My point is really that no one bothers to speak in support of these measures because they're so obviously sensible and everyone's happy to implement them.

As in, people don't walk around espousing the virtues of speed limits on highways because it's just naturally appropriate. However, there's a few 18 year olds that cry about nanny states and the removal of restrictions because reasons. There's a vocal opposition, but that doesn't imply that there's a democratically significant opposition.

One Nation is the notable exception - they will of course use any opportunity to gather up dissenters.

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[–] jtrek@startrek.website 2 points 2 months ago

My America defaultism made me excited for a moment, and then I saw this is about Australia. Sigh.

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[–] No1@aussie.zone 3 points 2 months ago (8 children)

I never understood gun buy-backs.

You'll only get them from safe responsible people.

The crims and crazies will hang on to theirs.

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[–] brisk@aussie.zone 4 points 2 months ago (6 children)

The buybacks aren't to remove them from people who will cause harm, they're to reduce their prevalence so that in the future when someone who would cause harm goes looking it's much harder to find a gun to use.

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[–] No1@aussie.zone 2 points 2 months ago* (5 children)

Right. But the safe, responsible people wouldn't give them to crims or crazies anyway.

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[–] brevl@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago* (4 children)

Say GPa dies with his old poppers lying around the farm. Crazy nephew George finds one, or cash poor aunt Georgina finds one while the family is cleaning out the buildings. It can be pretty easy for legit guns to end up in the wrong hands without the gun owner meaning to do wrong.

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[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 months ago* (2 children)

Sort of. There is a registry, inspections, and a pretty involved process to transfer ownership.

Plus a gun on its own it nearly useless, yet bullets on their own are almost lethal. We should be freaking out less about guns and spending some time coming up with a thoughtful and practicable way to track ammunition purchases and sales more closely.

Like did you know that I, with my dinky 100 year old target rifle in 22LR can walk into an ammo shop and buy 1000 .308 human killing rounds, then another and do it again? There's no requirement I own a gun that can shoot them, no limit on how much I can buy, and sales tracking isn't shared between ammo shops.

By the time anyone has figured out what's going on I can have gone and done something extremely anti social.

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[–] No1@aussie.zone 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

That is whack!

Yet, if I try and buy a can of spray paint at Bunnings, or a knife at Woolies I'll get the third degree!

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[–] naevaTheRat@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 months ago

Yeah...

I am pro recreational target shooting, I think it's largely harmless and fun. So I am coming at this from a "owning a gun is a serious responsibility but one that should be allowed" angle and it's something that's shocked me ever since I did the training and registration.

I think a lot of things are about right, and we see this reflected in the very low levels of violence and particularly gun violence. I do think that some of the rules around mental health stuff just get people hiding problems for fear of losing their one social link/fun thing and that permit to aquire applications in the same calibre/activity should start getting more closely examined rather than less (currently the first is slow but future ones are a given). But the ammo thing is absolutely shockers.

Imo, we should be keeping logs of what we've fired/missfired attached to the events we go to and that should be in a central db that ammo shops see when selling to you. There will be some miscounting and there should be some understanding around that but it's not really onerous to go "well I walked in here with 200 round and out with 20". Sure people could still do fraud but it's about making it harder, preventing massive stockpiles, and usually when humans make up numbers it's extremely obvious when you do statistical analysis and if you look like that it's not ridiculous for the inspector to come round and say "ok mate, open the safe and lets see what's in there".

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[–] No1@aussie.zone 1 point 2 months ago*

If Pa is a safe and responsible person, he's got those locked up.

But I get what you're saying. Maybe crazy George or cash strapped Georgina get the keys/combination to the gun safe anyways.

And fwiw, I agree that less guns is better.

But still, it's the safe, responsible person that's handing them in. If they truly didn't need them, they would get rid of them responsibly anyways. Well, you'd hope.

Maybe it's just a reminder to Pa that he doesn't need them anymore, and that he doesn't want crazy George or Georgina to get a hold of them, so it's a good time to get rid of them 😄

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[–] im_fine_sandy@nord.pub 3 points 2 months ago

You're correct that restrictions only effect law-abiding people.

I think there's a few things going on.

Firstly, every gun has the potential to cause harm, so less guns is less potential. Halving the number of guns does not halve the risk of harm, but there's some reduction.

Secondly, I value living in a country where there just aren't that many guns around. We don't really have any kind of "gun culture" here. Sure some people feel the need to have a firearm to feel safe but they're a small minority.

Also, and this is related to both points, without buy backs the number of guns in the system will always increase, as old weapons are more likely to be stored rather than destroyed.

Finally, it reduces the opposition to the new laws. Suppose a decade ago you purchased a weapon that you use for legitimate vermin control but is now illegal. You're not particularly concerned about that but you still need a weapon for that purpose. At least this way you're given a chunk of the cost of a replacement.

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