The police do not want the public owning firearms, and they pursue an anti-gun agenda — but it is a self-serving one based on fear, hidden behind the opaque plea for public safety.
We used to use the phrase “law and order” until it became a cliched character known as Laura Norder, so we retired her and wheeled out “public safety” instead.
I guess it’s harder to take the piss out of that combination of bland words, but it is still easy to over-use and abuse it, as our police and politicians have been doing relentlessly since the Bondi terrorist attack in December.
The current rhetoric started a couple of years earlier, though, in wild Western Australia under the double act of a police commissioner and a police minister whose paranoia turned to propaganda about the need to take guns of the streets (talking about clichés).
This then became the dreadful WA Firearms Act 2024, which among other ludicrousness introduced ownership limits for the first time in Australia.
More recently, way over in the south-east, Tasmania’s top police officer, Commissioner Donna Adams, has invoked the death of a police officer to support police demands to remove firearms from law-abiding, licensed owners.
The man who murdered Constable Keith Anthony Smith during a home repossession was charged with having unregistered firearms, being unlicensed and possession of a suppressor.
We are not talking here about one of us, and we are certainly not talking about someone who would have been stopped if straight-pull hunting rifles were restricted from general ownership or if he were only allowed to own four, five or even 10 guns.
Early this month, Tasmanian police shot a man in the chest after he’d allegedly threatened to shoot them. He was unarmed.
No matter the details of the situation, it illustrates the fact fear of guns is very real, but it is completely unacceptable that such fear results in unfounded attacks on law-abiding people like us.
Whether guns are illegal or imaginary, they’re not the ones you and I possess.
Ours aren’t the ones the police should be worried about, and no public servant — even a police commissioner — has the right to punish us for something we didn’t do … and won’t ever do.
But she and all her fellow senior cops think they should have that right, as revealed in a letter she wrote to Tasmanian Police Minister Felix Ellis in February, and which was made public.
“Together with my fellow Australian Commissioners of Police, I stand ready to support reforms that enhance public safety, strengthen police safety, and improve community confidence,” she wrote.
“In terms of policy and legislative change, I reiterate my support for the national firearms reform agenda, including a proposed firearms cap.”
So if you ever doubted it, there it is black and white: Australia’s senior police want legal gun ownership restricted further.
Where is the evidence to back them? There isn’t any.
Read Adams’ letter and you’ll see figures about the current numbers of registered firearms in Tassie and the number of licences, but no stats to back her claim of “a real and increasing threat [from firearms] to both the public and our officers”.
You’ll read about not just public safety but “firearms theft … criminal activity … family violence” and “meaningful reform that addresses the risks highlighted by such horrific crimes” as the Bondi attack.
These are the same things we hear from the anti-gun lobby. These words should have real gravitas but in this case they are just hollow.
It might be different if the current suite of enacted and proposed gun laws would do anything to prevent terrorist attacks or criminal activity, but they won’t. (Intelligence sharing etc probably will help — let’s not forget that, but those are not gun laws.)
There is no evidence that Australia has a gun problem brought on by those who legally own firearms. Murders by legitimate gun owners are statistically insignificant in Australia, and despite the anti-gunners’ recent focus on firearm theft, there’s no evidence that stolen guns are significant in subsequent criminal use.
Fortunately, in Tasmania as elsewhere, we have politicians who are not falling for it, refusing to kneel before the police commissioners. Police Minister Felix Ellis is a case in point, standing for evidence-based decisions and steering clear of reactionary law-making.
I’d like to bring the attention of the various police commissioners as well as so many of our politicians to one phrase Commissioner Adams used in her letter: “community confidence”.
The Australian community is increasingly losing confidence in its leaders and institutions. Perhaps commissioners and many politicians need to look in the mirror and ask themselves why.
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