-
- One year ago, Australian gun owners were forced to
surrender
for destruction 640,381 personal firearms (including
semi-automatic .22
rifles and shotguns.) This program cost the Aussie
government more than
$500 million, and produced heart-stopping photos
as veritable boneyards
full of Browning A-5 shotguns and other beloved
collectors' items were
surrendered up to be crushed by steamshovels in
a kind of steel-and-walnut
charnel field. Now, Keith Tidswell of
Australia's Sporting Shooters Association
reports the results are
in.
-
- (The
entire interview with Mr. Tidswell, conducted by
Ginny Simone, is
available as "Surprise, Surprise" in the "Archive
News" section of the web sight http://www.nralive.com)
-
- Drum roll, please.
Mr. Tidswell reports, based on a full
12 months of data:
Australia-wide, homicides up 3.2 percent.
-
- Australia-wide, assaults up 8.6
percent.
-
- Australia-wide, armed-robberies up 44 percent (yes, 44
percent.)
-
- In the state of Victoria, homicides-with-firearms are
up 300
percent.
-
- (Up until the government gun grab, figures for the previous
25
years had shown a steady decrease in homicides with firearms, as well
as armed robberies, Mr. Tidswell notes.)
-
- Although at the time of the
victim disarmament order,
the Aussie prime minister decreed
"Self-defense is not a reason for
owning a firearm," there
has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins
and assaults of the
elderly, now left with no means to protect themselves.
(One wonders
whether the prime minister's personal bodyguards gave up their
military-style weapons.)
-
- Mr. Tidswell reports: "Australian politicians are
on the spot and at a loss to explain how no improvement in 'safety' has
been observed after such monumental effort and expense to successfully
'rid society of guns.' "
-
- ______________________
-
- Meantime, efforts to
systematically remove such weapons
from the hands of the unruly,
untrustworthy commoners of England have been
underway at least as far
back as the end of World War II. (By 1946, most
of the valuable private
rifles donated by American NRA members in response
to an emergency call
after the 1940 military disaster at Dunkirk had been
rounded up from
the British "home defense" auxiliaries and either
dumped at
sea or else poured into new concrete foundations, where -- Londoners
confided to me on my last visit, in 1998 -- their steel outlines still
occasionally surfaceout of well-traveled concrete walkways.)
-
- Thus, the recent
effective outlawing of handguns for
civilian Britons after some nut
shot some schoolchildren in Dunblane, Scotland
(the government teacher
charged with their safety was, needless to say,
unarmed and thus
useless), was only the last straw.
-
- Given that the English peasant
populace has thus been
unarmed somewhat longer, are there any trends
developing there, to which
the Australians can themselves now look
forward?
-
- In an article by Helen Searls, titled "Trial by
Fury"
and scheduled for release in the October issue of Reason magazine,
we
learn:
-
- "In recent months the British government has unveiled
an
array of measures that promise to change the legal system profoundly.
This spring, British citizens learned that Tack Straw, the home secretary
(the rough equivalent of the American attorney general, though with more
political power), plans to abolish trial by jury for all but the most
serious
crimes. He is also considering lifting the rule against double
jeopardy,
which prevents a defendant from being tried more than once
for the same
crime, and is thinking of criminalizing offensive language
even when it
is spoken in the privacy of one's home. ...
-
- "These days,
defendants' rights are under attack.
The right to silence is now
severely qualified, trial by jury is under
review, legal aid is being
wiped out, defendants now have to disclose their
defense strategy to
the prosecution well in advance of trial, and in rape
cases the
cross-examination rights of defendants have been drastically
restricted. ..."
-
- But here in America, we're assured that those who would
cling to the right to bear arms are nothing but psychiatrically disturbed
Neanderthal throwbacks, clutching at the last talisman of 19th century
male privilege and power, a kind of combination surrogate penis and
security
blanket which they hope will magically protect them from the
stresses of
a changing world.
-
- Yeah, that must be it. There's
no (start ital)practical(end
ital) reason to cling to such an outmoded,
violent, and dangerous technology.
It's not as though, were we to give
up our guns, armed criminals would
take advantage of the situation to
commit more violent (start ital)crimes(end
ital) against us, or the
ever-beneficent government that brought us Ruby
Ridge and Waco would
take the opportunity to start eroding any of our (start
ital)other(end
ital) rights.
-
- Unless you're some kind of paranoid, black helicopter
conspiracy nut, where on earth would you get ideas like those?
-
- Vin Suprynowicz is
the assistant editorial page editor
of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers"
is available at
$21.95 plus $3 shipping through Mountain Media, P.O. Box
271122, Las
Vegas, Nev. 89127 or via 1-800-244-2224.
-
- ____________
-
- Vin Suprynowicz,
vin@lvrj.com
-
- "The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him
who
resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
-
- "The whole aim of
practical politics is to keep
the populace alarmed -- and thus
clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing
it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." --
H.L. Mencken
-
- _____________
-
- "The whole aim
of politics is to be impractical
and to alarm the public into disarming
themselves for purposes which can
be but imagined. For only stupidity
can be conceived from politics thus
far applied by our elected
officials." -- With honor and respect,
Jim Mortellaro
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