WA now has the 'toughest firearms laws' in the country. So who can keep their guns?
WA now has the 'toughest firearms laws' in the country. So who can keep their guns?
The WA government says its new firearms laws are the toughest in the country, “making explicit that the possession and use of a firearm is a privilege but not a right”, according to the police minister.
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Labor just lost 31,000 votes next election.
Might be water off a ducks back at the moment, but my experiences with gun owners to date, (apart from one gun owner), is they're uncomfortably fanatical about their guns. And belligerently oppose any demands they take higher precautions with the guns in their possession.
In short, they'll remember this, the laws are passed, but acceptance of them isn't.
Both main political parties have introduced sweeping gun reforms in my lifetime. Do they just flip back and forth over whoever introduced the latest set of laws?
This is a reason the Coalition have structured themselves in the way they have. As a mostly Liberal/National partnership, allied by a secret contract. It allows them to play to their respective bases, and as a unit, to constantly speak out of both sides of their mouth. Unfortunately the rise of the teals, and continuing denial of the climate reality have seriously damaged the Liberal/National electability in this area.
As @Mountaineer says, voter dissatisfaction on many specific points like this one is why a lot of minor parties have gained traction over the last quarter century.
Labor on the otherhand is supposed to represent workers, which is such a broad segment of society that they've never needed to form alliances to have the potential voter numbers to have a real chance of forming government before an election.
There are very few people, even in a dyed in community like shooting, that are so one eyed as to wholly pivot their vote on a single issue.
But it has lead directly to minor parties and independents gaining traction in regional areas (places where gun owners per capita are higher).
This is why groups like Shooters Fishers and Farmers sprung up.@Mountaineer @Nath yes the shooters fishers and farmers party.. who's main policies align with the Nationals but also want automatic rifles, no gun registration, game hunting in national parks (and taught at schools) and have always been pro nuclear power?
I didn't say they were great.
I'm saying that the current rise in minors is a symptom of voter dissatisfaction.These changes to WA law related to firearms are sold to the general public as being "tough on crime" or in some nebulous way "making communities safer", when realistically they won't impact criminals in any but the most tangential way.
What is going to happen is that someone who is a law abiding citizen, already subject to all sorts of regulatory compliance, is going to have decide which of their guns they can most easily forgo to get under an arbitrary cap.
If you don't like guns, lets use a metaphor and imagine you're a golfer who is now forced to choose whether they are going to forgo the putter, the sand wedge, the iron or the wood - because people who don't even play golf have decided you can only have 3.
@Mountaineer I grew up country and with guns.
Unless you're using them for work (e.g. farming), I'm pretty comfortable with people being limited to 3 tbh. 10 and 5 sounds pretty fair on a per person level.Oh - and it's Putter, my 1 wood and trusty 7 iron
Minor parties are fine in my book, if people would actually take the time to look at their policies instead of just read their name and guess from that.
The example they gave (shooters fishers farmers) also has policies that better represent views in the regional communities than nationals. I don't really agree with them, but they're more honest and better represent what they claim to than the nationals.
If you don't like guns, lets use a metaphor and imagine you're a golfer
Probably best to stick to guns without the metaphors.
Hard to find an apples to apples comparison. The damage a gun can do is uniquely unequal, while the products still having a societal purpose, to anything else i can think of.