Victoria Police has revealed there has been a considerable increase in handgun crime in the past financial year. Illegal pistol seizures are up 18%; the use of all guns in assaults up 46%.
“Victoria is going the way of NSW, where an epidemic of pistol incidents has continued over the past year,? says Gun Control Australia (GCA) President John Crook. “If our two big population States stay on this path, we are headed towards an American-style armed society,” Crook says. “Victoria?s Premier Bracks and NSW’s Premier Carr?s pro-shooter policies are significantly reducing public safety in both their States.”
The Problem
“The fact is it?s far too easy to legally obtain a wide range of guns,” Crook says. “This includes handguns,” he stresses. “Because of the lack of strict credentialisation for legal gun owners, many unsuitable individuals can obtain weapons. By “unsuitable,’ we mean careless, impulsive, poorly – trained, ill-disciplined, unethical, ?macho? and threatening shooters,” Crook says.
“These people should have been weeded out by the training, testing and licensing process,” he continues. “The fact that they are not is due in large part to the woefully inadequate testing regimes in all jurisdictions over 99.9% of gun license applicants in Victoria pass the test, hardly a strict examination.” “This allows licensees easy access to guns and allows legally obtained weapons to become illegal weapons all too easily,”Crook says.
Storage and Transport
“Let’s face it, far too many shooters are careless often criminally so about how and where they store their guns. This makes it all too easy for long- and handguns to be lost or stolen, and then migrate into the black market,” Crook says. “Our gun storage laws are not strict enough, they are not uniform across States and Territories, and they make gun theft much too easy. Plus, our Police forces have not got enough time or resources to police storage.”
The Gun Lobby
“Gun lobby leaders continually fight against proper gun laws and regrettably sometimes gain the ears of our politicians,? Crook says. ?This has resulted in manifestly irresponsible gun storage requirements for gun collectors. In 1993, 88 handguns were stolen from a property in central Victoria. Over 100 handguns were stolen from Cobb & Co. gun dealers in Surrey Hills. Earlier, 15 handguns were stolen from a private collection in Gippsland. Thats over 200 handguns now on the black market, available to active criminals and would-be criminals. And that’s just in Victoria!”
AIC 2002 Report
“The Australian Institute of Criminology [AIC] noted in June 2002 that approximately 4,200 guns including about 600 handguns are stolen in Australia each year,” Crook says. “Criminals are to blame but shooter and gun-owner carelessness, weak gun laws and inadequate enforcement of the laws that do exist are making gun theft far too easy for them.”
Australia’s illegal handgun arsenal
?Based on the AIC?s figures, GCA estimates there must be between 10,000-20,000 illegal handguns in Australia today a number that will continue to grow alarmingly unless Federal and State law makers act now. The illegal importation of handguns in bulk quantities
The problems
Crook summarises the existing problem as follows:
1. Guns are still too easy to obtain legally even handguns
2. Shooter training and licensing is till far too lax
3. Lack of toughness or uniformity in gun laws still offer gun owners ?loopholes? and criminals opportunities
4. Irresponsible gun owners are allowing their guns to migrate onto the black market
5. Insufficient care by customs and Federal Police in regard to illegal importation.
The solutions
GCA?s solutions to the problems above are summarised here:
1. Cease sales of handguns through gun dealers. Ban dealers from stocking handguns. Render handgun collections 100% inoperable and limit to 5 handguns maximum.
2. Introduce a uniformly strict, 20-hour TAFE-administered training and testing schedule, with re-testing requirements after 5 years and no ?Recognition of Prior Learning? (RPL) or ?grandfather? loopholes.
3. Ensure strict uniformity of all State and Territory gun laws, across training, testing, storage, collectors, ?fit-and-proper-person? requirements and gun registration. Accelerate the integration of all State and Territory gun registration and shooter license data.
4. Increase penalties for owners actively selling weapons onto the black market, and for owners and collectors not disabling and/or storing their weapons securely.
?The Australian comm
unity deserves the best gun laws possible at the least possible cost,? GCA President John Crook says. ?By cost we mean incidents such as Port Arthur, or the Moorabbin police murders, or the continuing number of drive-by shootings, or the manslaughter death of a young man at the hands of a deer hunter at Warburton,? Crook says. ?Only by locking down all legally owned guns except when in legal use, rendering collectors handguns permanently inoperable and supervising all gun transactions in all jurisdictions with an eagle eye will we be able to achieve satisfactory community safety levels.
?Parliamentarians must for once take a proactive stance before the next gun tragedy occurs,? Crook concludes.