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Editorial - Herald Sun
« on: January 13, 2012, 07:21:58 AM » Quote
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Quote: Andrew Rule is associate editor of the Herald Sun
The anti-gun lobby does itself no favours when it picks on honest, hard-working country people, whose firearms are simply tools of their trade
SAM Lee should know better. As chairwoman of the National Coalition for Gun Control she owes it to her supporters and all sensible Australians not to say silly things in public. It gives gun control a bad name, and that's no good for any of us.
People who actually know what they're talking about -- police entrusted with registering guns and licensing shooters, for instance -- must have rolled their eyes when they read Ms Lee's comments on gun ownership this week.
``Owning one firearm is meant to be a privilege,'' she wittered, ``but owning two is meant to be limited to only those who can prove they have a legitimate special need to have more than one firearm. Victorian firearms laws have made it way too easy to gain a second or subsequent firearm.''
She is conceding that legitimate shooters can have one gun -- but implies that if the same law-abiding citizens own two or more it's somehow going to turn them into Lee Harvey Oswald.
By this logic, a driver can have one car but becomes a menace to society if he has the keys to two. Which is about as sensible as suggesting that if you have two bathrooms in your house you're going to take twice as many showers. It's absurd.
There are sound arguments for gun control laws and tough measures to enforce them, but Ms Lee's glib dial-a-quote doesn't come close to any of them.
Neither does making a tenuous link between legal long-gun ownership rates in sp****ly populated country areas and the fact lunatic crims run riot with illegal handguns in crowded suburbs.
The fact some areas have more registered guns per head than some other areas is like noting there are more cars per head in the outer suburban commuter belt than in Fitzroy.
It's true -- but so what? A lot of people in Cranbourne and Melton use cars to get to work because they have to. And a lot of people in Fitzroy walk or take trams because they can. Just a geographic fact of life. Self-appointed arbiters like Sam Lee seem to think that if they don't know something it isn't knowledge. They're wrong.
Lawyers have Latin names for Sam Lee's dodgy logic. Law lecturers cite simple examples so students get the idea. ``It's true that taxi drivers get more fares when it rains, therefore taxi drivers make it rain.'' (A: False). And ``Just because you hear hoof beats you should not assume it's a herd of zebras''. (A: True).
Logic is really only common sense. They don't need lawyers or newspapers to tell them that in Swifts Creek, East Gippsland, or other districts where shrinking numbers of law-abiding people have lived on the land for generations. Places where many people are shooters through habit born of necessity.
Ms Lee and the sniffy urban elitists who accept her prejudices might like to know how guns are used on farms in the real world. This does not mean breeding golden retrievers on a vineyard at Red Hill.
A golfer has a bag full of different clubs for different strokes. A gardener calls on everything from a spade to secateurs. Shooters are much the same: They use different firearms for different purposes.
Virtually all Victorian farmland is infested with rabbits, foxes and feral cats. Landholders are bound by law, economic survival and moral obligation to control these vermin.
Some districts also have hares, pigs and wild dogs. Interstate are herds of feral goats, donkeys, brumbies and camels that damage the land. Kangaroos breed in massive numbers in good seasons, partly due to artesian water bores that let millions thrive where none used to.
In East Gippsland's high country, wild dogs kill and maim thousands of sheep, as the Herald Sun pointed out this week. Meanwhile, foxes kill lambs, poultry and native animals. Feral cats slaughter the birds and small animals the foxes miss, pushing vulnerable species towards extinction.
Governments do little to control pest animals and expect landholders to do it for them.
To do that, those facing ferals every day need a variety of weapons. Like a farm ute, a tractor and a truck, guns are tools of trade. They come with the territory.
It's hardly surprising that farmers and their relatives, neighbours and employees often combine work and recreation by becoming sporting shooters.
Remote places like Swifts Creek and Benambra have few sports other than football and cricket, and struggle to field teams as young people leave. That's why locals started their own clay bird target club years ago, building a little clubhouse on the creek flat near the paddock where the picnic races will be held at Easter. In a district where using guns is a workaday necessity, clay bird shooting is something for young and old, male and female.
Photographs of Swifts Creek shooters in this newspaper on Monday show a group of public-spirited, friendly people happy to oblige a visitor.
These are the sort of people who glue dwindling communities together. The sort of people who might well foster a talented young shooter to represent us at the Olympics. Every four years, we hail our competition shooters. The rest of the time, it seems, we treat them like lepers.
Meanwhile, the real problems with guns are not getting better but worse. As one wise observer mused this week: ``Why are we talking about 700 guns at Swifts Creek but not the 3000 registered in St Albans?'' A good point, but more of a worry are the hundreds of illegal pistols in the hands of violent criminals. Black market handguns are so hotly sought that Sydney criminals reputedly pay up to $7000 each for them.
John Howard's gun law reforms were applauded by most of us after the Port Arthur massacre, but the law of unintended consequences has kicked in. Prohibition has done exactly what alcohol prohibition did in the US: Created a black market that organised crime has exploited to the hilt.
When plain-talking senior policeman Brett Guerin spoke up on the subject this week, he gave both barrels to ``peasants'' who he says use guns to stand over others and commit crimes the way people do in their home countries.
He wasn't talking about fox-shooting farmers from Swifts Creek. He knows they don't cause much trouble for anyone. That's why they make easy targets for gun control lobbyists who, unlike Guerin, don't have the grit or the wit to draw a bead on the real bad guys.
Andrew Rule is associate editor of the Herald Sun
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I totally agree with this well writen editorial except for this single line.
"John Howard's gun law reforms were applauded by most of us after the Port Arthur massacre," .
John Howards gun law reform was not applauded by the law abiding citizens of Australia, or the farmers and sporting shooters. The little Garden Gnome painted us all in with criminals and criminal activity. The little Garden Gnome was so frightened of the citizens of Australia and of his own shadow and of the descision he forced upon us without debate or any input what so ever, he wore a bullet proof vest whilst addressing farmers in Queensland regarding his discision to ban firearms.
« on: January 13, 2012, 07:21:58 AM » Quote
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote: Andrew Rule is associate editor of the Herald Sun
The anti-gun lobby does itself no favours when it picks on honest, hard-working country people, whose firearms are simply tools of their trade
SAM Lee should know better. As chairwoman of the National Coalition for Gun Control she owes it to her supporters and all sensible Australians not to say silly things in public. It gives gun control a bad name, and that's no good for any of us.
People who actually know what they're talking about -- police entrusted with registering guns and licensing shooters, for instance -- must have rolled their eyes when they read Ms Lee's comments on gun ownership this week.
``Owning one firearm is meant to be a privilege,'' she wittered, ``but owning two is meant to be limited to only those who can prove they have a legitimate special need to have more than one firearm. Victorian firearms laws have made it way too easy to gain a second or subsequent firearm.''
She is conceding that legitimate shooters can have one gun -- but implies that if the same law-abiding citizens own two or more it's somehow going to turn them into Lee Harvey Oswald.
By this logic, a driver can have one car but becomes a menace to society if he has the keys to two. Which is about as sensible as suggesting that if you have two bathrooms in your house you're going to take twice as many showers. It's absurd.
There are sound arguments for gun control laws and tough measures to enforce them, but Ms Lee's glib dial-a-quote doesn't come close to any of them.
Neither does making a tenuous link between legal long-gun ownership rates in sp****ly populated country areas and the fact lunatic crims run riot with illegal handguns in crowded suburbs.
The fact some areas have more registered guns per head than some other areas is like noting there are more cars per head in the outer suburban commuter belt than in Fitzroy.
It's true -- but so what? A lot of people in Cranbourne and Melton use cars to get to work because they have to. And a lot of people in Fitzroy walk or take trams because they can. Just a geographic fact of life. Self-appointed arbiters like Sam Lee seem to think that if they don't know something it isn't knowledge. They're wrong.
Lawyers have Latin names for Sam Lee's dodgy logic. Law lecturers cite simple examples so students get the idea. ``It's true that taxi drivers get more fares when it rains, therefore taxi drivers make it rain.'' (A: False). And ``Just because you hear hoof beats you should not assume it's a herd of zebras''. (A: True).
Logic is really only common sense. They don't need lawyers or newspapers to tell them that in Swifts Creek, East Gippsland, or other districts where shrinking numbers of law-abiding people have lived on the land for generations. Places where many people are shooters through habit born of necessity.
Ms Lee and the sniffy urban elitists who accept her prejudices might like to know how guns are used on farms in the real world. This does not mean breeding golden retrievers on a vineyard at Red Hill.
A golfer has a bag full of different clubs for different strokes. A gardener calls on everything from a spade to secateurs. Shooters are much the same: They use different firearms for different purposes.
Virtually all Victorian farmland is infested with rabbits, foxes and feral cats. Landholders are bound by law, economic survival and moral obligation to control these vermin.
Some districts also have hares, pigs and wild dogs. Interstate are herds of feral goats, donkeys, brumbies and camels that damage the land. Kangaroos breed in massive numbers in good seasons, partly due to artesian water bores that let millions thrive where none used to.
In East Gippsland's high country, wild dogs kill and maim thousands of sheep, as the Herald Sun pointed out this week. Meanwhile, foxes kill lambs, poultry and native animals. Feral cats slaughter the birds and small animals the foxes miss, pushing vulnerable species towards extinction.
Governments do little to control pest animals and expect landholders to do it for them.
To do that, those facing ferals every day need a variety of weapons. Like a farm ute, a tractor and a truck, guns are tools of trade. They come with the territory.
It's hardly surprising that farmers and their relatives, neighbours and employees often combine work and recreation by becoming sporting shooters.
Remote places like Swifts Creek and Benambra have few sports other than football and cricket, and struggle to field teams as young people leave. That's why locals started their own clay bird target club years ago, building a little clubhouse on the creek flat near the paddock where the picnic races will be held at Easter. In a district where using guns is a workaday necessity, clay bird shooting is something for young and old, male and female.
Photographs of Swifts Creek shooters in this newspaper on Monday show a group of public-spirited, friendly people happy to oblige a visitor.
These are the sort of people who glue dwindling communities together. The sort of people who might well foster a talented young shooter to represent us at the Olympics. Every four years, we hail our competition shooters. The rest of the time, it seems, we treat them like lepers.
Meanwhile, the real problems with guns are not getting better but worse. As one wise observer mused this week: ``Why are we talking about 700 guns at Swifts Creek but not the 3000 registered in St Albans?'' A good point, but more of a worry are the hundreds of illegal pistols in the hands of violent criminals. Black market handguns are so hotly sought that Sydney criminals reputedly pay up to $7000 each for them.
John Howard's gun law reforms were applauded by most of us after the Port Arthur massacre, but the law of unintended consequences has kicked in. Prohibition has done exactly what alcohol prohibition did in the US: Created a black market that organised crime has exploited to the hilt.
When plain-talking senior policeman Brett Guerin spoke up on the subject this week, he gave both barrels to ``peasants'' who he says use guns to stand over others and commit crimes the way people do in their home countries.
He wasn't talking about fox-shooting farmers from Swifts Creek. He knows they don't cause much trouble for anyone. That's why they make easy targets for gun control lobbyists who, unlike Guerin, don't have the grit or the wit to draw a bead on the real bad guys.
Andrew Rule is associate editor of the Herald Sun
*************************************************
I totally agree with this well writen editorial except for this single line.
"John Howard's gun law reforms were applauded by most of us after the Port Arthur massacre," .
John Howards gun law reform was not applauded by the law abiding citizens of Australia, or the farmers and sporting shooters. The little Garden Gnome painted us all in with criminals and criminal activity. The little Garden Gnome was so frightened of the citizens of Australia and of his own shadow and of the descision he forced upon us without debate or any input what so ever, he wore a bullet proof vest whilst addressing farmers in Queensland regarding his discision to ban firearms.
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