The knee is jerking again.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Maybe you hate unions, but the changes Aussie unions led - 8 hours sleep, 8 hours play, 8 hours work led to the miggest productivity gains excluding technological improvements. I agree that unions went too far at times.. Norm Gallagher being one.. and of course, the CMFEU or CMFUE, or whatever they are called but generally speaking, absent of corruption, those countries that are unionised and respect progressive labour laws are far better places to live than the two I can think of that don't - Good ol' USA and Chy-nah! (trying a Donald Chump accent).  In fact, would you want to live in the far too many places that oppress their workforce (and the majority of their population)? Nah.. Australia ain't so bad after all and you can still make a decent living as an entrepreneur (sp?) like yourself, but don't have to have the workforce being supplimented by welfare.. like the UK, for example. And then you would complain about the higher taxes. 

 

In terms of hating Labor, that is cool. .but on balance, would you prefer SFM or Albo.. I guess form mining, Albo is a little less appealing, but if you were into rare earth stuff, maybe not so...

 

Kindest regards,

The Devil's Advocate (or Avocaat) , Esq.. with a NZ mate of mine (Wolfie has made himself so rare these days).

Edited Friday at 06:27 PM by Jerry_Atrick

[pmccarthy]

I grew up in the shadow of the Barrier Industrial Council. School bullies became union officials. It was oppressive, but now it all seems so tame compared with the deep corruption and underworld ties of some of our unions nationally and  here in Victoria.

[facthunter]

No one should be able to act BEYOND the LAW "Including" some bosses. Check out the countries where Unions are Not allowed. You wouldn't want to Live there. Collective representation is a RIGHT Under UN declaration.  Left unchecked Wages would be driven down by the Wealthy to increase Profits . Also corners get cut and safety standards Lowered. Nev

[old man emu]

Getting back to the oriinal idea of this thread - the governmental knee-jerk to firearm possession, it is becoming obvious that governments have been resting on the laurels of the original gun buy-back and the laws made in the late 1990s. That was thirty years ago. Are you still using the mobile brick phone you had back then? Are you still using dial-up ADSL? BY the same token, firearms have developed a lot in that time, but the classification of them for licensing purposes has not.

 

I was watching a video about the point of the failure of firearms classification to keep pace with firearm development. As with all laws and regulations, the devil is in the definition. Let's look at teh shotguns used at Bondi. How was it that they, in particular, are legal under the classification system?

 

The types of firearms permitted in Category A, the most commonly held licence, are: Air rifles; Rimfire rifles (other than self-loading); Shotguns (other than pump action, lever action or self-loading), and Shotgun/rimfire combinations.

 

The type of interest from Bondi is the Shotguns (other than pump action, lever action or self-loading. One thinks of the break action shotgun, single or double barrel. We see pump action shotguns in movies and news videos from the USA, so we are aware of how they are operated. Lever action shotguns operate in a similar way to what we see as rifles in cowboy movies. Self-loading means that a fresh round is loaded by using the recoil from the round fired before the round to be loaded.

 

However, firearm manufacturers developed another means of rapid reloading from a magazine using a loading lever similar to the idea of a bolt action rifle. This is the type of shotgun used at Bondi. As of that date, bolt action shotguns were Category A and legal to own. I believe that these have a 6-round magazine + 1 in the spout. To see what I'm talking about, watch this video from the 17:00 to 20:00 time marks.

 

 

 

 

The problem with any knee-jerk response and regulations made on the fly will have consequences that firstly will financially affect firearms owners and later affect lawful activities such as feral animal control. Feral animals such as pigs, foxes, deer etc are becoming a greater problem because landowners are denying permission to recreational hunters to shoot on their properties. And yes I know all about tthe horror stories of idiot shooters.

 

While it is good to hear politicians on both sides joining together to attack the problem, one must encourage them to keep at it, but not make flash in the pan decisions.

[facthunter]

Shot guns are meant to fire multiple Pellets ,called shot. Short range,  scatter and lots of soft tissue damage. Plain or sometimes choked barrel.

  Rifles have "rifling" A slow spiral of flutes to spin the Projectile for accuracy. Snipers rifles have heavier Barrels. Pistols don't have range  accuracy Barrels are too short. If the Point is filed off the projectile will do more damage. Some times called dum dums. These shotguns were firing solid material so presume they were for being more Lethal.   Nev

[old man emu]

I learned a bit about the changes to the Firearms Act that NSW Premier Minns is trying to make. If introduced then the administrative burden on Police will be terrible.

 

1. Licence period reduced from 5 years to 2.

The number of staff at the Fireams Registry was already overloaded trying to deal with paperwork before Bondi. I have recently experienced dealing with these Public Servants, and they are hardworking, helpful people. But by reducing the time between renewal if licneces and permits, their workload will markedly increase. Will the Government employ more staff? If it does, how long before the new employees gain the knowledge and experience in dealing with a very complicated set of rules?

 

2. Maximum ownership of 4 firearms.

OK, there is going to be a buy-back. During the 1996 buy-back the amount of extra work thrust onto police working at the front counteer of police station impacted the availability of police to be assigned the normal day-to-day police functions. Firearms were not simply hand over the counter and tossed into collection bins. Receipts had to be issued, and at the time these were handwritten. Maybe some sort of database could be developed to create digital records. There's the cost of developing the database that the government must meet. As well, other police were attached to warehousing duties where they were involved in picking up surrendered firearms from police stations across the State.

 

3. Valuation of surrendered firearms.

A big joke about the 1996 buyback was the profits made by gun owners when they surrenderd a firearm. Crappy .22 single shots were bringing big bucks. Once that became known, a lot of gun owners handed in crap and then spent the money received on upgrading their firearms. Where did the money come from? Taxpayers of course.

 

4. Additional work for oveworked General Duties police.

One of the firearms regulations is that gun owners must enable police to inspect firearms storage. I remember being assigned a list of firearm owners addresses and being told to go out and inspect their firearms and storage. This wasn't to be my sole assignment for the shift. I still had to attend to the normal calls for police service such as domestics, break-ins, shpolifters, drive-offs. Needless to say that I rarely got time to do a firearms inspection. 

 

It's all well and good to tighten the control of firearms. However, policing those controls has to be possible for the existing police staff to do within the number of personhours in a day while providing the a level of attention to the things that the Public expects police to attend to. It's easy for politicians to make grand statements and make rules, but a rule that cannot be policed with resources available both in staffing and finances is not worth putting on the books.

 

You will note that I have not spoken about the rule limiting the number of firearms owned to 4. That is a whole different can of worms. The political backlash could effect many local Members regardless of Party since the rule changes seem to be getting bipartisan support.

[onetrack]

Politicians take the easy way out all the time, and guy buybacks and a reduction in firearms ownership with simplistic rules is what happens every time.

 

The politicians need to develop a firearms ownership system that contains intense examination of people wanting firearms, their character, what is driving their "need" to have a firearm (or multiple firearms), their social behaviour history, their attitude towards women, and whether they suffer from extreme jealousy and view women as chattels, and any record of beliefs or religious views that contain specified hatreds.

 

Add in any record of depression involving suicidal thoughts and firearms, and stop all those who present with behavioural problems, from acquiring firearms, and that will solve a lot of the problem. Muslims who believe in jihad and fatwas need to be very closely monitored, and never given a licence for any firearm.

 

We already have laws forbidding criminals from gaining firearms licences, the final step is doubling the efforts to prevent possession of illegal firearms, and to prevent the illegal firearms trade. Double the sentences for being in possession of illegal firearms. Add possession of illegal firearms to the terrorism laws, treat illegal firearms possession like the terrorism it is.

The links between major violent crimes, the drug trade, and illegal firearms is already well known, take these people out of society for much longer periods.

[red750]

38 minutes ago, old man emu said:

It's all well and good to tighten the control of firearms. However, policing those controls has to be possible for the existing police staff

Make your concerns known to Minns an Albo. Rules are useless if they can't be enforced.

[old man emu]

21 minutes ago, onetrack said:

The links between major violent crimes, the drug trade, and illegal firearms is already well known,

True, but in those areas, firearms are "tools of trade". Criminals possess them for the purpose of carrying out their trade. Their preferred firearm is a pistol. Also they have more important things to do than get involved in racial politics.

 

Also you are concentrating on "illegal" firearms. Actually it is the possession of firearms in contravention of the Regulations that makes most firearma illegal, although there are firearms that are intrinsically illegal by definition within the Regulations.

 

Onetrack, widen your scope. You have honed in on people from the Middle East. Have you forgotten about White Supremists? Remember the mass shooting in New Zealand that was carried out by an Australian White Supremist?

[onetrack]

I know the White Supremicists are a problem - but they are reacting to the threat created by Islamic takeover of Western values. At the end of the day, the Middle East is where the vast majority of terrorism exists, and is promoted.

 

This bloke has some good points about the politicians constant creation of more burdens and restrictions on ordinary folk, simply because people in the positions tasked with keeping us safe under existing laws, aren't competent at their jobs.

 

 

 

[facthunter]

it's BS really.  The" Majority" wants a review as things have changed since the Last  Howard "thing"  He's only echoing LITTLE to Be PROUD of's Line. I don't think Albanese would get away with just tightening the existing rules. Nev