The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia Inc. today rejected calls by Australian Medical Association Queensland branch president Bill Glasson, for compulsory medical certificates for firearm licensees.
The SSAA said it believed such a system would be used to stifle legitimate gun ownership. SSAA spokesperson Paul Peake said “Given the AMA's well-publicized anti-gun outlook we have no doubt that compulsory medical certificates would be misused by some people in the medical profession as a means of preventing legitimate shooters from licensing firearms.”
Mr Peake said that the question of psychological fitness was often highly subjective and already misused regularly to gain advantages for litigants in spousal disputes. A system that required GP's to adjudicate on someone's mental state before they could have a firearm license would open the way for vexatious decisions on the part of doctors with anti-gun views and litigation from people who believed they had been turned down because of misdiagnosis. Mr Peake went on to say “We believe the AMA sees this as a way of introducing more restrictions on law-abiding gun-owners via the backdoor and we would urge policymakers to reject it.”