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?

Because it only represents shooters and the gun trade, the formation late last year of the Commonwealth Firearms Advisory Council (CFAC) was the ALP’s blatant attempt to buy the gun vote.

The disgracefully biased composition of this panel reminds us how Julia Gillard has lost touch with the bulk of the Australian people; most of whom still remember the mass gun murders and the tragic price that over 70 murdered Australians paid before responsible gun laws were initiated.

To further disgrace the government, it is now clear that for several years some of the shooter groups represented on CFAC have deceived the public with incorrect reports about the improved gun laws. Shooter groups such as the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (SSAA) and the International Coalition for Women in Shooting and Hunting (WISH) have tried to pretend that the post-massacre years gun laws have been totally ineffective and a complete waste of money – nothing could be further from the truth.

For many years now, about 90 fewer Australians die in gun homicides each year and about 350 fewer die in gun suicides each year. Thus thousands of lives have been saved by the stricter gun laws.

Yet the Gillard government welcomes SSAA and WISH people on the gun law advisory panel and refuses to have people telling the truth about the success of the gun laws on the panel.

One wonders if there are any good principles behind the present Commonwealth government.

With thousands of lives saved by reduced rates of gun homicide and gun suicide, we know how wonderfully successful the gun laws introduced after the six gun massacres in 1987 and the two gun massacres of 1996 have been. We refer to the combination of these stricter gun laws as the National Firearms Agreement (NFA).

It is a tragedy for the Australian public that several shooter groups try to conceal the truth about the success of our improved gun laws. Such deceptions discredit our governments and those who have been killed in gun massacres. It also reduces respect for our laws, and there can be great danger in this.

 The ABS figures on rates of gun deaths from homicides and suicides per 100,000 for the period 1915 to 2006 show us that:

*  Post-Hoddle Street, Queen Street, etc Gun Massacres (1987)

In the years following the decision by Australian governments to bring in stricter gun laws after the six gun massacres in 1987, the rate of gun homicide and gun suicide were considerably reduced.

*   Post-Port Arthur and Hillcrest Gun Massacres (1996)

The declining rate of gun homicide and gun suicide was consolidated and became more obvious following the 1996 NFA improvements.

*  Reduction in Gun Deaths – Homicides

The average rate of gun homicide in Australia in the decade before the start of the post 1987 stricter gun laws is approximately 0.6 persons per 100,000 population. The average rate over the five years 2002-2006 is approximately 0.16 persons per 100,000 population.

This means that about one quarter the number of Australians now die in gun homicides compared to the days before the NFA.

Taking Australia’s population at 22 million, it means that over the five years 2002-2006 about 90 fewer Australians have died in gun homicides each year compared with what would have been the case prior to governments introducing stricter gun laws after the 1987 gun massacres and after the 1996 gun massacres.

*  Reduction in gun Deaths – Suicides

The average rate of gun suicide in Australia in the decade before the start of the post-1987 stricter gun laws is approximately 3.2 persons per 100,000 population. The average rate over the five years 2002-2006 is approximately 0.8 persons per 100,000 population.

This means that approximately one quarter the number of Australians now die in gun suicides compared to the pre-1987 days (prior to Australian governments enacting stricter gun laws based on the public’s concern with gun deaths). As academics Andrew Leigh and Christine Neill said in their 2010 research, published in the American Law and Economics Review:

“We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates.”

Our estimation is that over 400 fewer gun suicides now take place each year because of the success of the stricter gun laws.

Summing Up

We therefore praise the success of the National Firearms Agreement. All Australians should be proud of the Hawke ALP and Howard Liberal/National governments that led the way in introducing the stricter controls. The State and Territory governments that supported such initiatives also deserve praise.

It’s no surprise that several shooter groups choose to deceive the public about this success. Fewer gun deaths each year may mean little to those with vested interests in gun activities, but we see that attitude as selfish, callous and lacking integrity.