April 2011 President message
The Federal Greens showed their ongoing ignorance in firearms-related issues this past month when Leader Bob Brown called for a ban on self-loading firearms in this country following abusive threats against several Australian politicians. SSAA National, however, was quick to correct Mr Brown and show his stance to be ignorant and simplistic.
Brown drew a connection between the recent death threats against himself and Independent Lower House MP Tony Windsor to a shooting of a United States politician by a gunman, later, unsurprisingly, revealed to have mental health issues. His comparison of situations, not taking into account the mental state of the gunman and the obvious differences in US and Australian firearm cultures, was misguided.
Brown’s proposed ban would affect the thousands of law-abiding and licensed firearm owners and SSAA members in this country. This ignores the Australian Institute of Criminology’s numerous reports, which have stated that it is unlicensed people with unregistered firearms who are responsible for firearm-related crimes, usually also involving drugs, gangs and organised crime. In short, it is criminals with illegal guns that are the problem.
SSAA National’s press release to the media and E-alert to members coincided with Tony Windsor separating himself from Brown’s uneducated calls for the handgun ban. Mr Windsor is, in fact, an ardent supporter of recreational shooters and unlike The Greens, understands the difference between the legal and illegal use of firearms. Following this, SSAA Queensland President Geoff Jones was interviewed on the matter, supporting Windsor’s view about criminals being the ones to misuse illegally held firearms. This interview is available on the ‘Media Monitoring’ section of the SSAA website.
This is not the first time Mr Brown has made uneducated calls for firearm bans using flimsy reasoning. He has previously stated that there are “300,000 legal hand machine guns in glove boxes around Australia”. The SSAA proved otherwise in last month’s edition of Australian Shooter, collecting figures from Australia’s police forces and firearms registries to show that there are about 120,000 registered legal handguns in the country, less than half of which are self-loading. This is about a fifth of the number of self-loading handguns that Brown would like the Australian public to believe exist.
It is uneducated and misguided calls like this from anti-gun spokespeople that the SSAA has and will continue to refute, but it is also SSAA members who have the power to help. If you are not already a subscribing member to the SSAA’s E-publications, visit www.ssaa.org.au and sign up today. The E-alert and E-newsletter are timely and proactive publications that will help you remain informed on issues affecting your chosen pastime to ensure you can assist us in setting the record straight.
Bob Green
SSAA National President
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