What Firearm Prohibitionists Say
by Ted Drane
Australian Shooters Journal
November 1996
The media have been quick
to report meetings of anti-gun activists in various capital cities after the
Port Arthur shooting. They ignore the fact that such meetings have been attended
by very small groups, often only a couple of dozen people, and that the pro-gun
meetings have been up to 120,000, the biggest gathering ever recorded in Melbourne.
Nevertheless, they are meetings which are attended by those who are being
converted to the hysterical anti-firearm cause, and they sometimes include
representatives from large organizations. This is not surprising; however,
what is worthy of considering are the fallacies which are being propagated
as truth. The statements below demonstrate that the fight which the shooting
community faces is a matter not of fact but of perception, and our battle
will be won by numbers and political power, not just by repeating the truth
of our case. This is sad, but it is a reality that we have to face without
delay. In Adelaide on June 29th, Professor Charles Watson at a public gathering
said the following:
Gun control is a health issue. More people die from gun-related deaths than
of AIDS. Gun deaths are now a third of the national road toll.
These pages have long held information reporting that gun prohibitionists have decided gun ownership is a public health concern. These assertions are pushed by health system advocates. Eighty percent of gun deaths are suicides, and international figures show that suicide does not reduce when guns are restricted; only the methods change.
The loud-mouthed gun lobby represent less than five percent of Australians. They need semi-automatic arms to demonstrate their machismo by the slaughter of animals.
Perhaps the only bit of truth in what is said by many gun-control proponents is that only a small percentage of gun owners belong to any organizations. This is to our detriment and their shame. Perhaps these latest moves against gun ownership will educate a few more and they will join the Sporting Shooters' Association. If they are not moved to do so by this suggestion that for owning a semiautomatic .22 they are blood-crazed maniacs, then they should be.
Military style assault rifles are terrifying killing machines which send out bullets at 4000 miles an hour and hit with the power of a truck travelling at sixty kilometres an hour.
Such hyperbole is all too well supported in the public mind by the video culture which has led people to believe many fallacies about firearms use. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures, only 1.75% of murders in Australia are carried out with semiautomatic firearms. However, someone knowing nothing of guns and walking into such a meeting as this, hearing that kind of statement about the power of guns, could easily be swayed by the imagery. Of course, it has nothing to do with the real issue, whether fewer people will die if there are fewer of this or that kind of gun, or whether restrictions of any sort actually work, or make society a safer place. However, that does not trouble the speakers at these meetings.
The gun lobby is small in number, well funded by big gun manufacturers and people who sell guns.
Yes, people are actually being told that the firearm you have safely held for decades is there as the end result of a plot between 'the gun lobby' and big arms manufacturers, who conspired to ensure that by your buying it, they will continue to grow rich, at the expense of safety in Australian society.
The gun lobby is also funded by the National Rifle Association of America, which would like to see machine guns on the streets in that country.
Of all the inaccurate statements made by gun prohibitionists, this is probably one of the most blatant. The NRA in the United States, which the media has turned into a bogy, is composed of people just like ordinary Australians, and the stand they take is that gun legislation of the Howard and Williams variety does not prevent criminal misuse, and does restrict the legitimate. Nobody in their right mind would want cocaine dealers on the street to be armed with machine guns. However, the prohibitionists continue to assume the worst about the NRA, without having any knowledge of their policies. They then use their own creation to threaten the gullible public with.
There is a bogus link between mental illness and gun murder. It is more to do with ordinary people having access to a gun and then spinning out in a rage.
So mass murderers are sane. This is a common nonsense, called material determinism, where man is sent mad by machine. The more rational thinkers among us incline to the belief that the problem is the culture that trains the individual, and then the individual's lack of personal responsibility that leads to murder and other crime.
Note how this view denies the responsibility of the mental health system, and will continue to blame the gun for crime, regardless of how few or many guns there are left in society. This is yet another pointer to the way that the gun prohibitionists can never be satisfied. If there is a murder carried out with a semi-automatic, it must be the gun's fault that the person could no longer stand the stresses of society: The truth is that if the semi-automatic is taken away worldwide experience shows the crime will be committed with another implement. If it is a another gun, this time a bolt action or a pistol or a centrefire or anything else, then the Professor Watsons of this world have no choice but to say the gun laws have not yet gone far enough and even more restrictions will be required. This is exactly what has begun to happen in the United Kingdom, where pistols are now the focus of prohibitionists. Other bodies are willing to join with the anti-gun faction, and the Adelaide gathering is indicative of the type of people who are aligning themselves. Mike Elliott, Democrat senator, spoke: He knew someone who was shot when he was eight, and when he was nineteen someone pointed a gun at him.
There has been plenty of debate on the gun issue and there is no need for any more; New Zealand research has shown that many people who are shot are killed by someone they know.
Jacquie Catalana represented the United Trades and Labour Council and also the South Australian Institute of Teachers. (Her father was accidentally shot in the 1930s when rabbiting, pointing the loaded gun at himself, using it as some kind of shovel, so his mother tossed the gun into a dam.)
Americans carry guns because everyone else does; we should stop supporting foreign gun manufacturers and we can all survive without guns.
Is it typical of modem urbanites that they rely on anecdote, ignore all facts, and whip crowds into emotional states with stories of bad behaviour with guns? Jasmine Rose, representing the Conservation Council and the Toy Library, seems typical:
Lots of guns mean a violent society; we should use guns only when we really have to; politicians are very pleased to receive letters of support from those who support their position, rather than the ratbag gun owners.
This claim about the levels of violence in a society being a reflection of the number of guns in it is something that the uninformed continue to push. None of them seem ever to have heard of Switzerland. This meeting also included Gail Gago of the Australian Nurses Federation. Her group also has a firearms policy.
There are fewer deaths in countries like the United Kingdom and Japan, and there are more deaths in places like Australia and the United States. High velocity guns are designed to kill, and nurses are the people who pick up the pieces, so as part of the majority against guns, they don't need such guns and don't want them in society.
The people mounting such tirades are usually not interested in listening to facts. If Ms Gago knows anything about murder rates anywhere, it does not show in her speech. The United Kingdom, Australia and Japan have very similar murder rates, but Japan has by far the highest suicide rate, far higher than that of the United States. The gun prohibitionists continue to overlook that fact because it does not fit into their view of the world. Instead, they are fed selected figures about murder, where, for instance, the gun deaths alone are singled out, and they climb a podium to make silly statements such as these above, and they then leave, to go back to their other work, and the only good they have done is to harm further the standing of the lawful firearm owner. The media, of course, reports them because they may represent large groups and the media feasts on controversy.
Other representatives at such meetings include somebody in the Sydney one on May 24th who argued that lead poisoning is a major factor in mood swings, and shooters have high lead levels so on this basis they represent a danger to the community. It was claimed that a Victorian Health Department researcher who wanted to do a study on this received death threats.
There is no limit to the levels of hysteria that these anti-firearm fanatics will go to to restrict every kind of gun in the hands of all Australians. Do they check under their beds before putting the lights out? The facts will not enter the question. Rebecca Peters wrote an article published in The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, (1996, Volume 20, Number 4), and, notable for its shrill hysteria, it seems a fitting place to conclude:
In response to Hoddle Street and Queen Street the Federal Government established the National Committee on Violence to inquire into all the aspects of violence in Australia. In 1990 the Committee produced a thick report containing 25 recommendations for gun law reform, the primary one being for a national gun control strategy based on uniform gun laws across the country. That suggestion, like most of the Committee's recommendation was never acted on. Hence Port Arthur.
The whole matter of mass murder is here reduced to one simplistic solution. Ms Peters, self-appointed tireless anti-gun crusader, ignores our failing health system, ignores the many criticisms levelled with justification at the NCV report, ignores the fact that the alleged murderer at Port Arthur was unlicensed, and that the gun he used was stolen or otherwise illegally obtained, and, once again, you the lawful gun owner are down for the blame. It all happened because of loose gun laws. Never mind that the whole incident was replicating the shooting in Dunblane, where gun laws had just been through the tightening process, where they were national, and where, once again, other groups and services had failed to act as they should have before the event.
This is the level of thinking that is supporting the anti-gun activists around Australia. If you want to save your firearms, be aware, and become active now.
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