Gun Shops, Politicians and Symbolism

Liberal Party politicians in NSW seem to have embraced the anti-gun cause with renewed enthusiasm. That’s interesting, considering they made some effort to court the shooters vote prior to the March 2007 election.

Planning Minister Frank Sartor has implied Labor might not be far behind them, offering to change planning rules to prevent gun shops from being established near schools. But Sartor is a stirrer and motor mouth, so who knows what his real views are.

Shooters Party MLC Robert Brown has at last spoken to the media about something controversial, but failed to cover himself with glory. The Daily Telegraph reported he “laughed” when told about parent concerns. Would the old fox John Tingle have handled it better?

The Member for SSAA, Roy Smith, has not been heard.

The issue is, of course, symbolic nonsense. If gun shops are dangerous near schools, armed police must be as well. A gun is a gun and if proximity is the source of the concerns, it makes no difference who has it.

The real issue is not whether the local Council reverses its decision, Sartor calls it in, or even Brown’s handling of the media. It is how the major parties view it in symbolic terms. Will they see more political capital in opposing gun shops, supporting them, or ducking the issue? And how should shooters respond to that?

Brown and Smith have a declared policy of voting with the Government on most issues. Will that change in light of this episode? How does it maximise their ability to change the balance of political capital. Will they run a Shooters Party candidate in 2011 against the Liberal MPs who are sounding off?

This is the sort of symbolic issue that sorts out politicians. It’s watch and wait.

Should The Shooters Party Contest The Federal Election?

The Australian Shooters Party (ASP) will shortly be registered federally. It was deregistered in 2004, re-registered in 2006 and then deregistered along with all the minor parties late in 2006. Its imminent reregistration will allow it to enter the federal election if it so decides.

The last time the ASP stood candidates in a federal election was 1998 when it nominated candidates in Victoria for the Senate. In its home state of NSW it has not entered a federal election since the 1996 Lindsay by-election. Indeed, the reason it was de-registered in 2004, just a few weeks prior to the election in that year, was that it had not entered enough elections. Parties that do not contest elections for four years are automatically deregistered.

MLC Watch 2007

A full summary of Robert Brown’s and Roy Smith’s activities in the NSW Legislative Council is now available on the MLC Watch page.  Updates will be added on a regular basis.

With Love From The Shooters Party

For about two years I have been receiving obnoxious letters in the mail.

All the envelopes are addressed in scrawly, childlike handwriting, probably written by a right handed person using their left hand or vice versa. The letters themselves were either written in the same handwriting or composed of items cut from a newspaper. These were mostly words or letters but in one case comprised a picture of a woman’s genitals.

Splitting The Vote

The Shooters Party represents shooters and the Fishing Party represents fishers, right? They are both single issue parties whose focus is defined by their name, or so most people would assume.

The Shooters Party seems to have different ideas. Although former MLC John Tingle occasionally claimed to speak on behalf of other groups, he rarely did much about it. Certainly most fishers didn’t take him seriously even if they knew about him. But since replacing Tingle, Robert Brown has been much more active at courting the fishing vote, addressing meetings and generally speaking out against marine parks and other Green inspired schemes to lock fishers out of certain areas.

Unforgiveably Naive

The Shooters Party’s latest newsletter to members (with the quite flexible date of Second Quarter 2007) refers to this blog in interesting terms. Written mostly by John Tingle, whose grammatical errors are a dead giveaway, it describes it as “sad” and “representing a Party which is unregistered”.

Perceptions of sadness are a matter of opinion. We’ll let others make up their own minds. But representing another party? That’s transparently fiction. There is nothing on this site, beyond a link to the LDP, Shooters Party and Fishing Party, to suggest a connection to any party. We are simply shooters who happen to think John Tingle and Robert Brown should be held to account, otherwise the next eight years will bring no greater progress than the last 12.

A Japanese Gun Culture

Prime Minister John Howard recently said he would do anything it took to prevent Australia from acquiring an American “gun culture”.

One wonders whether he thinks a Japanese gun culture is acceptable. Guns have been strictly controlled there for many years, with handguns virtually banned. Yet Japan is experiencing a burgeoning black market in handguns with some estimates suggesting the country has up to 50,000 illegal guns.

A report in the newspaper Asahi Shimbun claims the police are befuddled:

No-one to shoot back

Amid all the inevitable grief and finger pointing arising from America’s worst school massacre in history, one aspect you are unlikely to hear much about is why nobody was able to end the reign of horror by shooting back.

There will be plenty said about the failure of the college to issue warnings, how America’s gun culture allowed it to happen, and what drives someone to do it. But the fact remains, nobody stopped it until the gunman killed himself.

This is in a State (Virginia) with quite liberal gun laws, including concealed carry permits. Quite possibly some of the student victims themselves had concealed carry permits.

Bought and paid for

The idea that Roy Smith’s election to the NSW Legislative Council is a victory for the Shooters Party flies in the face of the facts. The seat belongs to the SSAA, which funded and managed the campaign. The Shooters Party was merely the vehicle it used for the purpose.

An examination of expenditure and votes demonstrates the point.

Taking the fight up to them

In the US, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) is increasingly seen as a rogue agency intent on wiping out law-abiding firearms dealers with or without legislative backing.

The aggressive pro-firearms organisation JPFO is running a campaign to have BATFE abolished. Gun Owners of America is campaigning for President Bush to reign it in. There is also a website documenting ATF abuses.

A gun shop in Idaho, the subject of a dispute with BATFE, is now running ads calling on supporters to contact their Congress representatives to have something done about it.