These guns and air rifles are the take – what authorities call a massive cache of private guns – in Moonford, Australia, a tiny farming community with virtually no crime. That is, there was no crime there before the Australian government created it with its intrusive “gun control” laws, taking advantage of the act of a madman and the emotional response pushed by their national media. Now all guns must be registered. All guns must be locked up. All guns are subject to inspection at virtually any time. When I considered a trip to Australia a few years ago, I learned that even spear guns and blowguns are subject to control. It’s chilling confirmation that gun registration is gun confiscation . . .

The “crime” in this case wouldn’t be illegal at all in the vast majority of the United States. It wouldn’t have even been a crime in much of Australia before 1996. Notice that in the photo (above) the “illegal guns” include pellet guns, single shot .22 rifles, antique shotguns and numerous bolt action hunting rifles.

The three men charged for amassing the collection – a 69 year old father and two sons, aged 46 and 42 – were licensed to have 71 firearms and all those guns are included in the 328-gun seizure. Because they are licensed to have guns, it is clear that they are not career criminals.  It is not as if they can shoot more than maybe two guns at once. But because the guns aren’t registered they are all subject to confiscation.

Australia has done what the American anti-freedom advocates want: to make any possession of any gun not registered to the state a crime. All the guns in the country are then subject to seizure by the state at any time the state either 1) finds them (for those not registered) or 2) desires to take them (those already registered). The seizure of the guns included 4.2 tons of ammunition.   Total value is likely to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. I wonder if Australian law will include confiscating the 2,000 acre farm.

There is no credible evidence that the strict gun control laws in Australia have decreased crime or suicides.  For every study that claims they have, there is at least as credible of a study to show they have not.  What is clear is the Prime Minister, John Howard, hated people having access to firearms, and that he would do anything to restrict and ban them.  From Wikipedia:

Until 1996, the federal government had little role in firearms law. Following the Port Arthur massacre, the Howard Government (1996–2007), with strong media and public support, introduced uniform gun laws with the cooperation of all the states, brought about through threats to Commonwealth funding arrangements (bold added). The then Prime Minister John Howard frequently referred to the USA to explain his opposition to civilian firearms ownership and use in Australia, stating that he did not want Australia to go “down the American path”.[53][54][55] In one interview on Sydney radio station 2GB he said, “We will find any means we can to further restrict them because I hate guns… ordinary citizens should not have weapons. We do not want the American disease imported into Australia.”

It is notable that the Federal Government used financial extortion to obtain the cooperation of the states.  It is remarkably similar to what we have seen in the United States.   Australia should serve as an object lesson to Americans.   Their media and government so despised guns in private hands that they were quite willing to use “all means” to bring about the nationalization of the gun laws Australia now suffers under.   The vast majority of Australians live in coastal cities and know only what they are told by the media about guns.  Their ignorance has cost their country cousins much time, treasure, and police intrusion into their lives.

Fortunately, the United States can learn from Australia’s experience.  We have far more activists who have developed strong networks to oppose these ill considered laws.  Our urban populations are learning the truth about citizen disarmament laws.  Australia’s developing network of activists was simply overwhelmed by the combined media and government forces that conspired against them.

©2013 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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50 COMMENTS

  2. Other reasons Australia’s crime rate is so low compared to America’s- Australia has no Black on Black or Brown on Brown crime, Australia … Oh why should I bother posting anything. I will just make me ‘sound like a racist’ just for even mentoning race/guns/crime. Anti-gunner have no interest in talking about personal responsibility, economic disparity, ethnic relations, etc.

    • Before you go into the race-related aspects (more economic than race, I suspect) of crime in America, and keep in mind that early in the last century the majority of the crime in the U.S. could be attributed to Italians and Jews, please cite the statistics showing Australian crime, absent the presence of guns in the culture, is less significant than in the U.S.

    • …. Sorry, but this isn’t exactly true.. Have you ever been to Australia? Aborigines are indeed the victims and perpetrators of numerous hate crimes.. At least as I remember from when I was there numerous times in the 90s.

    • What makes you sound like a racist is the implication that the crime is inherent in the skin color, and not the socioeconomic environment such crimes occur in. Any color of skin that finds itself in that culture/social structure would exhibit the same characteristics. It is only a consequence of history, and not genetic predisposition, that many “Black” or “Brown” people, find themselves in this circumstance. This is evidenced by the many White and non-Hispanic people who find themselves in the same environment committing the same crimes, as well and the many non-whites in different socioeconomic circumstances that don’t.

      When you start harping on the presumably rampant middle-class, or affluent “black on black” or “brown on brown” crime epidemics, then you might have a chance of not sounding like a rascist. Good luck.

      • “It is only a consequence of history, and not genetic predisposition, that many “Black” or “Brown” people, find themselves in this circumstance.”

        It may have started out that way, but it has evolved into a consequence of culture. Is it racist to say that there is a segment of black culture based on violence? The “gangsta” image is a multi-generational aspect of black culture.

        I don’t think anyone’s arguing that black people are violent because they’re black. But because they’re black they are sold a culture of violence, and enough of them buy into it that it’s not racist to say that we have a racial problem with violence.

        • I think it is more accurately stated that any population that feels disenfranchised – and this is not uncommon in the more poorer immigrant groups – is susceptible to a culture involving gangs and crime. This was true with Italians, Jews, Irish, Scottish, Mexicans, and blacks (mass movements from rural America into the cities probably qualifies as “immigration” in this perspective). This was as true in the 19th century as it is now. History just going around and around and around…

    • I used to live in OZ, any web search of Aussie news stories from the 1980’s will reveal loads of data on B-on-B crime

  3. “We will find any means we can to further restrict them because I hate guns… ordinary citizens should not have weapons. We do not want the American disease imported into Australia.”

    This sent a chill down my spine. But at least he was freaking honest about it.

  6. Aha ha hah ha haha!! That’s the Aussies for you. Always taking things too far, and blaming the wrong people for things they want to control. We in New Zealand also had an AK47 mass shooting (less victims than Port Arthur) but our Police did a good job of ensuring no repetitions with the minimum impact on legal gun owners. There is a separate category for military style weapons, involving heavier safes and greater scrutiny, but ordinary gun owners can have semi automatics (15 round for rimfire, 5 round for centrefire), and individual firearms are not registered, just the owners. This may sound like heresy to American gun owners, but we have a much greater choice than the Australians. Mind you, it has taken a decade or more for all Aussies to get the message, hence the recent seizure. We can even use silencers pretty much anywhere (I think), so in some ways we are better off than septics (septic tanks = yanks in Aussie rhyming slang). All our mammals are introduced, and many have flourished to pest proportions, as there are no predators other than human hunters. So shooting possums, rabbits and deer (in season) is actually encouraged.

    • Sounds a lot like Canada, now that they Torys killed the long gun registry. “Restricted” weapons are pistols and most semi-auto military pattern-ish weapons, but the definitions have not been updated so the Tavor (availible in Canada for the last 8 or so years), is not a restricted weapon. Also, you can’t hunt with restricted weapons.

      One cool thing is that, if you have your permit on file with your firearms dealer, non-restricted weapons can be shipped to your door. You gotta admit it would be cool to have the mailman drop off your new Tavor or M1A. With five round mag.

      • Pre-1977 Simpsons Sears and Eatons catalogues had mail order guns. Before 1977, you didn’t need a background check to buy a gun, and even machine guns were legal. (Handguns were registered since 1934.) But Trudeau’s government introduced the Firearms Acquisition Certificate system in 1977, as well as a requirement for ‘Authorizations To Transport’ Restricted firearms–i.e., a permission slip, to take handguns and the like to a particular place (e.g., the shooting range). And Chretien’s Firearms Act introduced a license for merely POSSESSING firearms, something that the Conservative government refuses to repeal. Prohibiteds are mainly only legal for film property companies and the like. Non-restricteds and restricteds are still commonly shipped via the posts or courier, though. Are intrastate courier deliveries not legal in the U.S.? I could see someone arguing that as a Tenth Amendment issue.

  7. And Howard was always a bit of a c*nt, nobody liked him in NZ. Hoplophobes have no business being in Government, where they might be called upon to order the use of arms in their country’s defense. People always fear what they don’t know – it should be a requirement of any aspiring leader of a country to spend some time in the armed forces. Why would any knowledgeable citizen vote for any idiot who espoused the disarmament of the said citizens? Our modern democaracies have degenerated because they ruled by lawyers and accountants instead of warriors.

  8. It might be time to start paying Dean for his contributions to this site. Or at least some more aggressive hyper linking.

  9. This kind of Federal extortion would be unthinkable in Canada and, I suspect, in the United States. When Chretien passed the Firearms Act, Provinces like Alberta refused to enforce it. But the system in Australia is an emasculated federalism, where the states do not even have revenue-collection powers. And Australia is slipping into Singapore-style ‘authoritarian democracy’ in other ways:

    http://www.internetblackout.com.au/

  10. I still remember the day my wife got the call that she had been excepted into a teaching program and that we were moving to the US, firearms freedom here I come, 14 years later + 20K and we are both US citizens, still have all the paperwork it took for me to purchas a HK UPS-C to carry on duty in Australia. Great place to visit not so great a place for people of the gun.

  11. “..,,We do not want the American disease imported into Australia.”

    Fnck John Howard. Australia and I will never meet.

  12. Read that article a few days ago. There was a few full-autos there, including full-auto FN-FAL (known as SLR here)variant with heavier barrel. The retard(s) who wrote the article referred to it as “hyper-powered”. Wonder what they’ll call .50 BMG…

  13. I wonder if John Howard was aware of who kept Australia from becoming a part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as well as the means used to do so.

    • I wonder if Australian school children are taught that the spreading Japanese Empire was defeated by “friendly persuasion”. Guns and those Yankee Neanderthals had nothing to do with it. (bitter sarcasm ended)

  14. There’s lot of dingo’s gonna feel safe tonight .Thank God all those HUNTING RIFLES are off the streets.Boy that will reduce gun crime by at least, let’s see; .00%

    • Well, presumably Australian fudds didn’t stand up for other gun owners, so when the State came for their guns there was nobody to stand up for them.

      Heed this lesson well, fudds.

    • They didn’t then and won’t now, Australia does not have a Bill of Rights and the Australian Constitution is just a piece of paper, it means nothing, Australian gun owners had the opportunity to stop Howard in 1996 when the bill banning so many firearms was being pushed but they didn’t do or want to do what needed to be done.

      • Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the 1982 version of your Bill of Rights) does not have a ‘right to bear arms’ paragraph, but the English Bill of Rights (still part of the body of Canada’s constitutional law, and the archetype of your Bill of Rights) does. Even in extreme cases, like the Basil Parasiris case, the courts have upheld things like armed self defense. Most of the Fudds bitterly protested the Firearms Act (licensing, registration) here, and even some non-gun owners got alarmed at the confiscations in High River this summer. Most of the alarm over that incident was the Mounties’ gross violation of Section Eight of the Charter (equivalent to your Fourth Amendment). But Australia seems to be importing some of the authoritarian tendencies of Asian countries (Howard considers Australia an ‘Asian’ country), like Singapore and China. Here, we seem to slowly be pulling ourselves away from this model, but all of Australia’s main parties advocate going the opposite direction. And Britain became a soft corporatist state long ago, beginning especially under the sainted Iron Lady. And, again, you will note that the federal system in Australia is very weak, and the UK is really a unitarist state. There is no room for Alberta, Montana, or other Provincial/State pushback against Federal power.

  16. Tyrants always appear as “Reasonable Men, Requesting Reasonable Repression”
    As much as I love the Kiwis they are succumbing to the Saul Alinsky play book.
    The ever changing and elastic ‘Laws’ that are only applied to those who oppose the statists enure an end to All Liberty

    • Yes a lot did this, but one can’t use or enjoy ones firearms when they are a few feet under the dirt. Australia is lost, they will never get their firearms freedoms back…….. never, their line in the sand was crossed in 1996 and they did nothing of substance to defend it.

  19. THIS is what Obama wants as he said we should look to the Australian and English way of Gun control.Isn’t that what the British tried to do to us in 1776?Didn’t they lose?Weren’t they BEGGING US(theU.S.) for GUNS when Nazi Germany was threatening them? Didn’t FDR ask the NRA to organize and supply the Brits firearms for their civilian armament program during WW2? Should we ever listen to these Anti – ignorant s who ignore history,ignore facts,Ignore the 2ND Amendment and the Constitution ? Would have you unarmed in a heartbeat, consider gun owners extremists,radicals,would say I’m sorry as you and he are standing naked over a burial pit just before being shot in the head ( as was done in WW2 by the Nazi’s after they disarmed their citizens).
    Ya know……I don’t think so.I think I’ll just keep opposing the “Bloom-Steins like……FOREVER( is that too long?) Ya that’s what I’m going to do!
    I’ve been to Australia,and to the ONLY gun store in Brisbane,I met THE promoter of the ONLY gunshow in Brisbane and surrounding area’s,we had dinner.——– Crime is at an all time high,They have a “turn in your guns and we won’t arrest you” day.I was in the gun store for two hours and 80 guns were turned in.The store pays them peanuts and sells the guns in the United States for a fortune.
    They will Never get their Gun Rights back! Nor will we if we let MAIG,MDA and other STUPID liberal groups get their way.
    I’ve said it before NO COMMON GROUND with anti’s! We ,not They have the Constitutional RIGHTS ! THEY want to trash the 2ND Amendment,not discuss it or have “Common Sense” gun laws .These clueless BOZO’S need to be opposed at every rally,bill passing,court case,proposal,News Articles and any where they rear their ugly heads.
    We need to support EVERY Pro-gun group,organization,stores etc.
    Get Rid of The Liberals as they tout Repeal of the 2nd Amendment I.e. treason!

  20. Some evil “Big Gov” commie clown shows up on my porch demanding a (show me your papers, Jew) inspection, they will/MUST receive (for God and Country) some type of heavy metal.

    • While I agree with the disdain of big government, I have to wonder why you need to climb on a pile of six million dead Jewish people to try and plant a flag. It’s as if someone stubbing a toe here equates to the holocaust. Disarmament is not genocide, though it may enable it, and the hyperbole is silly.

      • I am not pointing out the Holocaust (you did), although nightmare endings such as that were partly due to creepy statist tactics like the “show me your papers” Jewish persecution, which I WAS illustrating.

  21. Disarmament is not genocide,though it may enable it ? And the hyperbole is silly?
    Why don’t you ask the six million Jews how they feel about that?Better yet ask their survivors since it’s so funny!Gee ya know that was soooo long ago let’s see ,oh yah waaaay back 70 years ago.My parents were alive,my grandparents were alive,my great grandparents were alive .Oh here ya go,myfatherinlaw was in several concentration camps,let’s see what’s the famous one that starts with an’A’…hmmm ge I can’t remember cause it was sooo long ago,ya he was there.and so was his family and everybody he knew,their still there.He made it out alive,but most who did died shortly later cause of complications( you know experiments and such ,by the nice Doctors)
    You know maybe we should register and get rid of our guns look how we’ll it worked for Hitler and Stalin.Of course that will never happen here cause our Government is so Honest and Caring.And those forefathers who fought and died to create this country,they didn’t know anything about firearms,They just put the ,count em,123456789′ 2ND,not the third plus but the 2nd Amendment in the Constitution cause they were drinking ,beer ,rum,and wine and were really just kidding around.
    You should go watch the Movie” The Patriot” again,with Mel Gibson,it’s entertaining and loosely based on real events,but depicts tyranny and arrogance of the British at the time.You should also realize ,let me say this correctly…OK I’m ready; Firearms in We The People’s Hands Means Freedom” and that was understood way before we were born.And these anti- eggheads don’t get that ,we’ll then I feel sorry for them ,but they ,you ,nobody has the right to step on our Constitutional and Inaliable RIGHT to Keep and Bear Arms.NOBODY! Sounds Corny? maybe to you ,it’s a truth we live by.
    So if you want to be led to the slaughter,Cause that’s what it’s all about,isn’t it?(power) be my guest! ” As they said in days of old…KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY,BOYS!
    ( I know you think I’m way off base,hey it’s a free country’gee how did that happen!Hmmm?)

  22. It’s funny how what was well known in 1689 (i.e. the English Bill of Rights that granted universal armed self defense) was forgotten a few centuries later, as though human nature has made some fundamental change, and there is no longer any need to provide for one’s own defense in extremis. The British Commonwealth was disregarded by Britain after she joined the European Common Market (our exports suddenly had to find other markets), and yet our NZ leaders blindly followed the Westminster disarmament program. You Americans should be very proud of your Founding Fathers and their wise Constitutional provisions. If only we had the same. Mind you, I wouldn’t like your level of violent crime.

    • Excepting ,England and Australia’s violent crime level is higher per capita than the US,it’s just not as much gun related,It’s HAMMER related and other weapons.OUR ‘walk quietly and carry a big stick’ if you will are firearms, the British colonies self protection would be……………?

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