Gun Control Australia

STEVE BRACKS – OUT KENNETTING KENNETT

After one full year of governmental power in Victoria the Bracks ALP government have, in GCA's experience, shown themselves to be more evasive, more secretive, more underhanded and more in the grip of the gun lobby than the Kennett Liberal/National government. Five months before they were elected a year ago we asked Steve Bracks to discuss the weaknesses in Victoria's gun laws. He did not reply to our letter. Three months later we wrote again, specifying a half dozen of the weaknesses.He did...

Gun Killings Down – Gun Control Success

The recently released ABS statistics show a dramatic drop in Australian gun deaths for 1998. These figures are shown below. They exhibit the same tendency to decline which was shown in the 1997 figures. The continued reduction in the number of Australians being killed by guns strongly suggests that the stricter gun laws which have been put into place throughout Australia during the 1990's have saved many hundred's of lives. A decade ago, in 1988, just before the stricter gun laws started to...

One Nation – The Danger

Despite the Port Arthur tragedy and the stricter gun laws the fact is that Australia's gun laws still have over a dozen serious weaknesses. The gun lobby wants to weaken our gun laws even more, and they have won important concessions recently in Victoria and Queensland. There al danger however is that Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party now has a strong presence in the Queensland government. There are now major pressures to make semi- automatic shotguns and rifles readily available. The gun lob...

Us and Them – The United Nations and Gun Control

For many years gun lobby leaders have expressed great aggravation about the implementation of stricter gun laws in Australia and connected it to agreements with the United Nations. The shooters claim that anti-gun activists are working under the United Nation's banner to remove private gun ownership. They claim that documents reveal that, according to a 1996 United Nations agreement "Australia would support the preparation of an appropriate declaration of principles as a means of reducing the...

Shooting Range Danger!

Early in 1998, 10 amendments were made to the Victorian 1996 gun laws. One change made it possible for shooters to use private properties as shooting ranges . The government's proposals would allow shotgun and rifle range shooting to take place on properties as small as five acres. There are grave weaknesses in the proposed regulations in regard to noise and safety. By permitting shooting within 250m of a public road or dwelling, the government is disregarding the EPA regulations on noise ...