A LIVING HISTORY BLOG.

18TH CENTURY LIVING HISTORY IN AUSTRALIA.

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Firearms Regulations, Don't Care or Just Ignorant?

If you were worried about gun crime in Australia, which would you rather see people using, this


Or this


Single shot flintlock muzzle-loading guns are classed along with breechloading firearms, same licence, same restrictions. I don't know if the firearms advisory committee simply don't give a damn or if they are just ignorant. But let's face it, it has to be one or the other. The differences between the two firearms systems are so blatantly obvious. One would think that the government would have enough common sence to allow the public to own & use flintlock pistols & long arms over modern firearms. I for one would gladly swop my modern guns for firelock muzzleloaders. But no, they have to make it hard on themselves & everyone else. Okay, I will get off my soap box, but will leave you with a quote from Terry Pratchett in his Disc World book:

Swing, though, started in the wrong place. He didn't look around, and watch and learn, and then say. This is how people are, how do we deal with it?' No, he sat and thought: This is how the people ought to be, how do we change them?' And that was a good enough thought for a priest but not for a copper because Swing's patient, pedantic way of operating had turned policing on its head.



There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that. Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate.


Vimes wondered if he'd sat up in bed in the middle of the night and hugged himself when he'd dreamed that one up. Confiscate all weapons, and crime would go down. It made sense. It would have worked, too, if only there had been enough coppers - say, three per citizen.


Amazingly, quite a few weapons were handed in. The flaw though, was one that had somehow managed to escape Swing' and it was this: criminals don't obey the law. It's more or less a requirement for the job. They had no particular interest in making the streets safer for anyone except themselves. And they couldn't believe what was happening. It was like Hogswatch every day.

3 comments:

Gorges Smythe said...

It's NEVER been about crime; that's just their excuse.

elmo iscariot said...

One would think that the government would have enough common sence to allow the public to own & use flintlock pistols & long arms over modern firearms.

Let's be realistic: if "common sense" had anything to do with it, nobody would still consider gun control as a potential remedy for social ills. They'd look at the effect on murder rates everywhere gun control is tightened or loosened, see that it's statistically nil, and say "well, I guess that was a failed experiment; let's try something else".

That anybody ever talks about "gun crime"--and especially bald comparisons of "gun crime" rates between arbitrary cultures with far greater differences than just their gun laws--rather than caring about how many people are actually hurt and killed shows right off the bat that gun control is more about social signalling and tribal taboo enforcement than about public safety. Your government is the kind of people who care about "gun crime", and they feel the need to do things that signal that concern to other people who care about gun crime, to reaffirm their social connection. And the disapproved-of tribe across the ocean likes handguns, so to signal their disapproval, they need to make their own tribe's handgun proscription more orthodox.

Handguns are haram, you understand. When you talk about how deadly a given one isn't, you're missing the point. ;)

Keith said...

Good feedback from you both, thank you. Much appreciated.
Regards, Keith.