Political class doing its best to stir ‘moral panic’ over guns

WA Police Minister Paul Papalia says the state’s gun laws aim to ensure public safety.

If you believe what you’ve read over the past few days, you could be forgiven for thinking Australia has a gun problem.

That is what you’re meant to think, because if you feel nervous about guns then you might not look too deeply into what is really going on. The truth is Australia does not have a gun problem. Australia has a politics problem.

Gun law rhetoric in 21st century Australia has nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with political one-upmanship.

The extent to which a government bloviates about legal gun ownership is a direct measure of how much it wants to divert attention away from its shortcomings on other fronts, including skyrocketing cost of living, a crippling housing shortage and badly overstressed infrastructure.

It is no coincidence that as the Labor left has exerted more and more policy dominance within the party, Labor’s vote has collapsed in its traditional heartland.

Labor’s right know full well any further moves on legal gun ownership will go down like a lead balloon, being seen as capitulating yet again to the out-of-touch elite’s disdain for working-class pursuits.

The Liberals are doing their best to stir up moral panic in order to wedge Labor on guns, while also making Labor look weak, foolish and generally unable to lead their way out of a soggy paper bag. And both parties, lacking any moral credibility, seem to be feigning concern for victims of violence, while trumpeting their intent to “do something” about public safety. This is their self-serving strategy, intended to add a veneer of legitimacy.

There are about a million licensed gun owners in Australia, from all walks of life – from farmers and tradies to doctors, lawyers and even journalists. Ninety-nine per cent of them are law-abiding people, who are just as horrified by criminals murdering people as you are.

For all the political scare campaigns, spin and statistics, the simple reality is that if licensed gun owners were a genuine public safety problem, then you’d know about it in real life.

Too many of our laws are written by people who have no idea about firearms (or have all their “knowledge” from video games and movies) and don’t want to hear what firearms owners have to say, because it doesn’t agree with the legislator’s worldview.

Shooters Union Australia president Graham Park.

The real question that never seems to be genuinely addressed by “tough on guns” advocates is how further restricting licensed shooters stops criminals from doing criminal things.

Penalising target shooters will not stop criminal gang members shooting each other with illegal guns smuggled in from overseas or made in someone’s shed.

How is it for the past 27 years gun control advocates having been constantly telling us we have the world’s best gun laws, yet when Western Australia (who have spent that time essentially ignoring the National Firearms Agreement) now decides to implement draconian, badly thought out gun laws, suddenly it’s the other seven states and territories – all of whom have National Firearms Agreement-based laws – who are somehow deficient?

Why isn’t Western Australia being called upon to simply adopt a localised version of NSW’s Firearms Act or Queensland’s Weapons Act?

Realistically, a separate federal firearms register is going to cost a lot of money which is badly needed elsewhere, while not actually making Australians any safer. The various state vehicle licensing/registration systems manage to communicate seamlessly with each other, and have been able to for decades; we think it’s reasonable the firearms registries be able to do that too.

In Australia today, having a gun licence can mean many things. It can mean cultural traditions handed down over generations. It can mean supporting the ecological, health and economic benefits of hunting. It can mean employment, agricultural productivity and sustainability. It can mean striving for sporting excellence. It can mean researching, studying and preserving history.

It also means the person holding it has gone through extensive police background checks and been found to be a fit and proper person to own firearms. Having a gun licence should be seen as the gold standard of proof someone is an upstanding, honest, trustworthy, law-abiding member of the community.

The fact politicians keep trying to make you think the opposite should be making you wonder: Why would someone feel threatened by upstanding, honest, trustworthy, law-abiding people?

Graham Park is president of Shooters Union Australia.