Mastodawn

The worst part of Australian gun control debates are that we have a bunch of people who've never owned guns, but want more because they think it will protect them; and a bunch of dangerous people who do, who want more guns to be more threatening.

I am, without a doubt, an unashamed gun nut. I love every aspect of them, from the physical shape, through to the mechanical design. They are wonderful pieces of precise engineering.

I am also an unashamed gun control nut. I think no one, including myself, should own guns. Guns should be owned by clubs, by companies doing pest control, or the government. Anyone else owning a gun, deactivated or not, is a danger to society.

People who want guns should never own them; it's something my dad drilled into me from a young age, while teaching me about them

To clarify, I have owned 2 guns (Browning 9mm, and MAC-10), in Cambodia. It was the most terrifying time in my life, and it taught me that owning a gun isn't just a "responsibility" it's a liability.

The fact I was able to buy both, freely from the market and my friends, said gun control is the most important thing we can do as a society

Josh McKinnon Dec 18

@sortius damn straight. When only the really bad guys can have a gun, you know the guy with a gun is a bad guy, before he even uses it.

@corduroy and that's it. We either accept everyone has a gun, and is 30 seconds from being a "bad guy", or we accept that the only people with guns are bad guys, and they stick out like sore thumbs

Josh McKinnon Dec 18

@sortius dad was a farmer, he shot a few rabbits when I was a kid. I’m not suggesting some farmers don’t need to shoot pigs and Roos and shit, but building a regulation framework around those weapons being the exception needs to be normalised.

Josh McKinnon Dec 18

@sortius maybe now that the National Party is a marginal group, this is politically achievable

@corduroy agreed. Some of the permits and dispensations to land owners in rural settings (I hate to say farmers, because a lot aren't even) are just wild.

Nobody needs a full powered cartridge to kill vermin, but we're at that point right now. Deer/Horse/etc rifles are being handed to idiots in Sydney to go hunt foxes 500km away.

That's just not right

Josh McKinnon Dec 18

@sortius yeah. And what if idiots randomly shooting deer one at a time is not even useful? Have we ever considered that?

@corduroy of course it's not. There's actual methods in animal control: target females, in herds. At least that's what you do for deer.

You need to get them all, or that's just a waste of time and bullets

Josh McKinnon Dec 18

@sortius or sport. You could use a crossbow but wait they’re probably harder to get access to than a gun in NSW.

@corduroy oh, god, don't get me started on martial arts weapons down here. Fucking hell. A blunt sword requires an IMMENSE amount of paperwork, if you don't want to be at risk of maybe getting charged (even if it's decorative)

@corduroy I'm not saying we should relax shit, but maybe bring guns into line with swords and crossbows

Joanne Jacobs Dec 18

@sortius @corduroy and, y'know, decency?

@joannejacobs @corduroy have you met gun owners in Australia?

Joanne Jacobs Dec 18

@sortius @corduroy I'm just agreeing that the law needs to be reformed in line with... Decency

@joannejacobs @corduroy hehehe, yeh, I was trying to be funny. Gun owners in Aus are either racist arseholes, or rich arseholes, decency doesn't come into play 😬

Joanne Jacobs Dec 18

@sortius @corduroy and yet that's what ASIO uses to determine risk, so what does decency look like?

This is kind of my point: it's very hard to draw the line between what is fair and what is not.

Our future is not about taking a stand. It's about negotiating from a position of moral worth.

@joannejacobs @corduroy for sure, gun control is just part of that puzzle. We've definitely got problems, and those deeper problems won't be solved with legislation.

All we can do now is look to weapons, hate speech, and the symptoms of problems; sucks but tighter gun control will solve only one specific problem

Joanne Jacobs Dec 18

@sortius @corduroy I think we can do a little more than that. I think we can teach the next generation about civics and citizenship. I think we can instill in the next generation, a desire to negotiate rather than to evangelise.

@joannejacobs @corduroy we are doing that, even my kids have been doing "unit of inquiry" since year 1.

This isn't the problem, at all. The kids are fine.

The problem is where radicalisation happens, and we've known where for like, I dunno, 40 years. It happens in the home, it happens at the places of worship, it happens at social gatherings. Unless we can police that, we need to do more than just slam the hammer down.

The only way to fight extremism is to not let it phase us, to embrace everyone. This stuff has been said by terrorism experts for a long time. You will never defeat this kind of isolated attack, but how we react determines if there'll be more

Joanne Jacobs Dec 18

@sortius @corduroy so I believe that civics and citizenship education doesn't stop at school. I think it's lifelong.

Decency is something you witness. And mimic. Too many are choosing to mimic those who do not understand our land.

Josh McKinnon Dec 18

@joannejacobs @sortius and consistency, and lethality.

@corduroy @joannejacobs It's hard, because I'm in VIC, and we have VERY strict gun laws down here, with a fully automatic digitised database (a restraining order is enough to cancel your license).

We're grappling with long knife crime, and sitting amongst it, it's not fun. I watched dudes pull 45cm blades out the back on a regular basis, with the cops being unable to do much, because they didn't reach the threshold of "sword".

I think the problem is, we need to look at where people are turning to violence, restrict their weapons, and go after the root causes rather than just waving it off as freak occurrences that only need tougher laws (which they do sometimes)

Josh McKinnon Dec 18

@sortius @joannejacobs yep, semi-automatic crossbows should definitely be hard to own.

@corduroy @joannejacobs I've watched enough Todd's Workshop to know how to build one, so don't tempt me

@corduroy As I keep saying, if all the guns were used for their "Demonstrable special need", there wouldn't be a deer, brumbie, fox, goat, whatever, in Australia, let alone NSW

@sortius I'm the same way. I lived in the USA for 12 years, and I went there basically before we really started seeing the dividends of the gun amnesty, was going to get a CCWP as soon as I got my immigration shit sorted out, etc.

Now that I've been back here long enough to see the difference, yeah, nah, I was wrong.

Guns are fun, but I think it should be harder still for me to own one.

@fwaggle in some ways, Queensland, of all places, has one rule right. People can run controlled ranges for every idiot to come bang a few rounds.

I'm fine with that. Controlled circumstances, controlled environment, and trained staff. It's heavily regulated, but there's been only one incident I can recall, but that was a suicide

@sortius @fwaggle
I'm not sure what the rules are in NSW, but I've done a lot of shooting here on commercial and 'ad hoc but technically state run' ranges without a license - Absolutely a good way to learn to treat all guns safely. I stopped when I considered getting a license, for the same reason Feynman stopped drinking when he got a spontaneous urge to drink when walking past a bar. I don't want the option to buy, own, or store a gun.

CSIRO used to run a 'get it out of your system' event for kids called Exothermic Extravaganza, but I think it stopped around the mid naughties.

@noodle @fwaggle honestly, I have no idea what's happening in NSW. Because I looked at the matrix, and a 7+1 centre-fire shotgun should only be sold to a very very very very limited number of people, but I saw one, next to a tree, in Bondi.

I'm no expert, but I know my guns, and nothing I've seen was "Category A/B" in NSW

Jeff Turner ⛵Dec 18

@sortius as a West Australian who has owned a couple of guns since i was very young I would say what is happening here with gun control is very good. But it had always been quite strict compared to other states.

To get a license 40 years ago i needed a letter from a farmer saying i could use it there. And it had to be an appropriate calibre. Anything larger than 22 was harder to get. Now they are doing the same but keeping track of who issues the letters and making every license holder re apply.

Last year i handed in my grand mother's 410 shotgun and my father's 22. Might hand in the remaining one this year. They pay a small fixed fee for each weapon when you hand it in.

After port Arthur my father had to hand in his 12 guage semi automatic. He was very happy with the money he got for a very old shotgun. But it was a mass murder weapon if there ever was one.

@jetsoft it sucks that you're law abiding, because WA has been singled out as the state with some really sloppy laws.

There was one property with 1500 "pest hunting" permits given, and the dude was the owner of a gun shop.

There's a reason WA & NSW are being singled out lately, and it's because there's some serious corruption going on with gun licensing and sales

Jeff Turner ⛵Dec 18

@sortius there was a high profile murder. The guy had something like 13 hand guns . Legally. And went looking for his wife and killed her friends and himself. But that letter i had in 1976 should have been checked at least once since then.

Jeff Turner ⛵Dec 18

@sortius and they are saying there will be medical tests every 5 years. To see if your mentally suitable. Wonder if i will pass.

On a Tech note the new system ties into the federal myid system. So the same app you use to identify yourself for tax or centre link payments. Thatch that was good.

@jetsoft hahaha, it was inevitable, but, yeh, 5 years is a bit of a joke.

When I think about things that happened in 5 year periods, I'm kind of glad I didn't have a gun

Jeff Turner ⛵Dec 18

@sortius i haven't had it out if the gun safe (legal requirement but never checked) for a long time.
Why im thinking of handing it in.

@jetsoft unless you need it, even on a property, just in case, it's better not to own a gun. If they could rent them, that'd be so much better. Less risk to the licensee and state

@jetsoft I know it's tempting to think the safe is secure, but it's only as secure so long as the temptation to get into is low.

Whether yourself for bad reasons, or others for nefarious ones, a gun in the house is always a death waiting to happen

Jeff Turner ⛵Dec 18

@sortius qld and nt used to make it easy to get a gun you could shoot a large animal (camel crocodile etc. .) With. WA much harder to get high power stuff. You could mail order it though .

@jetsoft and I think this was the thing about that property with 1500 permits, he claimed Buffalo or something were on the property, then sold high powered guns to the people with permits.

It's basic maths. Selling plinkers vs rifles to people is a few hundred vs a few thousand dollars