The valuable research by Professor Kate Warner and Simon Sherwood of the University of Tasmania’s Faculty of Law shows that today there is good generalised jurisdictional commitment to the 1996 National Agreement on Gun Laws and the 2002 National Agreement on Handguns. The main thrust of these important Agreements, in regard to gun registration, bans on certain semi – auto guns, genuine reason for gun ownership, safety training, safe storage, etc have been taken on board by the six states and two territories – but there are several areas where greater compliance is needed. There is good reason to believe that these changes contributed in a major way to the fact that today about 350 fewer Australians die each year from gun wounds compared to the situation in the 1970′ and 1980′s – no mean achievement.

We’ll simply note five problem areas and then draw attention to other weakness in our gun laws which have not received sufficient attention from governments. In many ways these, and the growing ideological extremism of the shooting fraternity, are the real worries for the safety-loving people of Australia.

Amongst many hundreds of observations on the compliance of the states and territories to the aims of the national agreements on gun laws made in 1996 and 2002 Warner and Sherwood report that:

* The genuine reasons for owning, possessing or using a firearm in regard to participation in sporting events like the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games and World Championships by members of approved shooting clubs, have not strictly been adhered too by all jurisdictions.(P 74-5)

* In regard to firearm collectors: “it remains that in Queensland and Western Australia collectors are not required to be members of an approved collectors’ club and in Western Australia one firearm can constitute a collection and there is no requirements that Category A, B, or C firearms be rendered temporarily inoperable.” (P 77)

* In regard to basic licence requirements…”Queensland does not require a photograph and neither Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia nor the Northern Territory require a reminder of safe storage responsibilities on the licence.” (P 78)

* “Queensland still does not have any provisions regulating the sale of ammunition and Western Australia does not appear to restrict firearms sales to licensed dealers. And although most jurisdictions make provision for it, Tasmania and South Australia are the only jurisdictions to actually prescribe a limit on the quantity of ammunition that can be purchased.”(P 79)

* In regard to licensing requirements in the 2002 Handgun Agreement: “South Australia only contains the requirement for two character references and Tasmania and Western Australia do not appear to have enacted any provisions requiring applicants to provide details of memberships to other clubs and firearms owned (resolution 10), nor is there any requirement to provide character references (resolution 11), nor is endorsemment by an approved club required (resolution 12).” (P 80)

Important as the above compliance failures are, as we see it the two major weakness in our gun laws are the abysmally low level of training required before you are granted a shooters licence (and thus can legally own guns) as well as the entire organisational structure through which guns can be legally acquired. Over and over again we see gun incidents showing how poorly trained, careless, paranoid and ill-disciplined shooters manage to damage others. The number of illegal guns is far too high; which suggests that it’s time that gun sales took place only through specially adapted police stations.The simple fact is this: guns are far too dangerous an item, too cheap, too technically deceptive, too easily convertable and too concealable to be part of the normal economic trading process.

If we look at the future there is no reason to expect that moderate shooters will be able to control the economic opportunism of the gun trade and ideological beliefs of the shooter activists who, since the early 1990′s when the SSAA associated with and received grants from the NRA, now exert such control on shooters thinking in Australia.