Gun control becomes NSW election issue as firearm ownership reaches milestone - Polidicks

Data showing NSW has a fast-growing appetite for gun ownership has fuelled a battle between the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party and the Greens just a fortnight from the state election. There are now more than 1 million registered guns in NSW, and 90,000 have been registered in the past two years alone, according to NSW Firearms Registry data released under freedom of information laws. That means there is now one registered firearm for every eight NSW citizens, according to Gun Control Australia (GCA). The figures show one gun owner in Eastgardens has 305 registered firearms, while one Mosman resident owns 285, and one in North Sydney has 268 in their possession. GCA, which released the data, said the numbers were worrying. "It paints a picture of significant concern at the rising number of guns and the introduction of greater gun culture in NSW than we see as being healthy," vice chair Roland Browne said. The Greens also said the report was alarming and the party is using it as a warning against votes for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers (SFF) Party. "There are literally dozens [of people] with more than 100 guns — these are private arsenals right in the middle of our suburbs — there is no reason for anyone in Sydney to have the gun numbers of that order," Greens MLC David Shoebridge said. Mr Shoebridge said he was concerned gun regulations could be watered down because the SFF had a better chance of getting another member elected to Parliament following yesterday's ballot draw. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-09/gun-ownership-in-nsw-growing-fast/10886380

Australia's registry data is publicly accessible? Are they trying to get people robbed?

SFF are fucking useless, they straight up admitted a few days ago they have no intention of opening up what licensed shooters can own. Shooters should vote LDP. They've actually said what they want to do and it looks a lot like New Zealand (though the Greens and CGA will start screeching about America).

Fuck off, more guns doesn't = more deaths by firearms. Plus they only make up like 1% of homicides in Australia with most of them being in illegal possession. "There are literally dozens [of people] with more than 100 guns — these are private arsenals right in the middle of our suburbs — there is no reason for anyone in Sydney to have the gun numbers of that order," Gee maybe those kind of people just enjoy collecting guns because it's their hobby. I'm so sick of these anti gun morons in politics assuming that because you own multiple guns means you're more likely to want to go on a shooting spree or some shit, I'm sure they're going to be able to use even a quarter of them for a massacre or whatever. Pure fearmongering. Btw vote Lib Dems 2019 for not shit gun laws

lmao wanting a gun collection in a country with strict and anti-gun laws.

Lol, I wouldn't even be able to carry all my guns if I snapped and went nutters, and I only own five. Having 5, 20 or 100 more won't make me any more deadly.

Upper state house = Highly likely, due of the council use of Single transferable vote under Group ticketing, will resulted get them a least one to three seats. Lower state house = Less unlikely, due of the State's two-party mentality is still unfortunately a problem even under the use of Instant-Runoff voting, isn't enough to get them a single seat.

Clearly from the article, it's quite possible to do that.

Australia used to be as pro-gun as the United States for quiet a long time. They even had their own militia groups in the rural areas. Hopefully Australia can release itself from the shackles of hoplophobia, and allow it's citizens to rearm. What happened after the shooting in Tasmania was a classic case of government overreach, and it should never be allowed to happen again.

what would we be rearming for though? it's not as if us citizens are dying for weaponry to use against some evil force. i say that thinking that so long as all background checks are thorough, people should be allowed to own most guns

The Liberal Democrats certainly have some noble goals, and I approve of a lot of their policy in regards to drug reform, assisted suicide, etc. But I wouldn't recommend voting for them on the sole issue of gun laws because you would also be voting for the implementation of a American-like university system, the privatisation of most government functions and the abolisment of the minimum wage. I'm fairly certain a lot of people here would object to quite a lot of their other policies, so I really don't think you should vote for them on the principle of a couple of agreeable policies.

Oh yeah I admit some of their economic policies are pretty shit which sucks since I agree with them on majority of their issues outside of the more economic stuff. I still vote for them since I agree with them the most than other parties, but fuck those kind of policies you linked.

This may come as odd, but the current strict regulations in Australia are actually increasing the amount of firearms that are called "craft-produced" or otherwise known as homemade. These weapons are getting better and better every year, and are responsible for upwards of 10% of all firearm hauls at the moment, if not more. Considering the weapons being used are mostly zip-guns and automatic machine pistols, it leaves to question if the longer these regulations exist, will it increase the amount of actual military grade firearms on the market. Not to mention will criminal organizations actually start putting together their own open source software for the manufacture of CNC equipment that could be used to produce guns en'masse. Just some examples from Australia: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/gun1.jpg https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Homemade-australian-submachinegun-improguns.jpg https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/gunluty.jpg They are crude, but very, very effective. The quality is improving every year, and in some cases they look almost identical to what is being copied: https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/lutyausseized2.jpg https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/4111614-4x3-940x705australia.jpg https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/lutyausseized.jpg

The major parties also have lots of shitty policies. If we didn't vote for a party because they had a few bad ideas I'd have to donkey vote every election because there would be no one i could vote for.

Of course all parties have their unfavourable policies and compromises but you have to ask yourself if this party will in general work for my values, is their idelogical base something that I agree with? It's not a few bad ideas that they premote but instead the entire Libertarian Ideology, that includes a increase in individual at the cost of collective ability.

Single-issue voting for hobbies like gun ownership over societal or economic issues seems really petty and stupid to me.

But most people in Australia don't want more guns. Everyone understands that criminals will get around gun laws but even they could perfectly replicate a commercial gun, it wouldn't be grounds to relax the laws. Besides, I recall that a common argument in gun control debates was that military grade firearms or other heavy firearms weren't the main problem in regards to gun crime/death, it was handguns. Why should we be concerned now?

Not sure what you're trying to argue there given the examples he posted are compact machine pistols.

Shackles? For fuck's sake, we aren't the US, we don't have a huge part of the population that have raging erections for owning guns. Stop pretending you know anything about what Australians want, because you don't. I would be totally fine with even more gun control, nobody apart from farmers or sport shooters should even own guns as civilians. Also on your "point" about homemade weapons, gun control is working, people that are desperate for guns have to go to the length of making it themselves. Nobody can stop homemade guns, that doesn't mean we should just loosen control of professionally made official firearms.

Gonna add to this and say that these homemade guns are prohibitively expensive and difficult to acquire, not to mention ammunition. They're barely an issue.

Yeah man, crackhead down the road from me tried buying a homemade gun from bikies and it was obscenely expensive for what it was.

If you already got the tools you can make your own gun for a few hundred dollars worth of materials from a hardware store at the most, which is cheaper than almost any legit gun pretty sure. It's easy as fuck to find guides and blueprints on homemade guns. Not too sure about ammunition but I doubt it's much harder. Only reason why people try to sell them for so much is cause they're targeting dumb people for maximum profit. Point being for those who are fine with possessing illegitimate guns there isn't much stopping them aside from the money for the materials/tools and their craftsmanship (though practice makes perfect after all). Granted the quality will depend on various factors, but still.

There's something I don't get from this type of argument, though. If handmade guns are so easy and cheap to make, why aren't arms manufacturers out of business? Surely industrial scale manufacturing would drive costs down even more, and they'd be forced to sell them for competitive prices because handmade weapons would be a viable alternative. Also, if it really doesn't make that much of a difference, you'd see criminals in countries with better weapons availability, like the US, rely on handmade weapons as well, since that would save them the trouble of handling weapons trafficking.

I don't particularly understand why a man owning 300 guns is supposed to be scarier than a man owning 2 guns and a big deal.

Criminals here do use self made weapons. A lot of garage built MAC-10s turn up in gang busts.

Is that typically a type of weapon that federal or local gun laws restricts the sale of?

Yes, they're open-bolt automatics and are very illegal.

The second emu war.

I see, that explains why they'd make them from scratch instead. Does it offer them some form of advantage? I suppose there's some kind of reasoning behind their ban.

Few reasons. One, semi-automatic guns are hard to make. They're more mechanically complex by far than a full auto open bolt weapon, requiring a disconnector system, which is a considerable engineering challenge for a garage builder. Two, these are gangbangers we're talking about. The brrrt of a full auto MAC is pretty intimidating. Posturing and making noise is 90% of gang skirmishes. Three, your homemade gun isn't going to have a rifled barrel, which means accuracy suffers hard. Full auto = higher output = perceived higher hit probability. In practice you're not any more likely to hit.