Guns waste editorial
Editorial
Coffs Harbour Advocate
22 October 1997
It is a shame that the just completed guns buyback in Australia was probably a huge waste of community money and time.
Instead of removing guns from criminal hands, the buyback has ensured that honest people were able to hand in guns they probably did not want, and these days seldom used, for cash which if recent figures are right, will clearly be used to buy newer models for different uses.
And the criminals, as always, will be able to use black market guns to do whatever they please. Just as they have done in this country since bushrangers bailed up the first gold transport.
In the past year Australia has imported 83,000 rifles and shotguns, valued at $33 million. That was three times the number imported the previous year.
It is also the highest number of arms imported for private use since the 1970's.
The increase is also more dramatic as the previous figures also included semi-automatic and other guns since banned.
While the imports of rifles and shotguns has tripled, there is a fear among gundealers that the black market in weapons, banned or not, will increase as the issue of new gun licenses becomes increasingly bogged down. No new licenses have been issued for months, and gun dealers had sold only a handful of guns since July, when new license provisions came into effect.
Gun dealers also believed that some weapons were undervalued by the buyback scheme, such as Rugers, and they were being traded much more profitably on the black market.
It was always a pleasant hope that such a scheme would prevent madness such as that which occurred at Port Arthur last year. But events like that are hardly predictable. Other device can be used as weapons just as effectively by those deranged enough to want to cause such havoc.
Hopefully the buyback will have saved lives, as much by careless use of weapons as by intentional use, but to expect it to prevent outbursts of sheer hate and malevolence as some people can be capable of in rare moments of madness is sadly unrealistic.
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