Shooters Party John Tingle on NSW firearm numbers
Breakfast program
2GB radio, New South Wales
26 August 1999
PRESENTER - GRAHAM RICHARDSON....Well, I'll just mention that we've got a million guns in New South Wales, that's a hell of a lot of guns. I guess it just surprises you when you see the numbers come out that starkly and I.. as I said, you know, we've.. we've got even guns in walking sticks and we've got submachine guns and cannons and tranquilliser guns. It's just quite amazing. And I suppose when you get figures like that it.. it just suddenly brings to light this.. this whole gun thing. This is a huge issue and one that never seems to go away and I've never been quite certain about what you do about it.
One person who cer.. certainly believes he's certain about what to do about it is one of the big voices in the.. in the gun lobby and the representative of the Shooters Party in the New South Wales Parliament, former 2GB broadcaster, John Tingle.
Good morning, John.
JOHN TINGLE....Good morning, Graham.
RICHARDSON....Do these figures surprise you, a million guns?
TINGLE....Oh, it surprises me that it's that low. I think it's pretty much higher than that. But.. but can I just make the point, you mention machine guns in walking sticks, I mean, there are very few of them. They're in museums and they're disabled and they're held by theatrical armourers. The real story is how many legally owned firearms are in the hands of licensed shooters in this state. The police have always viewed the rule of thumb before the 1996 nonsense that there was at least one firearm, possibly two or three, to every fourth household in New South Wales, so these figures just pretty well fit in with that. But I will say, I mean, bear in mind this is a Sydney Morning Herald story; it's the usual thing they've done, glossing over the top of it, they're very anti-gun and the story makes it look much worse than it is. If.. if in fact half the firearms so far identified by the registry, and registered, are single shot rifles, probably twenty-twos and stuff, three hundred thousand of them, then really the story begins to get.. to get into perspective because those are mostly licensed, as the Herald itself says, for pest extermination and target shooting.
RICHARDSON....Well, what about pistols? What about handguns? How many of those are in New South Wales? I mean, they're the big issue, really, aren't they?
TINGLE....Well, no, they're not. The big issue is what handguns are in the hands of criminals and being used in New South Wales. Pistol shooting is a very very old thing in New South Wales.. [unclear] was talking about that target pistol shooting.
RICHARDSON....Yeah.
TINGLE....The only way a private citizen can own a pistol now is to be a member of a target pistol club in good standing and those are so tightly controlled. Those handguns have been registered since 1927, so there's nothing new in that, and those pistols are only able to be used on the range. And I.. I'm a pistol shooter; if I were found with my gun (a) loaded or anywhere other than on its way to a range, or a dealer for repair, or a police station for inspection, I'd not only lose the.. the licence, I'd probably go to gaol. They're very, very tightly controlled.
The problem with handguns, Graham, is the huge black market in them from guns mainly smuggled into this country and handed to criminals, and it's closely allied to the drug trade, but I believe that the black market in handguns in New South Wales at the minute is probably bigger than the drug trade and it's much more lucrative.
RICHARDSON....What does it cost to.. to buy a.. a legal gun as against a black market gun?
TINGLE....Are we talking about a handgun?
RICHARDSON....Yeah.
TINGLE....Well, you can buy a handgun from anything from about three hundred dollars up, legally, but a handgun which I am told you can buy in c.. some parts of South-East Asia can be sold here in New South Wales to a criminal for anything from three to five thousand dollars. I've heard of them supposedly paying up to ten thousand dollars for a Glock, which is that new pistol the police are using, because they're very dangerous.
RICHARDSON....Tell me, how do they get them in? It can't be too easy to smuggle guns into the country?
TINGLE....Oh, dead set easy. I mean, the Custom [sic] people will tell you that they don't have the resources to check every container. I think they check one container in ten out of every three ships that.. or something that comes in, and I've heard all sorts of apocryphal stories of people flying them in. I mean, you can land a light aeroplane in many parts of Northern New S.. Northern Australia quite unseen. There.. there is simply no barrier, if you like, no detection system, on our northern coasts through the top of Queensland and the Northern Territory and Western Australia, and that area's littered with old airstrips. I mean, I can't prove it, but I've heard some stories that stand my hair on end, I can tell you.
RICHARDSON....Yeah, see, that's the worry. We've had all these gun laws, all these restrictions, and yet, according to.. to what you're saying, there.. there are any number of guns coming into Australia every day.
TINGLE....Well, the point about it is that years ago, when I was on that same radio station, the Customs guys told me that they thought, they estimated, there were about a thousand handguns illegally brought in through the Port of Sydney, that is the maritime port, every year, and that was a long time ago before we had such criminal use of handguns as we've got now. And.. and the point that you've made is a very valid one: we've got all these laws but of course none of them affect the people who don't obey the law. The only people who've been punished and affected by this are people like myself who have a licence and register their guns.
RICHARDSON....And.. and so, as far as criminals are concerned, it's pretty easy to buy a gun? If I want to go and buy an illegal gun today, how hard is it?
TINGLE....Well, you can go into quite a few pubs around the Cross and Darlinghurst, you can go to certain pubs down in south-western Sydney, and let the word be known. A friend of mine who talked to me with this.. he is a shooter himself, this bloke, and a very good friend of mine, claims that he was in fact offered an Uzi [ph sp] at a pub in Kings Cross, and you know what the Uzi is..
RICHARDSON....Yeah.
TINGLE....that's the Israeli-made..
RICHARDSON....That's right.
TINGLE....nine millimetre, fifty round, dreadful piece of work, and this bloke, who's a pretty respectable bloke, he got out of the pub as fast as he could. And you can buy what they call a Saturday night special, which is a little cheap thirty-two or thirty-eight for probably two or three hundred dollars, no questions asked. In fact, in some pubs they'll come up and offer them to you.
RICHARDSON....See, that.. that is staggering.
TINGLE....It's terrifying.
RICHARDSON....I mean, I've heard of drugs being offered all over the place. I didn't realise that guns could be.
TINGLE....Well, it's terrifying, Graham. I mean.. and.. and the.. the thing about it from the point of view of somebody like me is that it all eflects back on us because we all get lumped into the one mould and because guns are used criminally, people who use them legally are seen as somehow potentially menacing and we're not.
RICHARDSON....And there's probably no way we're going to stop this illegal trade, is there?
TINGLE....Well, we can't stop the drug trade. How do we stop the gun trade? But I notice that the police have set up a task force to start looking at it, and.. and from my point of view I.. I'm saying thank goodness, it's about time they made the distinction between the illegal b.. illegal use of guns like criminals and the legal use of firearms for proper.. p.. perfectly legitimate purposes by licensed shooters. I mean, this is something they have never been prepared to understand before, and if they're understanding it now then maybe we're on the first step to doing something about it.
RICHARDSON....Let's hope so. Thanks very much for talking to us, John.
TINGLE....Nice to talk to you, Graham.
RICHARDSON....John Tingle from the Shooters Party. He always makes sense, John Tingle, I.. I always find, but also it's an educational thing talking to him. I mean, realising that there are that many illegal guns being smuggled in that you can go out and buy them in the pub, that really is very depressing news, isn't it?
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