Firearms have long history in Australia
Radio National (Canberra), Counterpoint, 14/04/2008 04.06pm
Compere Paul Comrie-Thompson says firearms have a long tradition in white Australia. He says they have always been a vital part of rural life and many city men have become familiar with them in times of war, when serving the school cadets or the Army Reserve and in the police force. He says guns are an important part of our history. Compere Michael Duffy says for some people they are also an important part of the present, with 2.5 million registered firearms in Australia, belonging to 730,000 licence holders.
Duffy introduces the guests, Phil Patterson who collects New South Wales police firearms to 1900 and the former secretary of the New South Wales Police Historical Society; Edgar Penzig is an author, collector and a well-known lecturer on Colonial history and weapons; and New South Wales farmer Peter Spencer.
Penzig talks about the use of guns in Australian history and says every home had one and women also knew how to use guns. He says what is saddening to him is that National Trust homes in New South Wales have been taken over by political correctness and firearms are not seen. He says in Tasmania he went to one historic homestead with a glass case showing 15 pistols and revolvers that the men and women used. Patterson talks about how he became interested in guns. Spencer talks about how guns have always been a part of his life. He says guns were an essential tool on the property and still are. Penzig talks about the popularity of gun collecting. He says they are an important part of Australia's history. He says a certain museum in Sydney took every firearm off display, when a woman wrote saying she did not want her eight-year-old son to see a gun if she came to the museum. Penzig says the curator should have been sacked for agreeing that guns play no part in the history or the development of technology in Australia.
Duffy says in 1996, 35 people were killed and 18 others were wounded in the Port Arthur shooting and the Federal and State Governments responded with a whole raft of changes to gun laws. Patterson says everyone was shocked about that incident, but when the buyback came in, there were collectors that had certain types of firearms on commissioner's permits kept for historical and educational purposes, but they still had to be handed in under the buyback and were destroyed.
Patterson says “Australian history just went into the furnace” and there were some collectors who did not get proper compensation, but were too frightened to speak out. He says the police department did not pay him the just compensation that he was due and he had to seek the balance through the ombudsman's office and through his local Member of Parliament. He says the Police Department set out to destroy its own collection and the Antique Arms Society and the Arms and Military Collectors Association wrote to then Premier Bob Carr, who put a stop to the Police Department destroying its own collection.
Spencer talks about how his freedom to use guns has changed over the years. He says if they adhered to the gun laws today, they would become incapable to using a gun as a tool on the farm. He explains what he would have to do to adhere to gun laws. Spencer says it is due to fear and political correct nonsense.
Penzig says in England about 12 years ago, Tony Blair took away every pistol and the British Olympic and Commonwealth Games pistol teams had to buy a farmhouse in France and practice in France to represent Britain. He says they have had 3000 pistol crimes in the last couple of years in Britain and yet they are totally banned. He says villains can get anything.
Patterson says there is a stigma to being a gun collector, but the problem is that it is over-regulated. Spencer says with these laws, the entire process of owning guns becomes stigmatised. He says further down the road, the whole process of using guns may be so decultured that Australians are not capable of providing a defence for themselves. Penzig says [gun collectors] should move down to Tasmania where all antiques before 1900 are not registered and not licensed. He says it is another country, compared to when he was in New South Wales. He says villains are running around, especially in NSW, with pistols like the police have. He says they are not going to go to Patterson's place and steal an 1849 muzzleloaded coat pocket revolver.
Interviewee: Peter Spencer, farmer; Edgar Penzig, gun collector, historian and author; Phil Patterson, gun collector.
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