It seems that some gun owners in the USA (and perhaps Australia) believe that gun ownership may be used to challenge governments in a hostile manner. It also seems to us that gun extremist groups (groups that want little or no controls on gun ownership) in the US, such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) will not clearly condemn those who have such ideas.

GCA urges all Australians who are concerned about the possibility of this occurring in the US (or even Australia) to study the recently published US book, ‘Guns, Democracy and the Insurrectionist Idea’. The authors are two lawyers, Josh Horwitz and Casey Anderson. Details about this book are shown on the American website of the ‘Coalition to Stop Gun Violence’ (www.csgv.org).

There are several gun extremist organisations in Australia. At least one of these is closely associated with the NRA.

Regarding this book, the ‘Coalition to Stop Gun Violence’ website informs us that:

The National Rifle Association (NRA) sells everything from its political agenda to its merchandise with a simple equation: more guns equal more freedom. The NRA steadfastly maintains that the 30,000 gun-related deaths with firearms in the United States every year are a small price to pay to guarantee freedom.

When gun enthusiasts talk about “freedom,” they have something specific in mind—freedom from government oppression. In their view, unfettered access to firearms is the key ingredient to protecting individual rights from overreaching by government. They argue that the only way to keep centralized authority in check is to ensure that individual citizens retain the capability to confront the government with force of arms. As NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre has said, “The people have a right to take whatever measures necessary, including force, to abolish oppressive government.”

This idea, which we call “insurrectionism,” is part of a broader ideological perspective that opposes a strong, activist government in nearly all of its forms. Insurrectionist philosophy degrades the democratic values and institutions that protect all of the freedoms we enjoy as Americans. Gun lobby extremists have been perfectly willing to trample on any freedom that gets in the way of their pursuit of unrestricted private access to firearms (i.e., property rights, access to justice, freedom of information, public safety, etc.). This toxic mix of ideology and firepower has moved beyond rhetoric and resulted in real violence in our country.

On the CSGV website two respected reviewers on the US gun problem, comment on the book:

• “Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea recasts the gun debate by showing its importance to the future of democracy and the modern regulatory state. Until now, gun rights advocates had effectively co-opted the language of liberty and democracy and made it their own. This book is an important first step in demonstrating how reasonable gun control is essential to the survival of democracy and ordered liberty.” – Saul Cornell, author of A Well Regulated Militia
• “This well-written book is the first to examine from an historical perspective the idea that wide spread private gun ownership is crucial for us to maintain our democracy … They argue persuasively that the insurrection movement is far more of a threat to our freedoms than a protector of them.” - David Hemenway, author of Private Guns, Public Health

Note also the review of the book by Professor Robert Spitzer in the June 21, 2009 issue of the journal ‘Law and Politics Review’.

On today’s front page of the Brady Center’s website you’ll see what possible horrors may be in store for Australians if the SSAA gets its way with our gun laws. By ‘gets it way’ we mean that it succeeds in breaking our current gun law regime and has its own American style versions put in their place – this could be done, for instance, by persuading the party in power that it needed the pro-gun vote. Our prime minister seems to shoot at a SSAA range, so he appears to have a pro-SSAA bias. Perhaps he too should be asked to comment on the eleven to one gamble.

In the top right hand corner of the Brady Center’s front page it simply says:

People shot in America this year 82,650

Of course the US has about fifteen times the population of Australia so it would mean that the relevant figure for Australia would be 82,650 divided by 15 – this is approximately 5500. This is only a ten month figure, not the entire year.

We ask, “‘Would the Australian public be happy with that figure in order to satisfy the Australian gun lobby’s desire to have free access to guns?

Since most shooting groups never seem to bother mentioning the number of gun deaths and woundings, it seems that shooters would be happy with the figure, even if the non-shooting population was not.

It’s worth pointing out that the relevant ball park figure for Australians shot in a ten month period approximates to 500.

Five hundred or five thousand five hundred? What would you prefer? It works out to an eleven to one ratio.

And, by the way; in the US the SSAA’s close buddies, the NRA and SAF, supported what’s called ‘the Thune Amendment’. The Brady Center’s website today tells us that:

Dangerous legislation that would have forced states to allow dangerous individuals to carry loaded guns in public was defeated in the U.S. Senate.

This outrageous legislation was introduced as the Thune Amendment (No. 1618) to the Defense Authorization bill (S. 1390).

It would have allowed the carrying of loaded, concealed firearms outside a person’s home state, even by persons legally barred from possessing guns in the state where the carrying occurs. It would have allowed the weaker concealed carry laws of one state to nullify the restrictions on gun carrying of other states.

We applaud those Senators who stood firm for the public’s safety and rejected the gun lobby’s dangerous legislation.

In his SSAA President’s Message for October 2009, Bob Green, suggests that the SSAA has a legitimate place in the Australian community. We would like to test that hypothesis by asking him these four questions:

• Did the SSAA hope that the Thune Amendment became law?
• If not, did the SSAA remind the NRA and SAF of its disapproval of the Thune Amendment?
• Is the SSAA concerned, that if Australia had American style gun laws, five thousand five hundred Australians would be likely to be shot in a ten month period, instead of five hundred?
• If the SSAA thinks the possible figure of five thousand five hundred Australians being shot in a ten month period is too high, what number does it estimate will be shot if it gets the American style gun laws it wants for Australia?

The way our Prime Minister happily uses the gun extremist Sporting Shooters Association (SSAA) shooting facilities is worrying.

The SSAA has long been closely associated with the American gun extremism of the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation.

All the signs suggest that the SSAA wants American-style gun laws in Australia.The US is sickly awash with all types of rapid-firing high-powered guns and in the continual grip of handgun addiction. Why then does our Prime Minister pander to these SSAA gun extremists who threaten the future of our successful gun laws? Do we have to remind him that the US has a gun homicide rate about 15 times greater than Australia – why help those who want US gun laws?

In Victoria the Brumby government’s ministers for Police and for Health are doing all they can to help the SSAA become more powerful and more legitimate by placing their representatives on advisory committees and providing funding.

Wake-up Ministers, here is the real future you are likely to be encouraging if you support American-style gun extremist groups who want easy access to ex-military rifles and handguns.

This excerpt is from the Washington Post newspaper. August 21, 2009. It is titled, Message in a Barrel – Bearing arms at presidential events.

The presence of firearms near events with President Obama this month, however, took our concern to a whole new level.

It seems to have started when William Kostric showed up outside the president’s health-care forum in New Hampshire last week with a gun strapped to his leg. That he also carried a sign that read, “It Is Time to Water the Tree of Liberty,” only fueled fears he might have nefarious intentions. That’s because it was a riff on a line from Thomas Jefferson that says, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” On Monday, a dozen gun-toting men, including one with an assault rifle, were outside Mr. Obama’s speech to veterans in Phoenix. The Department of Homeland Security has warned about an increase in right-wing extremism because of the soured economy and the election of the first African American president. So anxiety over the threat posed by armed men at political events cannot be sloughed off as merely paranoia.

Yes, all of these men were abiding by the law. In both New Hampshire and Arizona, it is lawful to carry a loaded weapon in public. Also, according to the Secret Service, the immediate area occupied by the president is considered a federal site, with no weapons allowed. This prohibition is enforced by requiring attendees at presidential events to go through magnetometers upon entry. The White House seems untroubled by it all. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has said, “There are laws that govern firearms. . . . [They] don’t change when the president comes to your state or locality.”

This is true. But American history is replete with examples of folks sending a message through the barrel of a gun. That’s why this new show-your-gun craze is frightening. Supporters of the Second Amendment ought to find another way to send their message — assuming it’s a peaceful message they’re trying to send.

In his President message for October 2007, the SSAA National President, Bob Green, complained about Gun Control Australia saying that “Teaching a child to shoot is teaching a child to kill”.

Guns are designed to fire or propel high-speed projectiles. These so-called bullets are, in the vast majority of cases, designed to kill something or to be used to practice for the killing process. Shooters may have noticed that you don’t need to take a safety training course when you buy a tennis racquet, and the racquet does not have to be registered with the police. The reason is that, unlike guns, tennis racquets are not designed to kill. Gun laws are based on this fundamental fact.

Hunting is the most common reason that people give in order to qualify to own a gun. The law throughout Australia allows appropriate licence holders to hunt-to-kill various species at various times. Whilst this is often done for pleasure, hunters may be encouraged to do this with government bounties if excess numbers of a certain animal is considered to have occurred. Whether shooting is the best way to reduce feral animal numbers may be debated, but it is understandable that shooters would claim to be of service to the community when they reduce such numbers.

For the most part, handguns are fundamentally designed to threaten, injure or kill other humans, or to practice for that.

Why then should people query a statement such as: “Teaching a child to shoot is teaching a child to kill”, because that is exactly what the great majority of guns are designed to do.

Where is the much sought-after magazine which only advertises non-killing guns (NKguns) and non-killing gun events?

Gun Control Australia would like to see a new type of gun, the NKgun. We are examining the possibility of awarding a $1000 prize for the best design of such a gun that is shown to us before the 31 December 2009.

The essence of NKguns is that (to those so oriented) they give the satisfaction of ‘killing’ some living thing without actually doing any damage to that thing. The hope of the Gun Control Australia committee is that those shooters who at present have no choice but use Kguns for personal satisfaction will transfer their allegiance to NKguns

We wonder if the National President of the SSAA will be one of those people.

Over 20 years ago the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) was trusted by the Australian public and the then Federal Government under Bob Hawke to examine one of our nation’s greatest problems with violence. We’ll remind you of that period before we tell you about the recent behaviour of the AIC.

1987 was a horror year for Australians; it was the year when six gun massacres took place. You might remember the gun killings because for the most part they were done by licensed shooters using legally held guns. 32 died in the six gun massacres: here are some details of them:

1. At the Sydney suburb of Pymble on 3 January 1987 a young man with a licensed six-shot pump-action shotgun murdered four innocent young women. The man received a life sentence.
2. During June 1987 at Timber Creek in the NT and at Kununurra in WA, five people were murdered by a migrant who had been a member of a gun club in Germany. The man had been a licensed shooter in South Australia so was able to easily buy a military style rifle in Queensland because the reigning National Party supported the gun lobby’s wish for a right to own guns. Police shot the man dead.
3. In August 1987 a young licensed shooter with a military background murdered seven people on Hoddle Street Melbourne. He had a bad record in the army, became dejected and used his beloved guns, it seems, to take revenge against innocent people. He received a life sentence.
4. At the Sydney suburb of Canley Vale in October 1987 a young licensed gun owner murdered five members of one family. The man was aggravated that his would-be girlfriend did not return his affections and took revenge by murdering five members of her family and then killing himself.
5. In December 1987 at Queen Street in central Melbourne a young man with a Shooters Licence murdered eight young people in the Australia Post building. He held a registered ex-military rifle, but had shortened it. He died when he jumped from an 11th floor window.

The Victorian Premier John Cain took action, as did the Hawke Federal Government by forming a National Committee on Violence (NCV). By 1990 the NCV had made its excellent report, Violence – Directions for Australia. Many useful recommendations were made on various violence problems including gun massacres. The AIC played an extremely important part in the work and success of that committee. Several of its recommendations on gun laws were incorporated into the 1996 National Firearms Agreement (NFA) and have become the cornerstone of Australia’s current gun laws.

In 2006 the AIC officially sent its leading researcher on gun violence matters to New Zealand.

Was she sent to a conference on gun violence which invited papers from all interested in the gun debate? No. Was she sent to an accredited academic conference? No. She was sent to a conference organised by the international gun lobby which had specifically been designed to oppose any new restrictions on guns; specifically, improvements to gun safety training. The AIC’s representative helped legitimise the conference so that the UN became involved and the highly biased outcomes of the conference were then presented to the UN. The AIC representative’s legitimisation was immensely useful to the gun lobby in its media releases. All this helped the gun lobby organisers to pretend that it was a genuine open conference. In fact one of the conference’s major aims was to oppose the Australian Government’s commitment to improve the safety training regime of shooters. The conference was titled: In the right hands-international firearm safety seminar.

The gun lobby groups organising the conference did not even bother to publish the AIC representative’s address on gun theft in their magazine devoted to the conference (The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia’s, ‘Australian Shooters Journal’ 2006 Vol. 8 Issue 2)- but they did feature her and her photo in their publicity. And she had so willingly allowed the AIC to help prevent an important gun safety improvement which had been planned by the Australian government.

The anti-gun law aim of the conference was summed-up on the final page of the SSAA’s magazine:

There is no good evidence that stricter laws solve the problem

On the 25th August 2007 the AIC officially sent the same specialist on gun violence research to:

A GUN LOBBY FUND-RAISING DINNER DANCE WHICH ALSO SPECIFICALLY ADVERTISED ONE OF THE WORLD’S BEST KNOWN GUN MANUFACTURERS AND ITS COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS. AFTER THE AIC REPRESENTATIVE SPOKE, A FUND RAISING AUCTION OF THE MANUFACTURERS GUNS AND KNIVES WAS CONDUCTED.

IT’S IMPORTANT TO KNOW THAT THE GUN GROUP INVOLVED WAS BLATANTLY AFFILIATED WITH THE EXTREMIST NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA (NRA), AND HAD LOBBIED FOR YEARS TO HAVE AMERICAN STYLE GUN LAWS IN AUSTRALIA. IT ALSO HELPS TO KNOW THAT AMERICA HAS ABOUT 10 TIMES THE RATE OF GUN DEATHS AS AUSTRALIA – MAINLY BECAUSE OF THESE DISGRACEFUL GUN LAWS. ALL THIS, HOWEVER, APPEARS TO MEAN NOTHING TO AIC RESEARCHERS AND ADMINISTRATORS.

WE WONDER IF THE AIC HAD BOTHERED TO ACQUAINT ITSELF WITH THE CRITICISM OF THE NRA WHICH IS IN THE BOOK ‘SMOKING GUNS’, WHERE THE NRA’S EX-SOLICITOR ROBERT RICKER REVEALS HOW THE NRA OPERATES AGAINST THE INTERESTS OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC. WE WONDER IF THE AIC HAS EXAMINED THESE AMERICAN BOOKS AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET.

• ‘NO GUN LEFT BEHIND’ The Gun Lobby’s Campaign to Push Guns Into Colleges & Schools
• ‘FORCED ENTRY’ The NRA’s Campaign to Force Businesses to Accept Guns At Work
• ‘THE NRA’ A Criminal’s Best Friend
• ‘THE ENFORCEMENT FABLE’ How The NRA Prevented Enforcement of US Gun Laws
• ‘DEATH VALLEY’ Profile of A Rogue Gun Dealer (Story of NRA Board Member’s gun shop)

GUN CONTROL AUSTRALIA AND THE NATIONAL COALITION FOR GUN CONTROL THEN APPEALED TO THE DIRECTOR OF THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF CRIMINOLOGY NOT TO SUPPORT THE SHOOTERS GROUP WHICH WAS USING THE INSTITUTE’S REPRESENTATIVE TO FUNDRAISE FOR THEM AND THE LARGE INTERNATIONAL GUN MANUFACTURER. THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF CRIMINOLOGY REFUSED, AND SENT ITS REPRESENTATIVE TO THE GUN LOBBY FUNDRAISER WHERE SHE WAS THE FEATURED DRAWCARD.

THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF CRIMINOLOGY’S RESEARCHER FINISHED HER TALK TO THE SSAA WITH THREE STATEMENTS; TWO ARE HIGHLIGHTED BELOW.

*FIREARMS THEFT WILL BE AN ISSUE IF THEFT RATES CLIMB

(THIS IS PURE NONSENSE. GUN THEFT HAS BEEN A MAJOR ISSUE FOR DECADES AS IT IS ALMOST CERTAINLY THE MOST COMMON SOURCE THAT ALLOWS CRIMINALS TO READILY GET GUNS.)

* PRO-ACTIVE STEPS BY SPORTING GROUPS TO EDUCATE NEW CLUB MEMBERS OF SOCIAL AND LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY TO SECURE FIREARMS WITHIN LEGAL REGULATIONS

(THIS IS PURE HYPOCRISY. ONLY A YEAR PREVIOUSLY THE RESEARCHER CONCERNED HAD GREATLY ASSISTED THE INTERNATIONAL GUN LOBBY AND THE WORLD’S GUN TRADE BY PUTTING THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF CRIMINOLOGY’S SUPPORT BEHIND THE 2006 NEW ZEALAND CONFERENCE SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO PREVENT IMPROVED GUN SAFETY TRAINING.)

In November 2008 the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology (ANZSOC) organised its annual criminology conference, in Canberra. Leaders of Gun Control Australia and the National Coalition for Gun Control were selected to give talks on the likely problems resulting from guns coming into the hands of youngsters.

They sent in their submissions outlining the talks they would give, and the submissions were placed on the ANZSOC conference website. The 180 or so submissions were then to be made into a special book to be given to all people at the conference, with additional copies used to publicise the success of the conference. These would then circulate amongst the great majority of important figures in the Australian criminological community as well as prominent politicians, and become the official record of the conference.

A few days before the printing took place, we in Gun Control Australia checked the conference website and found that five changes had been made to Gun Control Australia’s 160 word submission. All were blatantly introduced errors. The Australian Institute of Criminology had introduced humiliating errors, apparently designed to make it appear that Gun Control Australia’s president could not spell these five simple words.

• Australia
• Australian
• influence
• potential
• major

The introduced errors were so disgraceful that Gun Control Australia would have become a laughing stock if any pro-gun group decided to draw them to public attention.

A complaint was immediately made. The professional organisers of the conference apologised and agreed that none of the five mistakes were present in the original submission. The organisers then informed us that in fact it was the AIC that had accepted specific responsibility for making the conference website and placing the 180 submissions on it.

Gun Control Australia asked its solicitors what might be done to prevent humiliation by pro-gun groups for what appeared to be deliberately introduced errors by the Australian Institute of Criminology.

1. We then insisted that the errors be removed from the conference website. This was done within 48 hours.
2. We asked for a formal letter in the mail apologising for the errors. This was done.
3. We asked that an addendum be added to the corrected website entry acknowledging that the original entry was incorrect because of mistakes not made by Gun Control Australia. This was done.
4. We asked that the printed version of the submissions not contain any of the errors. This was done.
5. During this correction process we stated that we did not accept the organisers explanation that the cause of the five errors was purely an accident. We did this because, with the exception of some debatable hyphenation, we were unable to find practically any errors in the other submissions.

When the conference had concluded, Gun Control Australia wrote to the Director of the AIC asking for the truth about the cause of the five errors. We were told that it was accidental and was caused by a commercial organisation that had handled the production of the website. It was suggested that we were not alone in the problem. This was a remarkable assertion because we could not see anything like the systematically introduced errors in any other submission. We asked the Director of the AIC to tell us:

1. The titles of other submissions that contained three or four or five similar errors, so that we could check with our records.

or

2. The name and address of the website production organisation so that we could ask them ourselves.

The Acting Director of the AIC refused to give any details to support his claim that there were other submissions which had multiple errors. Nor was he willing to provide us with any details which would allow us to check if this was true with the website makers.

We conclude this record of the Australian Institute of Criminology’s disgraceful trickery by letting you know that there were very few errors in all other submissions, and no equivalent to the five errors which the Institute introduced into Gun Control Australia’s submission.

How serious is the AIC’s pro-gun lobby bias?

We believe that the Australian Institute of Criminology has other serious biases. Biases that are of profound concern to the safety of Australian citizens. Biases which indicate its pro-gun lobby stance.

The AIC is funded to do research on crime generally. In regard to guns, specific attention is paid to research on gun violence, guns and drugs, and gun theft. We want to take you through some of their reports on gun theft in Australia. We believe the AIC is not just biased, but that it has betrayed public trust by attempting to conceal vital aspects concerning the problem of gun theft.

The AIC Report, ‘Firearms theft in Australia 2005-06′

Some of the findings shown on pages X and XI show:

• Firearms stolen in 55% of theft incidents were stored in a firearm safe or other secure receptacle.
• Just over half (53%) were found to be compliant with firearm storage requirements. Non-compliance was generally recorded when firearm owners had stored their firearms in unapproved receptacles (such as wardrobes) or unlocked receptacles, or in vehicles.
• A quarter of firearm owners, regardless of storage compliance status, were found in breach of firearms laws and regulations and 18% were subsequently charged or faced disciplinary action.
• One in 10 incidents involved the theft from a parked vehicle, handguns were the most common type of firearm stolen during these thefts.
• Firearms stolen in six incidents were later used in subsequent criminal activities.

This paints a bleak picture of the gun lobby’s oft-repeated term, ‘law-abiding shooter’. It also shows that the gun lobby’s argument “It’s the crim’s not us”, means little; because it’s the normal gun owner who is ‘feeding’ the crims by way of weak gun laws and/or gun owner irresponsibility.

We suggest that the AIC report shows that:

25% of ‘law abiding shooters’ are not law-abiding at all. 30% to 40% ‘non-law-abiding’ would be nearer the mark if compliance with storage laws was included. Clearly however:

1. Far too many guns were being stolen and the majority appeared to stay in illegal hands.

2. Guns were far too readily stolen from vehicles.

3. Sheds and garages were far too easily broken into and should not be areas for gun storage.

Of course these important points are not highlighted by the AIC. One wonders if the ‘Purposes of the report’ listed on page 3, and stated as:

* developing initiatives to reduce the incidence of firearms theft

* developing a minimum standard for firearms storage across all sectors of the firearms community.

have been deliberately dishonoured.

Let’s look at the executive summary of the year later (2006-07) report. Here we see under ‘Key findings regarding firearms owners’ that it’s still close to half the gun owners who do not store their guns according to the law, and that close to ten percent of gun owners do not hold a valid firearms licence.

So, one in 10 gun owners are not basically lawful and 5 in 10 are careless and act irresponsibly. Shocking facts aren’t they? But more crucial information for the public and legislators is shown under ‘Key findings on related issues’, where we find that:

* Firearms stolen in 13 firearm-theft incidents were later involved in the commission of an offence.

And then within the category ‘Trends over time’ on page X, we find that:

* A quarter or more of vehicle-based thefts are aided by owners not locking the vehicle.

* Only slightly more than half of gun owners who report thefts are considered storage compliant.

These are crucial facts about the inadequacy of gun storage demands and of the irresponsible behaviour of shooters. It is deplorable that the AIC has not strongly emphasised these facts.

The AIC must take its share of the blame for poor advice to governments; thus, in all likelihood allowing many additional guns to get into criminal hands.

If guns are to be permitted in homes then we believe that all gun owners should be required to have a specially built gun-room within their homes. Such a room should have no windows and a double-locked steel door to contain improved gun safes and warning devices. Any gun owner found to have not complied with storage laws should lose their guns for at least a ten year period. Governments must act now to stop or greatly reduce the number of guns which fall into illegal hands. The AIC must follow up any criminal use of stolen guns over long periods of time, not just one to three years. A stolen gun is very likely to be as dangerous an implement now as when it was manufactured, say, 10 to 60 years ago.

Clearly gun storage and gun training laws need tightening. It’s obvious that a high proportion of shooters are careless and therefore need far more rigorous selection as to who is allowed to legally own a gun. They also need vastly broader and prolonged training schedules and more demanding exams than those that they are required to take at present.

In time the public will be able to assess the damage done by almost a decade of AIC pro-gun bias, and its irresponsible failure to emphasise the weaknesses in our gun storage and gun training laws. AIC research seems to be good; its analysis of that research and its conclusions have on many occasions been disgracefully biased. We can only hope that the pro-gun bias of the AIC has not crept into other governmental bodies such as the Australian Crime Commission and the Secretariat of the Ministerial Council for Police and Emergency Management – Police.

The AIC should be highlighting deficiencies in our gun laws and so give positive advice to governments, as it did in 1990. In addition to its gun theft research the AIC should consider shooter compliance with gun laws as discovered by police in their many examinations of various communities over the last three or four decades. The results of gun amnesties and many decades of shooter tribunal hearings also reveal many relevant aspects about the true nature of shooters; their carelessness, generally irresponsible behaviour and at times outright unlawfulness.

Governments must stop taking little or no action about the growing arsenal of illegally held guns, as well as the totally inadequate training and credentialisation of gun owners – of course the two are tightly connected.

In Victoria alone in the last three decades at least five people have died at the hands of licensed shooters in hunting accidents, while the number of illegally held guns in Australia continues to grow alarmingly. The Australian people are already paying too high a price for governmental laxity with an inadequate Shooters Licence, and will continue to do so because of the AIC’s pro-gun bias.