During April 2012 the website of the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (SSAA) has a message from its National President, Bob Green. His message tells readers about the role of privately owned guns used as a pastime and recreation.

April 28^th 2012 is the 16^th anniversary of the Port Arthur gun murder of 35 people, so Australians may well choose to recall the part played by the SSAA in trying to prevent the introduction of the very successful gun laws that came into operation following that tragic event.

No group in Australia tried harder to stop the improved gun laws than the SSAA. Indeed, no group is trying harder, now, to destroy those wonderfully successful gun laws than the SSAA.

Background – Gun Law History Over Recent Decades

In the three decade span between the mid 1950’s and the mid 1980’s Australia experienced very high yearly rates of gun deaths. During this period shooter groups were the government’s main reference advisors on gun laws.

In 1987 there were six gun massacres, 32 were murdered with guns. Most murderers held their guns legally.

Soon, most Australian jurisdictions made stricter gun laws resulting in a significant lowering of gun homicide and gun suicide rates. The SSAA organized a march of almost 30,000 shooters through the streets of Melbourne in an attempt to stop the proposed gun law improvements being enacted.

In early 1996 a dedicated shooter murdered six members of his family at a suburb of Brisbane and on 28 April 35 were murdered by a young man called Martin Bryant, at Port Arthur in Tasmania.

In the following year or two stricter gun laws were introduced by most Australian jurisdictions resulting in further lowering of the gun homicide and gun suicide rates. The SSAA organized shooter marches in capital cities aimed at stopping the proposed new gun laws being enacted.

In 2002-03, against the SSAA’s wishes, stricter controls were also introduced on handguns following the gun murder of two students at Monash University.

By 2004 it was becoming clear that the combination of new gun laws had been most effective and this was supported by subsequent statistics.

About one third of the number of people who used to be murdered with guns before stricter gun laws came about in the period 1988 to 2003 are now murdered with guns. About one third of the number of people who used to die from self-inflicted gun wounds now do so.

Perhaps about 2000 more Australians are alive now because of the stricter gun laws. This change has occurred since governments followed the public’s wishes regarding gun laws and not the wishes of Australia’s major shooting groups.

Shooter Groups Deplorable Attitude to the Above Evidence

Once it was obvious the stricter gun laws were working, the SSAA set about concealing the facts from politicians and public. In academic papers and media interviews SSAA representatives ridiculed the stricter gun laws in the hope of covering–up the true facts – this has continued till today, in what is an extraordinary and sickening attack on the interests of the general public.

So when, in his April 2012 message, SSAA president Bob Green tells you about the less harsh side of shooting, as in these words:

……… the Victorian duck hunting season opened, with hunters legitimately harvesting what nature provides them in the form of green, lean and healthy alternatives to our diets. No doubt, there were many members who took to the field to help reduce the impacts of foxes, rabbits, feral goats and pigs on our native wildlife or to find some meat for the family dinner table.

Please remember the SSAA’s attempt to stop the stricter gun laws that have saved about 2000 lives and the ugly side of the SSAA’s aims that are not mentioned, eg, the SSAA’s continued attempts to have almost all types of guns as readily available in Australia as they are in America – regardless of the sickening consequences to public safety.

But, above all, remember how, at Port Arthur on the 28^th of April, 16 years ago, in the Broad Arrow café, Victorian mother Mrs Carolyn Loughton threw herself on top of her 15 year-old daughter, Sarah, in a desperate attempt to save her life from a young man with a semi-automatic rifle. Then go to the Melbourne suburban cemetery and on Sarah’s grave, read the mother’s heart-breaking tribute to her daughter.

Suddenly you’ll find you have learnt something about the dark side of Australia’s ruthlessly selfish gun lobby.

The gun lobby is as insidious as it is deceptive. Note these grubby consequences of the secret deal that the Victorian Labor Party did with the gun lobby in 2006, when it was led by Premier Steve Bracks.

Masssive Victorian Shooting Range Secrecy

In 2006 a massive set of shooting ranges, under the title of a state target centre, was planned by the Bracks government and major Victorian gun groups. Gun Control Australia’s experience with shooting ranges is that they can create enormous disturbance to families living within four kilometers of the shooting – percussion rates of one shot per second have been recorded in the past.

When the final three sites were drawn up, GCA asked the government to reveal them to the public so that families living near the range could make formal complaint about the development if they so chose. (Note: gun noise travels about 5 kilometers in the direction of firing)

The (Baillieu) government refused; so last November Gun Control Australia asked the Tribunal (VCAT) to help protect the public.

At VCAT, Gun Control Australia’s arguments were well received and the government decided to entirely withdraw the three proposed sites.

Thus, at this moment, the public has been protected from the underhandedness of the Bracks and Brumby governments. Of course, little honour goes to the Baillieu government, but at least that government did withdraw the proposed massive shooting range development sites. This means that people have some chance of resisting the development should a future range cause disturbance to them.

GCA is not objecting to the range, but the underhandedness and anti-public bias of the government and the shooter groups who wanted the range.

Gun Control Australia’s past experience has shown that many shooter groups are selfish and deceptive and have no accountability morality when it comes to their self-interest. Indeed, we have found that some of them can be quite ruthless.

Inadequate Safety Training for Shooters

In 2008 a Victorian country shooting group was given the right by law to control what knowledge is required of people who want to own a long-gun legally. This was an extraordinary and sickening failure of responsibility by Bracks and Brumby.

We know that gun clubs strongly opposed the introduction of the improved gun laws that came about after the six gun massacres of 1987 (32 murdered) and the two gun massacres of 1996 (41 murdered) Thousands of shooters marched through the streets of Melbourne in an effort to stop the improved gun laws.

We have known for over six years that the stricter gun laws of post 1987 and post 1996 have been wonderfully successful (gun homicide and gun suicide rates are now one third of what they were before the stricter gun laws) Yet despite these facts, Bracks and Brumby placed the training to get a gun into the hands of a group of hardened duck shooters.

The results are disastrous; Shooter Licence applicants are given minimal, childish type training (eg. No history of gun law development and the importance of our gun laws. No proper indication of the damage done by legal gun owners in Victoria) and then, outrageously, always awarded their pass to legally own guns. To rub salt into the public’s wounds, the Bracks/Brumby government gave official rights to the (mainly) hardened old duck shooters to develop gun courses for schools. To us in Gun Control Australia, this was an appalling decision. Surely investigative journalists must study why the Bracks/Brumby governments sold-out to the gun lobby during the 2006-2009 period.

It seems to us that the Victorian Branch of the ALP is becoming a curse to the people of that state.

The Steve Bracks/John Brumby government’s determination to off-load responsibility for proper training of gun licence applicants during the period 2006 to 2008 is a black mark on a government that in other ways faced difficult decisions with determination.

Whether it was pro-shooter bias, carelessness or child-like incompetence by the Bracks/Brumby government is not the focus of this criticism. We hope that investigative journalists will study that deplorable episode in Victoria’s political history in due course. Such an investigation, we believe, should also include the post-2007 Rudd government contribution to the irrational and dangerous pro-shooting bias in the Commonwealth government’s present gun advisory committee.

What Victoria has now is a childish system of awarding the right of legal gun ownership to people. We see no excuse for what the Bracks/ Brumby government did to non-shooter Victorians by transferring safety training courses to a bunch of shooters who are known as the Firearms Safety Foundation (Vic)

It is a further disgrace to the Bracks/Brumby government that they agreed to allow the shooter group involved in gun safety training to have rights to indoctrinate school children with the irrational and dangerous gun doctrine beliefs that dominate gun club thinking. The nonsense of gun doctrine in its simplest form says that guns are good for society and should be readily available.

 The Firearms Safety Foundation (Vic) has a website that tells us:

The Foundation is funded by both the Victorian and Federal Governments under funding deeds which outline the Foundation’s obligations.  In each case the obligations outlined were developed in consultation with representatives of shooting organisations and the firearms trade.

 ….

The Foundation is governed by a seven member board, each of whom has an extensive shooting background. 

 Because of their irrational arguments, intense bias and apparent willingness to promote deceptions you could not get a more unsuitable group of people to inform children about gun culture and gun dangers than the representatives of shooting organisations and the firearms trade.

Does the teaching profession think that a handful of long-time committed shooters are the ideal source of advice for children regarding gun ownership and desirability, gun dangers, gun law justification and gun safety?

Will these seven shooters tell our children that projectiles fired by guns are designed to tear flesh apart and create massive bleeding?

Will they tell our school children about the fact that in Victoria a hunter kills someone every three years, due to poor training practices?

Will they tell the truth about how many innocent women in Victoria have been threatened, injured and murdered with legally held guns?

Will they tell our children about the necessity for strict gun laws and how most gun clubs have tried to stop the public obtaining such laws?

Will they tell our children about the shameful deceptions being promoted by some of our largest gun clubs. Clubs that refuse to acknowledge the wonderful success of the stricter gun laws enacted since the gun massacres of 1987 and 1996?

Will they tell our children about the gun massacres committed by Victorian legal gun owners and what might be done to stop this in the future?

 Almost certainly, they will not.

Good people can only hope that as the Firearms Safety Foundation (Vic), tries to inculcate our school children with their ugly nonsense about the beauty of guns and their desirability in homes; school teachers will firmly say:

 Guns are for killing. And we don’t teach killing at this school.

When in 2006 the then Premier of Victoria, Steve Bracks, decided to attract votes from gun devotees he told them that the National Party had let them down and that Labor would give them what they want. It was in our opinion one of the most unprincipled deals made in the history of Victorian politics.

 His actions gave them too-strong a voice in environmental matters, but crucially, it gave them rights to develop a course for Shooters Licence applicants. Passing this course allows you to buy guns legally.

 This meant that instead of the police, the medical profession and an independent training institution such as  TAFE colleges developing a serious course of practical and theoretical instruction in all the important matters that owners of killing devices should face, it was in our opinion left to a gun club to arrange to just about give away Shooters Licences and hence allow anyone who wanted to own a gun, to own a gun without proper pre-instruction.

 To launder the ALP deal, Bracks made legal arrangements for the predominately gun club shooters to call themselves the ‘Firearms Safety Foundation’.

 The Shooters Licence safety course needs many improvements, these are some of them:

 1.  It needs to be a proper test because at present the system ensures that everyone passes. It is ridiculous that everyone passes – this wasn’t always so

2. Proper training for a device specifically designed to kill easily and cheaply requires prolonged disciplined theoretical and practical instruction, say 40 hours

3.  The instruction must be in the hands of an accredited and highly respected instruction institution with instructors who are responsible professional teachers, independent of gun doctrine ideological values

4.  Written tests need to be used to prevent the ease of ‘quick tick cheating’

5.  The segment on gun laws must show how our gun laws developed since Federation and are necessary for public safety

6.  A segment needs to be taught on the difficulties that organized shooter groups have put in the way of the Australian public obtaining improved gun laws

7.  The deaths and injuries caused by ill-intent or carelessness by legal gun owners must be made clear, as should the contribution of gun using criminals.

8.  A five yearly up-date should be required to be taken. This may only require a few hours instruction and one exam.

 When will the present Victorian government enact legislation to overcome the ALP’s shoddy gun safety heritage and help prevent the present three yearly hunter killings?

Victorians continue to pay a high price for the irresponsible deal ex ALP Premier Steve Bracks did with the gun lobby in 2006.

In 2006 Premier Steve Bracks set out to woo the shooter vote. He did many things to impress them. Some of the consequences have been a curse to public safety in Victoria.

By 2008 John Brumby had become Premier and he signed-off on a crucial aspect of the 2006 deal – the Formation of the Firearm Safety Foundation (FSF).

To Gun Control Australia the FSF is a poor joke – apparently an ALP sell-out to gather shooter votes.

In the last 25 years in Victoria, on average, a hunter has killed someone every three years. Presumably this will continue, because the training of shooters and testing regime for competence has remained the same, despite the regularity of hunting deaths.

Why has it remained the same?

Simple; because the safety training and testing of Shooter Licence applicants is hopelessly inadequate.

There are no learning segments on the killings perpetrated by legal gun owners deliberately or on the great rate of accidental gun deaths or on the historical development and validity of our crucial gun laws; such as gun registration and banning of semi-automatic and pump-action rifles and shotguns.

Then there’s the crucial weakness of it not being a test anyway: if you sit the test, you pass; it’s as childish and as shameful as that. Why go to the trouble to learn if you know you are not allowed to fail the test.

At its base, the FSF was derived from a gun club. It’s no surprise that gun clubs don’t want to make it more difficult to get a gun.  They want more gun owners, so that there will be more to help achieve their economic and political aims.

Apparently it doesn’t matter much to the organised shooting fraternity how many die in hunting incidents: It seems to us that what matters to gun clubs and the FSF is that as many people as possible get guns.

We complained about the fact that in Victoria a hunter kills someone every three years on average. Peter Ryan, the Victorian Police Minister says he is concerned about those deaths but can’t do anything about it because he can’t change the composition of the FSF: Of course he can’t do that easily; the Bracks/ Brumby government made sure of that before Peter Ryan came into office.

How long, Mr Police Minister, will the Victorian government allow the hopelessly inadequate training, the 100% pass rate and the three-yearly hunting deaths to continue?