, "Peter"
scribbled thusly:


OzOne wrote:

You live in a land with guns in too many hands already..It would be
near impossible to get them all under control.

We don't....we have largly succeeded in getting control of guns.

Oz, I generally don't buy into gun threads these days but - that is
either an outright lie or such an example of wishful thinking that it
might as well be one.

Pete, we do largely have guns under control.
Pistols just aren't out there unless illegally obtaibned.

Agreed.

Automatic rifles..same story

Agreed. Never were common. None of my friends ever had one even 20+
years ago. Expensive ammo burners. I had a play with a .50 BMG on a
ship recently and was glad your taxes were paying for the ammo :-)

Semi auto...well....

You seem to have cut out the bit where I mentioned the many (hundreds
of) thousands of long guns that were imported but never handed in.
Where are they?

Thing is we have control over the legal arms situation fot the most
part and have not allowed a US situation to develop where a pistol is
considered a great gift for your wife on her birthday...no matter how
big your life insurance policy is :-)

Shrug. We've never been a pistol culture really. The gun laws haven't
really changed that.

Pete, If you could post that list it would be appreciated.

Sort of turning it around, aren't you Oz? I know from the dealer
reports back in the 90's what was imported. It's on public record. Are
you denying it, or suggesting that I'm making the figures up? I've
never been able to get a breakdown of what was surrendered but the
total number of surrendered firearms doesn't come even close to the
semiauto centrefires imported. So - there are still ****loads of rifles
in Oz, unregistered, illegally held (now). Yet the crime rate (murder
rate) with firearms trends downward, year after year - just as it was
doing prior to 1996 and the banning of semiauto guns.

It's the culture, not the guns.

Also a list of all owners of illegal and unregisterd firearms would
also be of assistance.

Heh. If anyone really wanted one, it could be done. Well, maybe it
couldn't. Friend of mine was head of ASIAL at one point and the NSW
Firearms Registry had to ask the members for their firearms inventory.
Apparently there'd been a database crash. Can't vouch for the truth of
this but it wouldn't surprise me.

Anyway, there are the importers records - where the figures I quoted &
you ignored came from - there are the records of what's been handed in.
What's left are the unregistered ones. Now finding who has them,
different matter. As long as they're not using them to shoot their
fellow citizens, I don't care. If they start, I most certainly do care.


In addition the Glock pistols so beloved by our immigrant community in
Sydney have either been smuggled into Oz or stolen from coppers &
security guards, because there are a lot of them about & NSW has had
pistol registration since 1922. Much good it has done.

Yes, Illegal weapons are out there, but do you seriously think that
arming the population like the US model is the answer?

Nope but that's a straw man. Do you think Aussies in possession of
firearms are going to go on mass killing rampages all the time? Doesn't
happen. Different culture.

In addition check out www.homegunsmith.com and a number of the yahoo
newsgroups devoted to firearms. You have no hope of controlling the
supply of firearms to anyone who really wants one.

True...a criminal is a criminal...even if he's the guy next door who
hunts with an illegal weapon.

Circular definition but you're evading the point. You state that we
have firearms supply under control. Are you now agreeing that we don't?
Which is my point.

These are facts, Oz. Not political positions. If you disagree, post
something with substance to the contrary. Or just bury your head and
chant the mantra, but it isn't going to be convincing, any more than
Bobsprit trying to talk about tools.

Very few facts Pete, just your impressions of the situation.

Well, let's see. The importers imported at least 5X semiauto firearms
than the total surrender of rifles & shotguns. This is a fact. Where
are the rest of the guns?

Criminals who want hand guns don't seem to have difficulty getting
them. They seem to be smuggled in because the serial numbers don't
appear on databases, far as I can tell when I asked. Alternatively the
databases are a waste of time which wouldn't surprise me, and it is
what I do for a living...

The gun laws haven't prevented people from obtaining unregistered &
illegal firearms. That's a fact, too.

In addition, anyone determined enough can make a firearm out of raw
materials without a huge investment in tooling. I predicted this 10
years ago but I certainly didn't forsee the Chinese selling small
machine tools like the 7x10 lathes and mini-mills for peanuts. This has
expanded the pool of tooling enormously. Now compound this with the
fall in price of CNC equipment and the availability of CNC G-code files
and life becomes even simpler for manufacturing, much more difficult
for prevention.

Those statements are also facts.

Yet we still don't have a problem in Oz, because our culture is
different.

Yes, I walk anywhere I wish.
The culture we have is one where guns are rare not common.

Yep, that's the mantra. Perhaps we should define some terms. What do
you define as 'rare' and what do you define as 'common' in terms of
guns per head of population?


What you should be considering is the *total* failure of the NSW police
to enforce security. Want to get private people to seriously consider
carrying? Let gangs run riot like the coppers did last year in Cronulla
& surrounds. I'd be getting my shotgun out of storage at that point.

You blow the Cronulla riots up way to much.
It was bad, but it was in the streets and mostly only involved those
who chose to be there and get involved or risk being involved.
There were no home invasions nor shooting that I recall...was it one
stabbing out of the hundreds involved over the whole time?
It wasn't the Police who stuffed up, it was the Govt who wouldn't
allow them, and still isn't allowing them to do their job coupled with
a system which allows media to incite situations like that with
impunity.

It was a failure of the police to keep control. Sure, the initial
Cronulla riot was one thing but the revenge attacks were something
else. The police knew about the gathering in the park yet stood by. As
a citizen I'm disgusted. Not only or even primarily with the police,
most certainly the political command, but the police are *paid* to stop
this sort of thing and they didn't.

Heh. Couple of my neighbours were potting rabbits with a shotgun then
target practice with a couple 22LR's on Sunday afternoon. Lucky you
don't live here or you'd have been suffering from an attack of the
vapours & called out the local SWAT squad.

Why?
Is here in farmland/country or the middle of Glebe?

Semi-rural Tassie, I guess Glenorie would be equivalent; 5 acre blocks
with some a bit bigger, others a little smaller. I'd have a severe
problem with people firing rifles in the 'burbs these days, tho we used
to do it as kids in Sydney.

PDW