old man emu

True, but in those areas, firearms are "tools of trade". Criminals possess them for the purpose of carrying out their trade. Their preferred firearm is a pistol. Also they have more important things to do than get involved in racial politics. Also you are concentrating on "illegal" firearms. Actually it is the possession of firearms in contravention of the Regulations that makes most firearma illegal, although there are firearms that are intrinsically illegal by definition within the Regulations. Onetrack, widen your scope. You have honed in on people from the Middle East. Have you forgotten about White Supremists? Remember the mass shooting in New Zealand that was carried out by an Australian White Supremist?

Too blooy hot to go digging trenches!

It's been around 40C here for the past few days, and likely to reach the same today. All I am getting are strong winds. There are no clouds yet. Over the past few days clound has developed, but blew away to accumulate downwind. At night I could see the lightning in those accululated clouds, but they were well past my place for any rain to all on me. At least the humidity is low - about 18%, so evaporating sweat helps. My household water is pumped in an underground pipe from the bore about 200 metres away. It has been so hot that the ground around the pipe is hot enough to heat the cold water to a temperature where I cn have a warm shower. Not too good when you want to cool off under cold water.

I learned a bit about the changes to the Firearms Act that NSW Premier Minns is trying to make. If introduced then the administrative burden on Police will be terrible. 1. Licence period reduced from 5 years to 2. The number of staff at the Fireams Registry was already overloaded trying to deal with paperwork before Bondi. I have recently experienced dealing with these Public Servants, and they are hardworking, helpful people. But by reducing the time between renewal if licneces and permits, their workload will markedly increase. Will the Government employ more staff? If it does, how long before the new employees gain the knowledge and experience in dealing with a very complicated set of rules? 2. Maximum ownership of 4 firearms. OK, there is going to be a buy-back. During the 1996 buy-back the amount of extra work thrust onto police working at the front counteer of police station impacted the availability of police to be assigned the normal day-to-day police functions. Firearms were not simply hand over the counter and tossed into collection bins. Receipts had to be issued, and at the time these were handwritten. Maybe some sort of database could be developed to create digital records. There's the cost of developing the database that the government must meet. As well, other police were attached to warehousing duties where they were involved in picking up surrendered firearms from police stations across the State. 3. Valuation of surrendered firearms. A big joke about the 1996 buyback was the profits made by gun owners when they surrenderd a firearm. Crappy .22 single shots were bringing big bucks. Once that became known, a lot of gun owners handed in crap and then spent the money received on upgrading their firearms. Where did the money come from? Taxpayers of course. 4. Additional work for oveworked General Duties police. One of the firearms regulations is that gun owners must enable police to inspect firearms storage. I remember being assigned a list of firearm owners addresses and being told to go out and inspect their firearms and storage. This wasn't to be my sole assignment for the shift. I still had to attend to the normal calls for police service such as domestics, break-ins, shpolifters, drive-offs. Needless to say that I rarely got time to do a firearms inspection. It's all well and good to tighten the control of firearms. However, policing those controls has to be possible for the existing police staff to do within the number of personhours in a day while providing the a level of attention to the things that the Public expects police to attend to. It's easy for politicians to make grand statements and make rules, but a rule that cannot be policed with resources available both in staffing and finances is not worth putting on the books. You will note that I have not spoken about the rule limiting the number of firearms owned to 4. That is a whole different can of worms. The political backlash could effect many local Members regardless of Party since the rule changes seem to be getting bipartisan support.

Getting back to the oriinal idea of this thread - the governmental knee-jerk to firearm possession, it is becoming obvious that governments have been resting on the laurels of the original gun buy-back and the laws made in the late 1990s. That was thirty years ago. Are you still using the mobile brick phone you had back then? Are you still using dial-up ADSL? BY the same token, firearms have developed a lot in that time, but the classification of them for licensing purposes has not. I was watching a video about the point of the failure of firearms classification to keep pace with firearm development. As with all laws and regulations, the devil is in the definition. Let's look at teh shotguns used at Bondi. How was it that they, in particular, are legal under the classification system? The types of firearms permitted in Category A, the most commonly held licence, are: Air rifles; Rimfire rifles (other than self-loading); Shotguns (other than pump action, lever action or self-loading), and Shotgun/rimfire combinations. The type of interest from Bondi is the Shotguns (other than pump action, lever action or self-loading. One thinks of the break action shotgun, single or double barrel. We see pump action shotguns in movies and news videos from the USA, so we are aware of how they are operated. Lever action shotguns operate in a similar way to what we see as rifles in cowboy movies. Self-loading means that a fresh round is loaded by using the recoil from the round fired before the round to be loaded. However, firearm manufacturers developed another means of rapid reloading from a magazine using a loading lever similar to the idea of a bolt action rifle. This is the type of shotgun used at Bondi. As of that date, bolt action shotguns were Category A and legal to own. I believe that these have a 6-round magazine + 1 in the spout. To see what I'm talking about, watch this video from the 17:00 to 20:00 time marks. The problem with any knee-jerk response and regulations made on the fly will have consequences that firstly will financially affect firearms owners and later affect lawful activities such as feral animal control. Feral animals such as pigs, foxes, deer etc are becoming a greater problem because landowners are denying permission to recreational hunters to shoot on their properties. And yes I know all about tthe horror stories of idiot shooters. While it is good to hear politicians on both sides joining together to attack the problem, one must encourage them to keep at it, but not make flash in the pan decisions.

I hope those arrested persons had firearm licences and access to registered firearms.

The word "midget" is widely considered a highly offensive and derogatory slur by most people with dwarfism and their advocacy organizations. Most importantly, use the person's name rather than a label, as their height is typically irrelevant in everyday interactions.

The first step in being a successful terrorist is making sure that no one gets an idea that you are a terrorist. The second step is to not telegraph you plans. Terrorist attacks rely on the element of surprise. If you want to succeed, keep quiet.

Yeah. I was being obtuse again, not aiming at anyone on this forum. Just a comment. At the moment the Conservatives are howling about misuse of funds for travelling by Labor politicians. If they become the Government sometime, Labor will howl about Conseervatives doing the same thing. Rapant thespianism.

So, the government of a small, multi-ethnic country is going to turn back nearly two thousand year's worth of human behaviour? Some might think tht Albo is a Kvnt, but he's definitiely not Kanute.

"Let he who is without sin cast the first stone" (John 8:7) where Jesus challenges accusers to examine their own faults before condemning.

That is the very problem with knee-jerking - unintended consequences. Once again the good intention adversely affected those for whom the intention was not met. There's a Latin saying, festina lente, which roughly translates as "hasten slowly", or its equivalent, "look before you leap".

When will politicians of teh Parties not in power folow the adage "If you can't say something nice, say nothing"?

Therein lies the problem to be overcome. If the Federal Government seeks to combine all the ownership databases, then a few million could be trown at the problem. I think that the electorate would accept the spending of tax dollars in that way.

I think that the current upsurge in anti-semitism has more to do with disgust at the Isreali government's excesses in Gaza and the West Bank. The Common People are now more aware of happenings in other countries than they were even 50 years ago thanks to the Internet. They don't like these excesses and now have more freedom in their own countries to express their disgust. Unfortunatley, this passionate disgust is not being considered by our politicians who are playing in a differnt game. As a result of this unrequited response from politicians, the Common People are acting without considering what their actions result in.