Letter - Ineffective laws
Adelaide Advertiser, Page 16. Monday, 23 November 2009
Your article on replica firearms (The Advertiser, 20/11/09) raises some interesting questions. Police Minister Michael Wright said that removal of the new regulations would make “imitation guns freely available for criminals and police would be powerless to confiscate them”.
Criminals, by definition, do not obey the law. How is making something illegal to the law-abiding community likely to affect them? Is threatening someone with a firearm, whether it is real or a replica, not already a serious offence? As an instrument used in an assault or other criminal offence, do not the police already have adequate powers to seize that item whatever it is? Your photograph clearly shows a model Luger cap gun. It is a child’s toy. I had one just the same. What next? Ban rubber knives? This is another example of the Rann Government diminishing the freedoms of law-abiding people by introducing ineffective laws to give an illusion of being tough on crime.
J Peek, Meirose Park, SA
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