The Firing Line Forums

Go Back   The Firing Line Forums > The Conference Center > Law and Civil Rights

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old March 3, 2009, 12:10 PM   #26
johnwilliamson062
Junior member
 
Join Date: May 16, 2008
Posts: 9,995
If you are way out in the boonies does anyone care? I understand there are some reaches in Australia that are more remote than in the US.
johnwilliamson062 is offline  
Old March 4, 2009, 01:21 AM   #27
N00b_Shooter
Senior Member
 
Join Date: October 15, 2008
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 307
Quote:
If you are way out in the boonies does anyone care? I understand there are some reaches in Australia that are more remote than in the US.
If you got busted by a cop in a bad mood then you probably would get in trouble.

Quote:
The police will inspect this prior to the first "Permit to Acquire" has been approved.
I thought so to but i only just got my safe and i asked the firearms regestry and they said i don't need to get it inspected. They told me to just get my rifles and wait for the police to come and do a random inspection.

chadwick76, i would love to go to the US for a holiday and if i did go, i would go shooting for sure. Thanks for the invite might take you up on it one day.
N00b_Shooter is offline  
Old March 4, 2009, 05:09 AM   #28
R W
Member
 
Join Date: May 2, 2007
Posts: 71
A 3 month GUN AMNESTY is on in NSW at the moment, Unregestered firearms
can be handed in or registered, no questions asked.
Minister for police has said the theme of the NSW gun amnesty and public
education campaign is "Taking the Gun out of the Equation".
R W is offline  
Old March 4, 2009, 01:46 PM   #29
Eghad
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 28, 2005
Location: Texas
Posts: 6,231
I have run the numbers on Australian firearm deaths and speaking honestly they dont prove anything either way. Gun deaths were already on the way down before the laws were enacted . Some intellectually dishonest people follwed the advice we have heard here. Dont let a perfectly good crisis go to waste. They sold the Australian people a a scam.

Remember a law does not do anything it just defines a societal norm. People have been killing each other statrting with hands, rocks and spears before firearms were ever invented. We will probably have a zero homicide rate when the big meteor hits and takes out all human life.
__________________
Have a nice day at the range

NRA Life Member
Eghad is offline  
Old March 4, 2009, 07:34 PM   #30
N00b_Shooter
Senior Member
 
Join Date: October 15, 2008
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 307
Hey R W, yeah there is an amnesty on at the moment, i have already used it to regester 2 centerfire;s and an air rifle, only cost $25 each and you DON'T need a permit to aquire (which is awsome). Take advantage of it while its on, ask friends if they no people with unregistered guns that will sell them for cheap. Thats what i'm doin.
N00b_Shooter is offline  
Old March 5, 2009, 11:03 AM   #31
Foxrr
Member
 
Join Date: March 5, 2009
Location: Western Australia
Posts: 48
Australian Gun Laws

G'day fellas. This is my first post on the F.L. forums. Thought I might throw a bit more light on the situation here on the west side of Oz.
The rules are pretty much the same as in eastern states but they are handled a little differently. To obtain any firearm in West Australia you have to either be a member of a rifle/gun club or produce a letter from the owner of a suitable property on which you wish to shoot- unless you are in a club, inwhich case you can't use the darn thing anywhere else without that letter!
Obviously, the property must be of a suitable size for your chosen firearm. Just to make life nice and sweet, you have to produce a new letter every time you wish to add any B-class firearm to your collection. The police these days can quickly check the extent and some details of the property via Google Earth and a phone call to the owner.
If you say you want to hunt, say, foxes on the property and you apply for the likes of a .338 WM you'll pretty much be laughed out of the cop shop!
Things do get a bit easier if you've owned firearms for a large part of a longish life and kept your nose clean (like me - well more or less). But newbies are put through the grinder a bit if they want to go to centrefire first up. There doesn't seem to be a course to sit here. You get given a book to go home and study and sit the test a while later.
A review of the Firearms Act last year in West oz proposed among other things to have hunters renew their letters of approval every 5 years. That threw a bucket of gas on the fire among shooters...and the police as it turned out, when they realised how much extra work that lot would entail. Don't know for sure if it'll come about but looks like we might not be inflicted with that one.
There have been efforts by some to restrict shooters to the property specified but in W.Oz it hasn't happened...yet!
I believe there is something of a dilemma of outlooks amidst the halls of power in Oz. The problem is that although we have always suffered from the Powers' old Brit attitude of paranoia against the citizenry about firearms, especially in W.A. (toughest laws for years until the move to nationwide standardisation), the country has a huge and ever-growing problem of introduced feral animals.
Almost all of our hunting species are feral. Only kangaroos and emus are in some circumstances allowed to be culled where they have bred up in rural districts to unmanageable numbers. In both cases, a permit is required to cull those native species in the West.
I know there has been a hue and cry about us Aussies knocking off our 'iconic' native species from some in the States. But you have to spend time here to understand just how out of control those critters' numbers can go quick time.
To make a long story a bit shorter, we have rabbits, foxes, pigs, camels, wild dogs (not including dingoes here!), deer (mainly in the eastern states), and Asiatic water buffalo to choose from, all trying darn hard to swamp farmers and other humans out of this wide brown land.
Unfortunately, the fairly widespread negative attitude to hunting just makes the problem that much bigger.

Last edited by Foxrr; March 5, 2009 at 11:14 AM.
Foxrr is offline  
Old March 5, 2009, 11:23 AM   #32
Foxrr
Member
 
Join Date: March 5, 2009
Location: Western Australia
Posts: 48
Australian Gun Laws

Oh yeah. Forgot to mention wild horses, donkeys, goats, and scrub (wild) cattle to choose from. Quite a list. Did I forget anything? Way past my bedtime.
Foxrr is offline  
Old March 5, 2009, 12:08 PM   #33
N00b_Shooter
Senior Member
 
Join Date: October 15, 2008
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 307
Wow, WA sounds even tougher then here. Welcome to the forum by the way Foxrr. I know its unlikely but hopefully Rud does something about our gun laws, he has been pro guns for years and even though he hasn't said anything, there is still a chance he might ease them a little...Fingers crossed i guess.
N00b_Shooter is offline  
Old March 5, 2009, 01:21 PM   #34
vranasaurus
Senior Member
 
Join Date: November 16, 2008
Posts: 1,184
It appears that gun control in Australlia is the result of the tyranny of the majority.

The majority should never be allowed to trample on peoples rights.
vranasaurus is offline  
Old March 5, 2009, 07:43 PM   #35
Foxrr
Member
 
Join Date: March 5, 2009
Location: Western Australia
Posts: 48
Thanks Noob. This lot looks like a top forum. Stateside leaves us for dead when it comes to the rights of the shooter.
Actually Vran, we have no gun rights in Oz. Our ex-British system says gun ownership is a [I]privilege![I]
Getting a high powered rifle for hunting in W.A. is even more complex than I've told but I'd have made my post no.1 into a novella just to explain..whew.
And yeah, I did forget one other Aussie feral, the domestic cat gone wild. Native birdlife killer extraordinaire.

Last edited by Foxrr; March 5, 2009 at 07:49 PM.
Foxrr is offline  
Old March 6, 2009, 11:29 PM   #36
SKULLANDCROSSBONES65
Senior Member
 
Join Date: August 19, 2008
Location: Far Nth Wst QLD Australia
Posts: 992
G'day just re-found this thread. Some areas have had to cull the Koala population and they decided that shooting them was the best method. In a small part of Victoria you can shoot Wombats (no they are not Bats, more like a mobile rocks about 2 feet tall). From time to time, various bird species have an open cull.
__________________
If you're not confused, you're not trying hard enough!
When you're confused, I'll try to use smaller words!!!
SKULLANDCROSSBONES65 is offline  
Old March 7, 2009, 05:05 PM   #37
N00b_Shooter
Senior Member
 
Join Date: October 15, 2008
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 307
LOL! I love your description of wombats... Funny
N00b_Shooter is offline  
Old March 9, 2009, 11:09 AM   #38
wildboarZ
Member
 
Join Date: August 25, 2000
Posts: 61
I was there in 1996 when Prime Minister John Howard spoke before a bunch of ****** off farmers and gun owners on the subject of banning pump shotguns and semi-auto rifles. He basically said "I don't care if this isn't what you want, this is the way it is going to be." End of discussion.


Now, what people from the US might not understand is that Australia is only 21 million people. Not a lot of people considering how big that continent is. Next, you must realize that a majority of those people live along the coast and once you get inland 40-50 miles, there isn't a lot out there. Think western Nebraska sand hills (most sparsely populated county in the entire US -- Cherry County) and then you will have a good idea.

So basically 95% of the continent is a place you would want and should have a REAL gun. There's nothing out there but you and the wildlife.

This is knee-jerk mob rule at its best. Just because some guy shot up a bunch of people at a tourist location and some bikers blew each other away doesn't mean the rights of the other 99.992% of the population should be infringed upon.

Frankly, I was surprised by the number of stabbings in the news while I was staying in Melbourne --- the quote about the stabbings in Britain isn't too far from reality.
wildboarZ is offline  
Old March 9, 2009, 12:05 PM   #39
Guy B. Meredith
Senior Member
 
Join Date: August 29, 1999
Location: Salem, Oregon
Posts: 1,581
How difficult is it to obtain a Class H license? What are the requirements--what is the requirement for the Aussie teams that show up for our handgun competitions?
__________________
Smart Gun + 1 Battery + 3 Wires = Dumb Gun

PC = Agenda driven groupthink filter on reality.

Apostrophes denote ownership or missing letters NOT plurals!
Guy B. Meredith is offline  
Old March 9, 2009, 06:01 PM   #40
Ben Towe
Senior Member
 
Join Date: March 6, 2009
Location: Middle Tennessee
Posts: 1,128
wildboarZ- Least populated county in the US is Loving County, TX with 67 people.

I don't think I could live in a place with gun laws that bad. It's insanity.

I looked up the Austrailian Constitution and it's pretty anemic. No Bill of Rights; nothing resembling a right to bear arms, no right to free speech, a limited right to vote, etc.
__________________
'Merica: Back to back World War Champs

Last edited by Ben Towe; March 9, 2009 at 06:11 PM.
Ben Towe is offline  
Old March 9, 2009, 08:26 PM   #41
Benonymous
Senior Member
 
Join Date: January 6, 2005
Location: NSW Australia
Posts: 254
Hey Wildboarz, do you remember when he addressed a group of shooters, brave Johnny wore a flak jacket under his suit? I always thought, what a gutless little bastard he was but later on I thought. "That was a stroke of genius! If he made it look like he needed to wear a bullet proof vest to talk in front of a shooters group, most of the public would assume that shooters were a bunch of murderous psychopaths who couldn't be trusted"

Isn't it incredible how since the laws were enacted, the ordinary shooter has been steadily demonized until we're considered to be the problem, not the criminals with unlicensed firearms? Amazing what can be achieved with propaganda.

I'm interested to hear from WA that the laws appear to have been interpreted and enforced differently. Weren't they supposed to be "uniform"?

By the way. The laws as enacted, without debate, were already drafted and ready to go. The incident at Port Arthur was a convenient vehicle for the Howard Government indeed.
__________________
"A firearm in the hands of a citizen is a danger to government. A firearm in the hands of a criminal is of benefit to government" Anon.
Benonymous is offline  
Old March 9, 2009, 08:39 PM   #42
Guy B. Meredith
Senior Member
 
Join Date: August 29, 1999
Location: Salem, Oregon
Posts: 1,581
Benonymous,

Re: "brave Johnny wore a flak jacket under his suit"

This behavior is called "bigotry" and, if used to infer that shooters are dangerous, supporting and spreading bigotry.

The attitude about shooters rather than criminals being the problem is common to our anti-gunners. They just don't get it that, unlike a footy game, basketball game and such, the shooting venues don't require armed police to check the crowd (though I was told that the Aussie police do stand guard at shooting events) and there is no drunken violence or riot. Bigotry is the rule of the day both here and in Oz.
__________________
Smart Gun + 1 Battery + 3 Wires = Dumb Gun

PC = Agenda driven groupthink filter on reality.

Apostrophes denote ownership or missing letters NOT plurals!
Guy B. Meredith is offline  
Old March 10, 2009, 10:55 AM   #43
Foxrr
Member
 
Join Date: March 5, 2009
Location: Western Australia
Posts: 48
The situation in Australia is darn complex really. I think we have governments which are starting to realise the value of recreational shooters as one of the tools to fight the feral problem, with a game council started up in New South Wales to oversee management of deer populations and work a trial scheme to allow hunting ferals in some reserves.

Here in West Oz, the Dept. of Environment and Conservation has occasionally used rec shooters to assist in culls. The move to legitimise rec shooters as a conservation tool has been slow but is grinding on quietly, all the time pushing the proverbial uphill against both animal rights activists and plain ignorant city folks who would suffer culture shock if they were to spend more than a few days on a farm or in the red dirt country.

Wildboarz is right. Picture a landmass that's somewhere around the size of the U.S. The state of Western Australia occupies somewhere around a third of that landmass. Yep, much, much bigger than Texas. The majority of it is semi-arid-to-desert country. How do we make it pay its way? It's super-rich in minerals.

In Westoz, the so-called wheatbelt extends in a foot-shape in the western corner of the state from a few hundred miles north of the capital, Perth out two-fifty or so miles east, then about four hundred miles south along the state's south coast. It's a small bit of a humungous area. A lot of the rest is given over to sheep and cattle raising but it's mostly semi-arid country, pretty marginal.

But it's ALL feral heaven, including the cropping country! Trouble is, the only dangerous species in all that lot are hogs and maybe if you get close enough, wild dogs. Buffs are dangerous but there aren't many of them in Westoz. Everything else that is actually dangerous is fully protected indigenous wildlife like snakes and crocs.

So there's never been a huge perceived need in city-Joe's mind of the need for widespread ownership of firearms in Australia. And so..the feral problem.
Foxrr is offline  
Old March 10, 2009, 11:51 PM   #44
USASA
Member
 
Join Date: June 27, 2008
Location: Washington State
Posts: 84
Well...so much for my idea of migrating to Australia for retirement.
USASA is offline  
Old March 11, 2009, 08:19 AM   #45
Foxrr
Member
 
Join Date: March 5, 2009
Location: Western Australia
Posts: 48
Hey USASA, don't give up on it. It's not all bad. We badly need good folks to settle over here. And the fishing in the tropics is world class. At least come for an extended visit.
Once you've GOT your firearms, not a lot of hassles from the Man as long as you don't do anything stoopid.
And it looks like you guys might get at least some of the stuff we put up with in the future anyway. That latest mass shooting won't help.
Foxrr is offline  
Old March 11, 2009, 05:01 PM   #46
N00b_Shooter
Senior Member
 
Join Date: October 15, 2008
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 307
For all the bad laws down here in Aus relating to guns, theres something wonderful to make up for it. Not trying to brag about Aus or anything but if you drive around it you see some really beautiful things and some of the experience are incredible, so you should still think about retireing down here
N00b_Shooter is offline  
Old March 12, 2009, 06:15 AM   #47
Foxrr
Member
 
Join Date: March 5, 2009
Location: Western Australia
Posts: 48
Although I wouldn't emigrate to the U.S. I'd just love to spend a lot of time travelling that great country. Not so much the cities, but the stunning countryside and all that goes with it. The Rockies, whew! Montana and the trout fishing. The hunting. All that amazing Civil War history. The Rail Museum in Sacramento. Orgasmic!
All that mindblowing history. America was founded on blood, sweat and tears. So was Oz, but we just don't have quite that vigorous dramatic past. We just didn't see any real war at home until 1942.
You gotta hand it to the Yanks.
Foxrr is offline  
Old March 12, 2009, 06:54 AM   #48
Stiofan
Senior Member
 
Join Date: January 17, 2006
Location: Panhandle, Idaho
Posts: 714
Australia has always seemed a bit like California to me. One of the most beautiful, stunning places only to be screwed up by the people who live there. This coming from a native Californian.
Stiofan is offline  
Old March 12, 2009, 09:08 AM   #49
Foxrr
Member
 
Join Date: March 5, 2009
Location: Western Australia
Posts: 48
Well Stiofan, I guess Oz is like most other places. The average Joe/Jane is a good person just trying to get on with their life. Some are misguided, some wise, some nasty, some just too lazy to see beyond their front gate or beercans, and many who's hearts are basically in the right place.
Interestingly I've got an Aussie mate living and working in Houston with his family. The differences in our cultures that he tells me about are pretty amazing.
For every good thing there is about the States there are some things in the U.S. - well, the southern - way that we Aussies would find a bit alien or oppressive.
Same the world over ay? Good and bad everywhere. But in the civic trauma stakes, Oz fares way better than most places. But like every other western country, it's slowly deteriorating.
Foxrr is offline  
Old March 12, 2009, 09:52 AM   #50
Ben Towe
Senior Member
 
Join Date: March 6, 2009
Location: Middle Tennessee
Posts: 1,128
Quote:
For every good thing there is about the States there are some things in the U.S. - well, the southern - way that we Aussies would find a bit alien or oppressive.
Just out of curiousity, what things are you speaking of? I live in the South and I always like to hear different perspectives.
__________________
'Merica: Back to back World War Champs
Ben Towe is offline  
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 11:37 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
This site and contents, including all posts, Copyright © 1998-2021 S.W.A.T. Magazine
Copyright Complaints: Please direct DMCA Takedown Notices to the registered agent: thefiringline.com
Page generated in 0.08412 seconds with 11 queries