Even before the Sydney siege reached its bloody conclusion, we predicted that Australian antis would find a way to use the attack as an anti-gun talking point. This despite the fact that anyone in their right mind wouldn’t want to be unarmed in a cafe when a shotgun-wielding jihadi strolled in on a suicide mission. And by “right mind” I mean anyone who understands that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. As happened here, eventually. As it always does – unless the bad guy tops himself (with a gun, usually). Anyone who “gets” the simple fact that the sooner someone, anyone, eliminates a lethal threat. the safer everyone will be. And (almost done) the more armed someones there are about, the less likely an attack and the faster its resolution. Australian antis don’t see it that way . . .
Many people are writing to me rejoicing that there is a hostage situation in Sydney. That they are somehow happy that it’s not in America and it will in some way prove that them having guns is a good thing.
There will always be guns in every country, what I “joke” about is gun control. Let’s look at the facts. Some religious nut goes into a cafe in Sydney and holds some people hostage with a shotgun (which is legal to own in Australia if you are a farmer).
I don’t now what the end result of this stand off will be, but I do know this, he will only shoot that shotgun once before the police will be in there.
This is a piss weak terrorist at best.
If this happened in the USA the guy would have semi automatic weapons and hand guns that could easily kill many people in a short period of time.
It seems to me that gun control in Australia is working better than ever.
That’s Aussie-born, LA-based comedian Jim Jefferies’ response to the incident on Facebook. I doubt that no one – not one person – wrote to Jefferies “rejoicing” about the hostage situation. Anyway, the fact that Man Haron Monis didn’t have a semi-automatic rifle or handguns doesn’t mean that Australian gun control minimized the attack by making it harder to obtain same. In other words, Monis could have obtained these weapons if he’d wanted to. Yes, even in Australia.
The Australian Crime Commission (ACC) conducted an investigation into illegal firearms in 2012 and has presented some of the unclassified findings in its submission to the Senate inquiry (pdf).
The ACC estimated there were over 250,000 rifles and shotguns and 10,000 handguns in the illicit market in 2012.
That may not seem like a lot of illegally owned rifles for a country of 23 million inhabitants, but it’s enough to keep the criminals in business. Back in August of 2013, ballinaadvocate.com.au reported that New South Wales police confiscated over 9,000 guns and charged 3,352 people with firearms offenses during a 12-month period. Believing that Monis’ firearms options were limited by Australian gun laws is seriously, dangerously delusional.
As is the belief that an attacker armed with “just” a shotgun doesn’t pose a threat of mass casualties. Three words: Washington Navy Yard, where spree killer Aaron Alexis murdered twelve people with a shotgun and injured three others.
What is undeniable: Australia’s s gun control laws have disarmed the general populace. The nation founded by convicts is now solidly perhaps even rabidly anti-gun. I mean, what are we to make of this (via fusion.net)?
Philip Alpers, a professor at the Sydney University School of Public Health, said that’s not likely to change. He said most Australians would still agree with Howard, the conservative former prime minister who instituted the gun laws.
“There are only a handful of Australians who might suggest that having more guns inside that café would have made the situation less dangerous,” Alpers said. He added that if anyone suggested more guns were the answer, “he’d be howled down and become a laughingstock across the country.”
To which Proverbs has a reply: “If a wise man has an argument with a fool, the fool only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet.” No joke.
Clean your own house, mates.
Anyone who thinks a shotgun is “less dangerous” than an AR or a handgun is a straight up moron.
Yes and the assumption that “he would fire once and the police would be there”… Wow I think I’m past feeling bad for that type of mentality. It really has gotten to the point where I feel just disgusted. How hard is it to realize that the thin layer of safety we have in this world is covering a brutal core. The police are like seat belts, they can and do save the day but there isn’t much they can do for accident avoidance and they can’t work miracles. A bad guy with a gun is nothing in a society of armed individuals. Sadly there are not enough armed citizens even stateside.
Exactly, I’m feeling disgusted as well. Essentially aren’t they admitting the lives of the victims who are shot by people who aren’t armed with semi-automatics and handguns are somehow less valid than those who are killed by more advanced weapons?
Everyone deserves a chance to defend themselves. Taking away the ability of the individual to protect themselves is inexcusable. I bet the hostages in that cafe wished they had guns, I bet they wished they had some sort of method to extricate themselves from that position of utter helplessness.
“I bet the hostages in that cafe wished they had guns”
We covered this yesterday, and the answer is NO they probably dont/didnt. They probably wish that shotguns were illegal, and those that survived will probably form a victims advocacy group and push for legislation making even pump shotguns illegal.
Imperial societies, or societies that were conquered by imperialism have an ingrained sense of dependency that is woven into the fiber of their society. The concept of self sufficiency is limited to small things they have individual control over. Something so dangerous as self defense or gun ownership, in their minds, is best left to the State. So again, no the last thing going through the minds of those helpless people smeared up against the windows of that cafe was “how would this be different if I or someone in here had a gun.” As my coworker from Sydney once said, “everyone was mad when they went for the ban in 96, but then they just found something else to do and spend their money on when they didn’t have guns anymore” That right there is the difference between a society born out of the empire and a colony that fought their way out. To them its a privilege not a right.
@Tex300BLK
My high school US History teacher relayed a story that I think exemplifies the situation:
She was with a few Western European diplomats and her American husband, who worked for the State Department, at a sidewalk restaurant in northern Virginia, when a passing car hit a table. The customers (probably almost all Americans) began spontaneously organizing to summon ambulances, get people to safety, and help those injured in the collision. The visiting Europeans expressed shock afterwards that the customers of the cafe began to act without having some sort of authority figure show up and tell them what to do. They said that in Europe, people wouldn’t have acted that way.
Aussies used to have a strong independent streak, like Americans, but now they’re much more like Europeans.
@Tex300BLK:
“Imperial societies, or societies that were conquered by imperialism have an ingrained sense of dependency that is woven into the fiber of their society.”
Respectfully, this is nonsense. The Englishmen and Scotsmen who conquered India, Africa and for that matter Australia would have know exactly what to do with this Islamist thug. They would be baffled as to why their cousins and children would want to be disarmed in the face of danger, or hold an enemy flag up in a window. What you are looking at is the fruit of Progressivism: centuries of lies and dishonor result in a cowed and cowardly populace.
I’ll bet the manager wanted a gun. And I’ll bet that the men’s men who settled his country and conquered that continent would have loved to have had a pint or shared a settlement with such a one. RIP.
Tex300BLK: Pump shotguns have been illegal in OZ for going on 20 years now. Jeffries’s whole argument is destroyed by this fact, and also the fact that he clearly got off several more shots before and during the police assault, since 2 hostages were killed and something like another 4 and a police officer injured.
JohnM: Haven’t the imperialists and adventurers of Europe’s past generally been villified by today’s European society? they all want to think they’re ‘better than that’ now.
From what I’ve seen most of the guns in yak hands are status symbols. they generally wouldn’t dare actually use them. Japanese courts are extremely harsh (something like a 99% conviction rate) as presumption of innocence isn’t a thing, and they prosecute gun crimes extremely aggressively.
@Sian: Imperialists and adventurers are loathed in right-thinking European society. It turns out that decolonization works in both directions.
Correct- its not what type of weapon you have, its what you do with it that counts.
With a load of large buck shot. Even a single shot shotgun can take out 3-4 people in a single trigger pull.
I have not yet heard if the bad guy killed the hostages or if the police got ’em with “friendly fire” when they stormed in the store.
And we’ll never know, as if they shot them themselves, they’ll cover up the fact.
the gunman shot one hostage thus initiating the raid and the other victim died of an apparent heart attack.
But if he had an AR-15 ALL the hostages would have died of a heart attack.
Let’s not let this one deranged comic speak for an entire continent. There are many who are unhappy in Australia about their Natural Rights being stomped upon.
+1. And now I know thats one comdian I wont bother watching. He’s probably like Pierced Organ, reviled in his home, had fo come to the US to run his self-hating laugh lines while disrespecting his hosts.
Only have 3 words for those that think shotguns can’t be used in mass shootings and those are:
Washington Navy Yard
It’s also sad that Jeffries’ only take on access to handguns and rifles is that the criminal would have better weapons…NOTHING about the hostages could have been armed instead.
And thus is the reason the anti’s coined the term “police-style shotgun”.
Good point. Added it to the text. Thanks!
Don’t forget the fact that this guy was out on bail and thus not able to possess any firearm for any reason. So, the fact that he had a shotgun and not something else, is moot at best, if not downright obfuscation.
And the Columbine high school shooters had shotguns, among other guns. I believe one was a double barrel shotgun.
And the Aurora shooter.
I heard of one. Apparently the bad guy was dozing off and the manager of the café tried to take the shotgun, and was killed for it, which apparently precipitated the police assault. Would have been nice if that manager had an LC9 in his pocket, siege would have been nearly 17 hours shorter and he would still be alive. Under arrest for having that nasty gun, perhaps, but alive.
“Would have been nice if that manager had an LC9 in his pocket, siege would have been nearly 17 hours shorter and he would still be alive. “
Maybe. Maybe not.
At least he would have had a chance. That’s what “evening the odds” kind of means, which is what the anti’s either don’t get (I think they do) or ignore for political reasons.
Maybe, maybe not. Some mass-shootings in the US were worse. Some were not. Some incidents that might have become mass-shootings were stopped by armed citizens (sometimes off-duty cops, sometimes not).
So if we’re going to bring “could” into this, perhaps we should do it equally.
Worse in the US? Maybe, but not because of the bad guy’s choice of weapons. The police here have a habit of killing the hostages.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/calif-mom-hostage-killed-police-chief-article-1.1899907
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/20/18378370-cop-in-ny-shooting-that-left-hostage-dead-faced-split-second-decisions
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/los-angeles-police-admit-accidentally-killing-tosh-0-production-assistant/
http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=96381
Lesson to be learned –
Tool up and refuse to be a hostage.
If it was in America it would have been worse- for the hostage taker/a-hole. Especially in my proud state of AZ. We’re armed pretty well here.
I would continue to point out that when a durka durka goes on a rampage outside a “gun free” zone in the US, he gets ventilated before the police even show up. Quod Erat Demonstrandum, exact same situation, much better and more rapid outcome.
“Q.E.D.”
There we go with that pesky “logic” thing again.
r Selected mice don’t need logic. They have self-superiority and emotional bleating on their side.
The logic system of “Liberal-us Progress-EVIL-us” is called “Liber-Logic”.
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No Human has, as yet, been able to understand it.
Some researchers doubt that it is decipherable.
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You really have to wonder just how damn STUPID these people are. They’re so obsessed with the fact we have firearms liberty that they can’t even ponder that terrorist can use ANYTHING to kill. Has the Boston Bombing slipped that far out of the public member already? How about those two guys that decapitated a British Solider on the STREET a few years back? Japanese subway gas attack? Well that was more than 5 Facebook message ago, so I’d image he can’t remember it.
All of the things you said, all day long.
The Japanese subway gas attack is an excellent example. The entire country might have two or three guns in it outside government control.
Not so. There might be only a few military-type RIFLES outside of government control in Japan, but there are plenty of handguns and SMGs in the hands of the yakuza. From what I understand, most of them are Russian imports.
And hunting shotguns are legal, though IIRC they usually require a hunting license in order to own (and those licenses are EXPENSIVE). And I’m pretty sure it’s break-action shotguns only. And I think duck-shot only.
I have no idea about black-powder weapons.
“there are plenty of handguns and SMGs in the hands of the yakuza.”
What?! Doesn’t the Yakuza know that guns are banned in Japan?! Stupid criminals not following laws and whatnot.
Interesting thing that. The Yakuza are very well tooled-up. But they almost never use guns on each other, let alone anyone outside the org.
The Yakuza is insinuated into government and business to a depth and breadth the Mafia could never dream of. So, there is an “understanding”. The police know full well the Yakuza are heavily armed, and as long as nobody actually uses said guns (at least in ways that will make the news), the police leave it be. However, if for some reason deliberate or not, gunplay ensues, there will be a warning call, and there will be a raid. There will be sacrificial soldiers, and some firearms presented as penance.
It’s a cultural thing.
From what I’ve seen most of the guns in yak hands are status symbols. they generally wouldn’t dare actually use them. Japanese courts are extremely harsh (something like a 99% conviction rate) as presumption of innocence isn’t a thing, and they prosecute gun crimes extremely aggressively.
” They’re so obsessed with the fact we have firearms liberty that they can’t even ponder that terrorist can use ANYTHING to kill.”
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It is the woeful wail of Subjects!
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Wow, Jim Jeffries is another jerkoff with an annoying accent telling Americans how stupid they are. It just seems ridiculous that he’s relieved by the sight of violence in his home country for little other reason than it didn’t show guns in a positive way, but what can you really expect?: Dude’s obviously drank the government sanctioned Kool-Aid and just mindlessly parrots “Gunz er EEVILL!!!!”.
Where were all those ozzie rugby lovers that have been saying real men don’t need guns, just their fists, when this siege was happening? Why didn’t they just mob in there and beat the crap out of the jihadi? Why? Gun, that’s why. The bad guy had one and they didn’t.
Where were they? Where every other big talking doucheb@g would be in that situation: pissing himself in the corner.
That was my first reaction as the ‘siege’ was ongoing: Somebody’s likely to die. Why no “distract-then-beat-down” bit? I thought all Aussies were buff for the beach and good (well, the men) for a beer-fueled bar brawl “just for sport, mate.” Apparently that cultural meme is out-of-date?
Let’s be frank: From Rod Laver to Nicole Kidman, Aussies settle in the U.S. because Australia just has too damned many venomous snakes and spiders.
As a commenter above said, I’d like to know if the police killed the hostages. From the reticence of the “authorities” and the lack of thanks to them from Lindt chocolates, I’d say that is a distinct possibility
It appears that one of the two (the Lindt manager) was killed by the terrorist, which triggered the intervention by the local SWAT team. The other is said to have died of a heart attack.
No word about injuries caused by the flashbang grenade thrown at the hostages and the SWAT team … by one of the SWAT team members.
==============/ Keith DeHavelle
I am a bottom line kind of guy so what is the bottom line in this incident? It is that you cannot rely on the police to protect you. It isn’t their job. The people who escaped did so on their own. The two people who didn’t/couldn’t escape died on their own and the police moved in after the fact and didn’t execute effectively. The police fulfilled their role of closing the breach of peace but it didn’t help the two people who died. This is why some people choose to carry a gun even though the chances of needing it are quite slim unless you live in a place like Detroit. However, slim doe not mean none and it is better to have the capability of armed self defense and not need it than not have it if and when you do need it.
+10,000 on all points.
You and I might have some fun batting around some points of ideology (for discussion and fun debate purposes), but this post is “all of it” in a nutshell.
Well said.
I’d far rather die in the attempt to eliminate a rouge shooter, to save my life. It’s just not in my nature to shake like a Chihuahua in fear, mark me as willing to go down fighting.
I had an incident with one of those Rugby jerks years ago. His mates had told him “American birds are easy” His approach ended up in a wrestling, rolling off the sofa, breaking a coffee table, ended with me biting his lower lip for him to understand not all American women are easy, was biting risky? Hell yes, but I rather take a risk than be a victim. I’m older now, carry a pocket LCR .38 & Mace
Australian and New Zealand women have been shown to be among the most promiscuous in the world according to a study I tripped over once.
my aunt harriet used to apply her rouge with a compact. texas is so bad assed.
Hold on! They made terrorism more illegaler!
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/world/asia/sydney-australia-hostages-anti-terrorism-measures.html
Oh, but the laws didn’t work. What you said, then, TDI.
That really does sum it up. For those disinclined to firearm use, though, pepper spray is actually quite good. I’ve had to use it twice (no gun zone) in a few decades (a fog/mist type, Fox) and it worked like gangbusters. But even that is a prohibited weapon, illegal, in Australia, with a fine of $8,000 or 2 years in stir.
So they’re not just anti-gun in Aulstralia, they’re anti-self defense in general? Sad day when your own government tells you that you can’t and/or shouldn’t defend yourself.
In other words, they’ve managed to turn themselves from Britons most hardened criminals into mamby-pamby lambs ready for shearing!
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If we’re not careful here in the U.S. we’ll be joining them in the shearing sheds.
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What the comedian fails to realize is that in some parts of America, there wouldnt be a hostage situation to begin with- the guy would have been ventilated by an armed staff member or customer, and there wouldnt even be a peep in the media on the matter.
Well said – I had dinner out last night with a dozen aussies (I’m a Yank) and mentioned the concept of an armed citizen stopping the situation in a timely manner – there was stunned silence for a few moments and the dinner guests looked at me like I was from Mars.
One spoke saying “no one should ever have a right to carry a concealed weapon”. Sheep mentality down here by many that will likely never change.
One spoke saying “no one should ever have a right to carry a concealed weapon”.
Look them in the eye and say “Tell that to the Wolf.”
Shooters Café in Rifle, Colorado!
The real terrorists are probably laughing at this kind of thinking. The terrorists evil little brains are already contemplating how easy it is to steal firearms from those who have them. Considering places like Australia put easily identifiable uniforms on those who have them, it makes their search fairly easy. I can see people failing to imagine terrorist flying planes into buildings, but failing to imagine a terrorist injuring or killing a police officer or military member for their firearm is just plain stupid. After the Boston bombing, the two bad guys ambushed and killed a police officer in order to take his gun. If it weren’t for a level 4 retention holster that they could not figure how to operate, they would have succeeded.
I just had to add to my post. Here is the scenario. One terrorist takes a building full of hostages in a small, rural town. This quickly overwhelms the local small town police department of 2 or 3 officers, so they request assistance from the Sheriff’s department and nearby cities, which send their nearby deputies and officers to the scene. A second terrorist goes to work on a town that is 30 minutes or so away. With no police to respond to the second event, you can imagine what happens.
Criminals promote civilian disarmament! The People running around willy-nilly are bad for business.
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I expect OSHA will have standards for that soon.
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Correction: the navy yard shooter killed at least one of the 12 with the handgun he took off of the security guard. Also one of the 3 injured was from the handgun as well.
These horrible situations always lead to stronger calls from the gun control crowds for the disarming of law abiding citizens that choose to personally protect themselves. The statists main battle cry of only the state sanctioned agents can possess weapons, and it is the governments job to protect us was just put to the test in Australia. It only took sixteen hours of hell on earth, not knowing if the muslim was going to behead them, for these victims to realize that the government good guys with guns outside are more interested in their armored personal safety and protecting political fall out. Sixteen hours to realize that their dependency on government for security was a well crafted illusion and a person has no functional use unless they are politically beneficial, which is accepted by the victim ‘s designation as a subject not a citizen. The unarmed victims finally said enough and took an active step through bravery to end their encounter with evil. The defenseless victims engaged in an act of defense that all humans have the right to do, except their nation’s leaders decided for them that they were to be unarmed in their last act of heroism.
“These horrible situations always lead to stronger calls from the gun control crowds for the disarming of law abiding citizens that choose to personally protect themselves. . .”
And, to a person, the gun-control activists completely ignore the lynchpin fail of prohibitionist laws: smuggling. They tend to have a naive faith that passing a law, empowering the state to confiscate private property, will actually—in the case of gun ownership—create a coast-to-coast gun-free zone. But gun confiscation efforts will immediately lead to an increased availability of all kinds of handguns. The US is already a smuggler’s paradise where, despite decades of expensive enforcement efforts, drugs are more plentiful and easier to get than ever before. Think those guys wouldn’t have a field-day running guns across the US borders? The Texas border areas are already so rife with smuggling they’re having to put up signposts!
You’d probably have to pay more, but guns and ammo would be popular commodities in the underground marketplace. That simple fact, however, doesn’t fit the gun-control narrative so we’ll never hear any activist acknowledge it.
Like a poster said above, they did not learn a damn thing.
They will just bleat for more gun control and try to cash in on their victim-hood rather than learn to empower themselves. Doing that would be scawy, hard, and life changing.
They have been indoctrinated and are too stupid to break that mentality because doing so would also make them realize that everything else they have been told has been a lie probably causing them a mental breakdown. Thinking for yourself can be a scary thing and is not for the feign of heart.
On the good side: More Sheep = Cheaper Wool!
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I once lived where Australians live – A gun-free utopia where no upright citizen ever carried a defensive handgun (Illinois, a year ago). When the concept of armed citizens is not in the legal realm of possibility, the “what if” never crosses your mind. You don’t stop to ponder, “What if one or more of his intended victims was armed and could shoot back?”
No doubt, it never crossed Jim Jefferies’ mind, either.
And right after we just called him out on this very thing. http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/12/alan-brooks/jim-jefferies-argument-guns-like-guns/
This “comedian” gets added to the list. At least I don’t see Mahr hugging jihadists or suggesting that somehow a lone wolf lunatic is a one off.
As much as I disagree with Maher, he is pretty funny sometimes. He’s the one who said that Islam is a religion of “peace.” There’s a piece of you here, a piece over there…
Perhaps Jeffries, who for some reason insists on calling himself a comedian, should reconsider living in this country if he can’t stand the freedoms we still enjoy here. Why did he come here if we’re so terrible and our gun laws are so “lax”?
Easy answer: Jeffries is a two-faced prick that mocks this country and its people’s rights while standing in his expensive high-rise apartment in Manhattan(or insert any other city with high cost-of-living) he bought doing his “comedy” in American venues.
Jim Jeffries is a brainwashed human being with a subject mentality. I never understood the types who think he is “Funny”. I find myself embarrassed for him the one time I watched a special of his.
Depends on where it occurred in the US. In the gun-free zones emulating Australia’s laws– it could have been worse, but that would have been dependent on the intentions of the folks. People taking hostages don’t normally kill them and run up a body count- that’s not the point. It’s to keep them alive as a deterrent to police action as one makes their political point, or get a ransom, whatever their goal is.
In areas which respect the 2A right for people to have the effective means to defend themselves- the individual may have been dissuaded from even attempting this. I they did, they alone probably would have died prior to achieving their political messaging goal.
Really worse in America? Mr. Jefferies the Port Arthur shooting in 1996 claimed the lived of 35 people with a further 25 wounded, from a numbers standpoint you still hold a higher total killed & wounded for a single shooting than we have ever experienced here in the US.
Government and anti’s response. If someone does something wrong, punish those who didn’t!
Criminals and fanatics intend to use guns to kill people. Law abiding people intend to use guns to defend themselves. Death of the other person isn’t the desired outcome in self defense. Preserving your own life is.
I suspect that Australians’ attitudes toward self defense go deeper than the issue of civilians carrying firearms. I think they would also reject the idea of saving themselves by attacking the terrorist with the goal of injuring him so badly that he could no longer stop them from escaping. Remember the Gabby Giffords shooting. Stopping Loughner began with an elderly woman interrupting his reload by grabbing the magazine. As soon as he was distracted, everyone else piled on. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the store manager gave the Sydney hostages a similar opportunity but they didn’t take advantage of it.
“I don’t now what the end result of this stand off will be, but I do know this, he will only shoot that shotgun once before the police will be in there.”
CNN–
With two hostages and gunman dead, grim investigation starts in Sydney.
Other people were injured, including a police officer who suffered a wound to the face from gunshot pellets.
Oh my. It would seem like he got off more than just a single shot. At least three, if not more by the looks of it. I don’t realish their deaths in any way, shape of form, but this comedian type was just asking for the foot in the mouth for underestimating the lethality of a shotgun… And trying to dismiss the failure of his countries gun control edicts in the process.
Sorry, Aussie farmers. You’re next.
“There are only a handful of Australians who might suggest that having more guns inside that café would have made the situation less dangerous,” Alpers said.
No, having more guns in the café would have made the situation orders of magnitude more dangerous — for the attacker that is. And that is a very good thing in my world.
As an Aussie, and a licensed firearm owner residing in Sydney, I would like to see a statement from NSW Firearms Registry about Man Horan Monus license status. I am doubting he ever had a license and if he did it would have been revoked with the pending criminal charges (accessory to murder and over 40 sexual assault).
Also for the firearm to be correctly identified to remove any speculation (currently a sawn-off double-barrel shotgun) and for the firearm to be audited to ascertain its origins and ownership.
Of course this will never happen and there WILL be backlash on the legal firearm owners. This can be likened to a farmer killing his dog after a fox got into the henhouse, satiating the demand for revenge but ultimately pointless.
Some breaking information about the Sydney Hostage crisis.
The wannabe jihadi had a firearms license.
http://www.news.com.au/national/tony-abbott-wants-to-know-why-sydney-hostage-taker-man-haron-monis-had-a-gun-licence/story-fncynjr2-1227158943800
The Prime Minister is demanding an inquiry as how Man Horan Monus was able to obtain a firearms license (and keep one with pending charges of accessory to murder and 40+ charges of sexual assault).
My speculation is the firearms license could not be revoked because it would be an example of “racial profiling”.
The outcome of the inquiry is due at the end of January 2015.
The writing is on the wall for legal firearms ownership in Australia.
I normally don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories, but I find the timing of this to be too convenient.
And now NSW Police are denying Man Horan Monus ever had a firearm’s license.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/sydney-siege-gunman-man-haron-monis-did-not-have-gun-licence-nsw-police-20141217-129bg7.html
I think I would trust the NSW Police before the Prime Minister.
The guy had an hours long standoff with police and only killed 2 people. Unless he only had 2 shotgun shells the only reason for that is that he wanted a hostage situation, not to kill as many people as possible. The problem with hoplophobes is that there phobia is born out of ignorance.
Remember that time when people were held hostage inside an American coffee shop?
Me neither.
Nearly every (if not all) mass shooting in the US has been in a “Gun-free zone”. When was the last mass-shooting at a gun range? Even on military bases, arguably some of the most secure places in the US being GFZ with heavily-equipped police, there have been mass shootings. The bottom line for every. Single. One of them? Armed resistance stopped the bad guy.
The Luby’s shooting is the only thing that comes to mind, and Texas quickly changed the laws to allowed more conceal carry.
I’m still waiting for all of these situations that became worse because a citizen was armed. That seemed to be the favorite anti gunner and aussie response under the articles on the hostage situation. I guess their fantasy trumps reality.
If in a spree shooting the last thing that goes through your mind is “God! I wish I had a firearm to defend myself!”, then that’s apt really only to be the second to last thing to go through your mind. The actual last thing being lead.
Every true thing was first believed by one person, then by sixty, then by thousands, then by everyone.
Patience.
This incident was alarming, and I gasp at the news. Then I realized it was in the no-gun Australia and my gasp went to, those poor people! They have no choice, their lives are at the fate of a crazed person. Maybe they can reason with him or all assemble and quickly overtake him? Horrible options.
It was only pure luck so many walked away. The comedian’s comments were idiotic and not helpful to anyone, only hurtful.
There is no way to understand why more people were not killed. I’d say hasty poor planning on the criminal part.
But if the exact thing had happened in the USA? I’ll guarantee it would not have lasted 16 hours. The killer having the same shotgun, but somewhere someone behind a wall would have HAD a semi-auto, maybe an AR, maybe not, but the guy would have been super dead super fast.
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