It’s difficult to imagine that only weeks ago NSW Premier Chris Minns was a friend of the shooting sports, talking keenly of the benefits of recreational hunting. Now he is trying to introduce what he calls the toughest gun laws in the country.
No one seriously believes gun laws will put a dent on the issues that both men are dodging as hard as they can: extremism, terrorism and racism. That transparently diversionary tactic has caused a huge loss of face (and faith) in the eyes of the population, including the Jewish community, who were the specific victims of the terrorism.
But that’s for other people to analyse. I only intend to look at the effects of the knee-jerk rush to table gun laws.
For starters, Minns’ actions have united the shooting community like never before. Prior to 1996, there wasn’t anything you could really call a shooting lobby, but afterwards the SSAA grew enormously and so did its influence. Shooters were forced by law to joining shooting organisations, and SSAA made the most of it. Suddenly we had a single body representing us as a united voice. (I know that’s generalising it, but the details would scroll on forever!)
The industry got more involved and active, too. Ultimately, the Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia was spawned and has been making a big, professional difference in ensuring regulation is as fair, informed and balanced as possible.
Over 30 years, the unity built then waned. The sense of a single purpose got lost. SSAA Queensland has effectively split from the national body, a huge blow from a nation-wide viewpoint. Major firearms companies have come and gone from SIFA, rather than finding common ground.
Much of that has changed dramatically in the past few days.
We have not only seen SSAA National and Shooters Union Australia working together and getting along like old friends, I know that at least one major firearms importer offered every cent it could give because its management felt they might as well spend it fighting rather than lose it going broke.
Shooters Union president Graham Park told me today they have reached more than 1 million Queenslanders (where another campaign was already running) and 800,000 people in NSW in the past week or so, and have gained more than 500 new members in that time. I haven’t spoken with SSAA about it but would believe they’d had similar impact and benefits.
They’re not the only ones with booming impact. I can see Sporting Shooter’s website and social media figures have skyrocketed, some figures up almost 1000%. This gun-law issue is no small thing. (No, we are not profiting from it; that’s not how the business model works.)
We don’t yet know exactly what happens after Tuesday when the NSW parliament rises again to break for Christmas, but it will have political repercussions.
Maybe the smallest upset would be if Minns did find a way to delay and slowly ease away from his captain’s call. We might not feel much at all, at least in the medium term, and Minns might even keep his leadership if he does it strategically.
The laws might go through with Liberal support but the Nationals opposing it. Could it split the Coalition, as many people hope, so the Nationals can properly support their region base? More to the point, it would give shooters about a year to prepare a massive anti-Labor campaign, with presumably a huge swag of new SFF, One Nation, Libertarian and other candidates in electorates all over the NSW, all energised by this misguided attack on gun owners.
In the highly unlikely event that the Coalition partners both reject the laws but the Greens have the sway to get them over the line — but only with a number of Greens amendments that make them completely unbearable — the anger will be even more intense afterwards and the political push even stronger. (Alternatively, a Greens stand like that could give Minns the chance he’d need to back out again, on the basis that he didn’t want to be that unfair on shooters.)
There are a host of other scenarios. We’ll find out by Tuesday evening.
It will probably hurt, but we will get up with more strength and purpose than we have ever had before, and the fightback will begin.
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