#gunlaws — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #gunlaws, aggregated by home.social.
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@johnquiggin
I sympathise with your frustration John (not just about gun laws) and agree that while #Labor has moved its legisaltive agenda through parliament, there is little in it to establish any kind of ‘legacy’ for the #AlboPM govt. Not least of which is in Firearms legislation. Apart from knee-jerk useless quick-fixes around the edges, especially from States and Territories.From my perspective, any Federal ‘umbrella’ legislation to tighten up gun laws in Australia will run afoul of States and Territories govts. Case in point: though agreed by all jurisdictions, the Federal Gun Register proposed by the Howard govt is still to be delivered (and from an IT perspective, this is a no brainer). How then can any PM even think national gun laws are possible? Imagine the shit fight that would ensue were legislation to be tabled in Canberra to licence and control all 3D printers.
On the contrary, meaningful gun control law reforms must be undertaken by the States and Territories with the Feds providing guidance and funding — because funding is the elephant in the room, for all enforcement services. Not just those policing legal gun ownership, but border control, criminal intelligence, and gang taskforces, and then some. To put it into perspective, how long has our society been waiting to get gambling adds banned?
Any changes to gun laws/processes/regulations require cooperation and coordination at all levels of government together with sustained budgets adequate to the tasks. In our dreams…
I believe the idea that terrorist massacres, DV and Gang murders, can be prevented just by reducing the number of guns that can be legally owned is laughable. Our gun laws may be in need of reform to keep them relevant in changing circumstances like any other law, but if you cannot effectively police them no legislation is going to make any impact at all. Just as no amount of policing is going to prevent illegal speeding on our roads or drunk driving — the later a loaded gun. In the end, society as a whole (not a tyranny of the majority) must want more policing and more effective gun controls if not an outright ban. NSW is, from memory, the State with most (legal) firearms and most por-gun voters. So, NSW is where it must start. But while Minns is in control you can forget it because he is out of his depth on this one IMO.
