Rann’s rhetoric on guns not matched by reality
Adelaide Advertiser, Page: 22. Friday, 17 October, 2008
SOUTH Australia is seemingly awash with illegal and stolen firearms and the Government appears powerless to stop the black-market trade.
About 200 guns are stolen in SA a year, according to the latest Australian Institute of Criminology figures. Of those only about 3 per cent or about six weapons are ever recovered by police.
That means hundreds of weapons a year are disappearing forever, ending up in the hands of bikies and the criminal underworld.
It is fuelling a black-market trade in stolen weapons where SA has the unenviable honour of reporting the highest proportion of handgun theft in Australia.
You don’t have to watch CSI to know that a stolen weapon is an untraceable weapon and worth a small fortune among criminals.
A case in point is a gun stolen from a Peterborough shop in 1999, which has never been recovered. Police believe it was used in a shooting at Blair Athol in August this year.
South Australians are justifiably alarmed at the spate of shootings and gun-related crime now running at more than 310 incidents a year, according to SA Police figures.
Premier Mike Rann and Labor have had seven years to launch an assault on gun crime, and failed. The Government’s solution to the latest Gouger St shootings has been to propose another gun amnesty.
Surrendering illegal weapons may take a few guns off the streets.
But I’m not convinced that the bikies and underworld figures hoarding their stash of stolen weapons are suddenly going to give them up on the basis of a Government advertising blitz.
As the Commissioner for Victims of Crime, Michael O ‘Connell, said in The Advertiser this week: “Police can take 1000 guns off the road and another 1000 guns are back there in a very short period of time.” Premier Rann’s rhetoric on tackling unregistered, illegal and stolen firearms has unfortunately not been matched by reality. The Government annqunced an “urgent” overhaul of the Firearms Act in October, 2 (106, to strengthen gun laws. But by February, 2008 15 months after the original “good news” announcement - there was still no sign of the Bill on the horizon.
The legislation was finally passed in June this year but it is still not expected to come into force for several weeks. In the two years it has taken the Government to beef up the Act “urgently”, we’ve had hundreds of gun-related incidents.
South Australians need to feel safe in their homes and on the streets, and that means cracking down on stolen guns and the criminals who peddle them.
We need more police on the beat with the resources to tackle gun crime. In June this year, police had the equivalent of 4128 full-time officers a drop of 21 on the previous year.
Firearms theft is at alarming levels and its consequences are grave for the community.
South Australians deserve better.
David Ridgway is the Opposition spokesman on police matters.
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