Capital news

Independent MP Bob Katter is strong on civil rights

The Hon Bob Katter is the Federal Member for Kennedy (Queensland).

In the last year of the Bjelke-Petersen era, there were virtually no gun laws in Queensland at all. When I bought my AK-47, there were no paperwork requirements - shock, horror! You could walk in, buy it and take it home.

All governmental action should be judged upon its outcomes. Was Queensland right in having no regulatory system? Queensland, in this last year of freedom, 1998, and with effectively no gun laws, had eight deaths with guns. New South Wales, with very restrictive gun laws, had double Queensland’s population and thus should have had 16 deaths with guns. It had 39. Victoria, with draconian gun laws and with 50 per cent greater population than Queensland, had 58 gun-related deaths.

A similar phenomenon is recorded in Europe. East Germany, where private gun ownership was banned, is a near neighbour of Switzerland, where almost every home has a lawful semi-automatic combat rifle. Almost every year, East Germany had Europe’s highest death rate involving guns, while Switzerland has invariably registered the lowest gun-related death rate.

When intelligent men have in a considered manner written down the foundation stones for a civilised society, whether it’s Britain’s Bill of Rights or the American Constitution, all include the right to bear arms. Rightly so, since history, it can be argued, is simply a chronicle of the build-up of oppression and tyrannical power by the Crown and the Government.

We have to fight the government to assert the Australian paradigm: the ordinary man who stands on his own two feet and looks after himself - it’s called self-reliance, it’s called freedom.

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