NSW Labor has been left red-faced starting an online petition in support of its own gun laws that had only received eight signatures more than a day after it was posted.
The petition calls on the state’s Liberals to back Labor and “strengthen NSW’s gun laws”.
“While the Liberals and Nationals remain divided, Labor is working hard to deliver stronger gun control in NSW,” Labor said in a Facebook post that call on people to “Add your [signature] to our petition to show them that NSW supports strong gun laws”.
The petition stands in stark contrast to the parliamentary petition launched by shooters in opposition to the Labor Government’s pre-Christmas gun law changes, which initially crashed the parliamentary website and went on to become the largest ever tabled in NSW.
Shooters Union Australia called out the embarrassing state of affairs, highlighting the fact that in more than 24 hours since being posted, the petition garnered only eight signatures, and soon afterwards the displayed count was removed from the web page.
SSAA National also weighed in on the matter, jokingly saying they had more people show up to emergency meetings to discuss the quality of coffee available at the range.
By Tuesday afternoon (June 9), having reached about 15, the signature count had been removed from the petition website, but both the Facebook post and the linked website page were still up.
The NSW Labor post had received more than 1000 comments at time of writing this article – the overwhelming majority being critical in nature – and the story about the embarrassingly low number of signatures on the petition had been picked up by 7 News and The Australian.
Shooters Union Australia president Graham Park said the lacklustre response to the Labor petition showed the public was seeing through the rhetoric and spin.
“We’ve had 30 years of being told our gun laws are the best in the world, yet following a terrorist attack which was clearly an intelligence failure rather than a gun law failure, the response from NSW Labor has been to ban century-old bolt-action rifle and shotgun designs and attack licensed shooters for existing – and they’re wondering why Australians aren’t buying it,” he said.
“Politicians, or more specifically their activist advisors, need to wake up and realise the days of using responsible, licensed firearms owners as a political punching bag are over.
“When your petition hasn’t broken double digits within 24 hours of going live, that should be a deafeningly clear message you’ve completely missed the mark and that it’s time to rethink your position on the issue.”
NSW independent MP Roy Butler said Labor’s petition had “blow up in their faces”.
“In trying to prove that public opinion is in favour of Labor’s half-baked firearms reform, Labor actually proved the opposite,” he said in a Facebook post.
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