Earlier this week, the ABC’s Media Watch ran a story they described as “Tasmanian minister whips up discontent on his socials, following an inconvenient question” – Gun Grandstanding – Media Watch.
The SSAA is disgusted by this segment that chose to take a terrifying and violent crime and focus on the criticism of a journalist for victim-blaming a lawful firearm owner.
This story related to a recent early morning burglary on Tasmania’s east coast, with police stating a man was tied up with cable ties, with nine firearms (stored in a firearm safe) and a car stolen from his home which was set on fire (read more here).
Thankfully the resident was taken to hospital with non-life threatening injuries, but what resulted in the media heavily focused on a journalist essentially querying whether the lawful ownership of firearms contributed to this situation.
The Media Watch story followed a narrative where police stated the burglary was motivated by the theft of firearms, that the victim owned “no less than nine guns”, and went on to show highlights from a press conference where a journalist asked/said to the Tasmanian Minister for Health if there are “more people with more firearms, it’s more likely that a robbery like this will occur”.
While Media Watch described this as a routine question, the Tasmanian Minister for Police, Felix Ellis stepped in at the press conference to highlight the journalist’s victim-blaming and state that it was disgraceful for the media to say that law abiding firearm owners are the problem in this case.
Rather than focusing on this fundamental point, Media Watch elected to analyse social media comments, and the inappropriate language that was used by some keyboard warriors to criticise the journalist.
As the SSAA has repeated time and time again – lawful firearms owners and the laws that govern them have not been, and are not the issue when it comes to community safety in Australia.
This position is not just a convenient theory for us but is also backed by a plethora of formal reviews in recent years across various states and even the current Royal Commission that was prompted by the Bondi terrorist attack.
In this instance, Media Watch have elected to take an approach to this segment that the presence of lawful firearms in the community is, at least in part, responsible for those who want to steal them.
To that end, they included comments and misinformation from Josh Willie, the Tasmanian Labor leader that there are now more firearms in the community than at the time of the Port Arthur massacre. Had they bothered to check, they would have found the number of firearms in Australia has dramatically decreased since Port Arthur when population growth is considered.
This situation really begs the question why a journalist is publicly asking a question that suggests a law-abiding citizen is (at least) partly responsible for the harm caused to them, and why Media Watch is choosing to criticise a state minister for pointing out how problematic that is?
Can you imagine if this kind of questioning was assigned to another victim of a violent crime, such a sexual assault? It very much brings to mind “but what was she wearing?”
Even more important than this, how would the victims’ friends and family feel watching Media Watch reduce a traumatic and violent incident where their home has been destroyed to a pithy and sarcastic segment about comments on social media, and “an inconvenient question” to a Minister.
We can only hope that, like the vast majority of the Australian population, they weren’t watching Media Watch, and they move towards recovering and rebuilding their lives.