Australia once the gold standard for gun safety: Experts say it's losing control

LilBytes 16 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Unfortunately I find this article to be true.

Only just today two policemen were killed, and a third injured in the rural Victorian high country.

There's been a huge spike in cookers/sovereign citizens using violence through firearms.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-26/victoria-police-incid...

This happened in Wieambilla Queensland in 2022. This story made international news. The policemen and women were executed. Similar story, police perform a welfare check, are shot on sight.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieambilla_shootings

The assumed suspects from todays shooting are well known to the local community, for all the wrong reasons. Notorious 'sovereign citizens'. More information in the Reddit post below.

https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/comments/1n09tef/victoria...

	▲	anenefan 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's most unfortunate and sad when shootings happen esp where fatalities are involved. However it all depends on how situations are handled. Sending unsuspecting police to do a welfare check - for instance when another state's police had already sensitised / inflamed someone who wanted to be left alone ... nutters need to be handled with care and / or special tactics used to subdue.

▲

iamthemonster 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't own guns myself but I know someone who runs a gun club and a policeman. They are both in agreement that the latest legislation changes have introduced absolutely no improvement, for example a recent lifetime ban for somebody who renewed their license one day late.

Australian gun legislation already has every protection you would expect built in. As soon as a Violence Restraining Order is in place, guns are immediately removed. Your guns need to be stored in a locked safe where the safe is bolted to the ground. Background checks on every license application. You really couldn't name a practical improvement to gun safety.

However the "something must be done" approach is applied, which wastes time targeting clearly responsible gun owners.

The trend of firearms per capita and firearm related deaths per capita is relatively stable, although it might have increased from about 8% of USA's figures to 9% of USA's figures, although I haven't established whether the apparent trend is statistically significant (since gun related deaths are a small sample size so the numbers jump around per year).

▲

wrp 13 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

American usage is for "gun safety" and "gun control" to mean different things. In Australia/UK, are they interchangeable?

	▲	anenefan 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In Australia the two terms are certainly not interchangeable. However such articles and general media reporting in Australia that use the term gun safety - we'd generally take to mean they are talking about gun control including the wider ramifications of laws regarding weapons that are either restricted or prohibited. The term safety has IMO gained popular usage most likely due to the fact that many people in cities where much of Australia's population resides (where reasons like self defence is viewed as not a genuine reason for a gun licence) - thus they don't (no longer) have guns, there exists a strong view where less guns is seen as safer in the way that if there were 95% less cars in a city there would be less car accidents and thus better car safety. In cities or large towns there's limited reasons to justify a gun licence with exceptions such as if they belong to a sporting gun club or a recreational shooter visiting rural hunting areas occasionally on their time off.

▲

anenefan 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This article does not reflect the situation accurately.

Australia's over the top knee jerk action in the 90s is not a gold standard for gun control.

Almost immediately a black market in gun trade started up via importation (or worse theft) - thus since modern hand guns were not very common amongst the criminal elements up my was (North Qld - Australia) - they soon were - also since not a great proportion of the population sought to get a gun licence, there was a shift to where the criminal element though having an illegal gun (pistol) would give them an upper hand - this IMO soon changed though after a few years, since having such when they were finally busted by the police was probably going to be jumped on harder than any other petty crime they might have endeavoured in.

What mattered most was giving the police the power to remove guns from and prosecute repeat mishandling tools. Scarring the wannabe crime lord / drug king / big time tough guy for what happened in the courts to the few unfortunate examples who mishandled a gun in public. Locking up any loose guns (this is somewhat painful if one needs quick access to a gun but ... it means to stop angry drunks and malignant narcissists having a temper tantrum doing something impulsive.) Controlling the sale of ammunition so that the criminal element has difficulty using any guns they do happen to have.

I miss the weekend gun culture that used to exist in my locale - but it's a different world now - short on common sense.

	▲	metalman 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Similar in Canada, we had the worlds highest gun ownership per capita, and one of the very lowest gun crime rates, every kid was instructed in proper gun handling, and guns were in no way fetishised or seen as anything other than tools with a higher level of responsibility attached. I would carry my rifle down the hill to the hardware store and pass it up to the gun guy, and say " I need bullets for this", and walk out with my gun and bullets to go hunt squirles for the tails, that I sold to fly fisherman to make lures, so I could have some spending money. We were violent little bastards as well, but no one ever thought of bringing a gun to a fist fight, ever, the concept introduced was that a gun was a tool, or a theoretical weapon of war. And war is what we have now, a fight to retake a sense of personal responsibility, and escape an ever more intrusive state run beurocracy. My personal observation is that the mucker extreamists are acting out a sentiment that is felt by a much wider segment of the population, and for every one of the ones shooting at people, there are 200 with a gun a grab bag, a camp and 1000lbs of vacume packed dehydrated food, but the sentiment is different, as there are 2 guitars, and a canoo for every gun.