But if they’re harder to get, fewer will have them. You can very much get an illegal firearm in Australia or the UK if you really want, but firearms crimes are significantly less because they’re not readily available.
I don’t think we (Canada or anybody) should necessarily ban guns, but I don’t think the US should have the 2nd amendment (as it’s now interpreted anyways) either.
Unfortunately because I wish there were no guns at all. But I’m a pragmatist. I know gun ownership will never go away in the U.S. so I own guns as well.
You can’t compare Australia to the U.S. on many levels.
Australia is less than 10% the population of the U.S. Its easy to get to the majority of 20 million people to agree to something. It’s impossible when you have over 300 million. And the U.S. has a wide history of different states with different attitudes.
Also gun laws are codified in the constitution in the U.S. that’s not the same way in every other country in the world. I wish I could remember who said it, but to paraphrase, Constitutional rights are God-given rights as viewed by Americans. Every other country has government-given rights which can be taken away whenever the government wants. That’s not the case in the U.S. and why it’s so much more entrenched and impossible to get rid of.
I think his point was that Australia does not specifically enumerate a right to bear arms. That makes it much easier for politicians and judges to erode liberties in the name of safety or "think of the children". Eg. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand have done mass firearm bans or confiscations in recent years, while the US has largely resisted similar efforts to restrict civil liberties.
The 1973 Act is the part in which we the citizens of W.Australia grant the right for our elected and employed politicians to form regulations wrt firearms.
That can be repealed, if so there is no right for our government to make firearm regulations.
The 1974 Regulations are the evolving regulations, the fine detail about what the licence requirements are, the purchase and sale requirements are, the various classes, storage requirements, and conditions for disqualification.
These can be changed.
Their point was nonsense.
We have a "Washminster" system of government, it's a bit like the UK Westminster system and a bit like the US Washington system .. only it was formed after looking at the shortcomings of both.
> Australia [..] done mass firearm bans or confiscations in recent years
Awww, you read the US NRA dot points on Australia then?
The response here was to unify gun regulations across all states and territories. At the time the bulk of the Australian population had gun regulations .. Queensland (then low population), Tasmania, and Territories (low population) did not.
Once regulation was uniform and gun licencing was taken seriously there were a lot of guns that people didn't want to licence ("we have the three we mainly use and another three out the back that grandad used in the war") - so there was a federally funded buy back scheme "cash for guns" to encourage handing in unlicenced weapons for cash, this resulted in pictures of skip bins full of "confiscated guns".
There are still semi automatics being bought, sold, and used in Australia - these are licenced for feral pig control use.
You cannot get a semi automatic to barrel polish and strut the street in the city with, you can get one if you're going to kill a lot of pigs.
You can get a licence to drive a three trailer prime mover (road train), you are still not permitted to drive these fully loaded on a large number of urban roads.
It's a quibble - the base position here in common law is that the people of this state have a right to weapons .. much later the people of this state first agreed that the body they employ to debate common rules would be allowed to argue the regulation of firearms and delegate enforcement of any agreeed regulations to those tasked with the enforcement of policy - the Act grants that right to our employees, the politicians and the police.
After Regulations were agreed upon, these were codified.
The base right as that citizens of the state can have weapons, the agreed regulations (that can be overturned) are citizens with violent criminal records, domestic assault allegations, unqualified in handling, not willing|able to safely store cannot have weapons - these are our background conditions.
The US also has background checks for sale and possesion - they're just weak on enforcement.
The US is an oddity is they felt after the fact of constitution that they had to whack on an ammendment to spell out common law for firearms - but not for explosives, poisons, motor vehicles, etc.
And now you have no ability to take those "rights" back using violence if you needed to.
You do not have the right to own a firearm in Australia regardless of whatever mental gymnastics you want to perform.
- The fact that a forcible confiscation (governments cannot "buy back" something they never owned) campaign could happen at all means you do not have this right. "Give us these items or go to prison or die when we come to take them" - some right you have there!
- If you cannot own remotely the same articles that your police do, you do not have a right to bear arms. You have a privilege to own a limited set of items under a limited set of circumstances - all of which would be useless for mounting violent resistance.
> And now you have no ability to take those "rights" back using violence if you needed to.
This is repeated a lot and shows that at bottom, gun ownership ideologues are violent thugs, they all promote using violence to impose their political views dressed up as a fight for "rights".
Ultimately it proves that restrictive gun laws are absolutely correct.
The entire purpose of the Second Amendment - at least in the United States - is to enable violent resistance against tyranny. Not hunting, not culling predators, not sport, not home defense.
> Ultimately it proves that restrictive gun laws are absolutely correct.
"We need to restrict something that prevents further restriction."
You need violence, firearms, and "violent thugs" to go around disarm people who possess them - this in Australia is the threat of prison time.
This is plain bullshit, the historical context doesn't support your wishful thinking.
You can justify violence any way you like, but at the end of the day you're promoting violence and killing people based solely on your political views.
> the historical context doesn't support your wishful thinking.
The most left-leaning members of the United States Supreme Court disagree with you legally on this point, just as much they would agree with you in principle.
> You can justify violence any way you like, but at the end of the day you're promoting violence and killing people based solely on your political views.
Where did I "justify violence?" The Second Amendment is quite clear and contains its own justification.
Again, you need violence to disarm people - so you're really not "against violence" - you're just against those using it that you don't agree with.
That doesn't make the least bit of sense, but I can see you were desperate to say that, ie "I'm armed, there's nothing you can do!"
But the idiocy of the armed is the delusion that they are safe. A person can kill another person at a safe distance, at their convenience. Having a gun doesn't help you at all.
Maybe one day you'll start thinking for yourself and come to your senses.
