Bruce in West Oz
New member
From another website I visit.
It is, reportedly, from the "members only" section of the New South Wales (Australia) Law Society website -- so obviously we're not meant to see it! (It was in their July Journal)
There is is so much gag-inducing cr@p in here, it's almost impossible to start to refute it.
Remember, this is the woman in charge of IANSA who tells everyone she only wants to control military and ex-military small arms. Well, you be the judge.
Emphasis is added by me.
"Know thine enemy"
It is, reportedly, from the "members only" section of the New South Wales (Australia) Law Society website -- so obviously we're not meant to see it! (It was in their July Journal)
There is is so much gag-inducing cr@p in here, it's almost impossible to start to refute it.
Remember, this is the woman in charge of IANSA who tells everyone she only wants to control military and ex-military small arms. Well, you be the judge.
Emphasis is added by me.
"Know thine enemy"
Maintaining a watching brief on gun control – Activist adds law studies to her arsenal
REMEMBER REBECCA Peters, the brilliant multilingual law graduate and feisty chair of the Coalition for Gun Control? After working strenuously for almost a decade to strengthen Australia’s gun laws, Peters and the Coalition found unexpected tragic support when the April 1996 massacre of 35 people at Port Arthur raised a public outcry against guns.
Swift action by the Prime Minister, John Howard, brought an agreement from all eight Australian states and territories to pass consistent legislation, including registration of all firearms and a prohibition on semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, except for the military, police or shooters licensed for specific purposes, like for instance, the extermination of feral animals. Firearm possession in Australia is no longer a right, but a conditional privilege. Genuine reason must be shown for owning a firearm, and self-protection is not a recognised reason.
Worn out by her lobbying and advocacy efforts, Peters left Sydney in late 1997 for New York to do a stint as a Soros Senior Justice Fellow and delegate for the International Alliance for Women. She is currently the London-based director of the International Action Network on Small Arms.
Her successor in Sydney is Samantha Lee, a former health and social welfare worker with a master’s degree in women’s studies and a law degree almost completed.
Lee is now co-chair of the National Coalition of Gun Control with Tasmanian lawyer Roland Browne.
The hostile denunciations she attracts from gun lobby advocates on the web suggest the struggle for more legislative constraints on guns is not yet over.
“When will it be over?” LSJ asked Lee.
Lobbying for control in a different phase
“We’re in a different phase now,” Lee said. “We’re trying to ensure that state undertakings given in the Australasian Firearms Agreement of 1996 are actually met.
“Some states are still attempting to erode the measures agreed to back in 1996.
“We’re also seeking to have gaps in the law filled. Semi-automatic handguns are a big concern. At the time when long-arm rifles were everybody’s favourite firearm, semi-automatics were already subject to regulation and were kind of overlooked. Now the public realises the government provided only half a package. People are switching from rifles to hand guns. Semi-automatics are among the most powerful guns out there. We’re now seeing more robberies with handguns and more homicides.”
The homicide that got the Council of Australian Governments to ban predominantly, small, easy-to-conceal handguns, followed the killing of two students and the injury of five others, when a man armed with a number of handguns opened fire in a students’ room at Monash University in 2002.
According to Lee, the ban has not gone far enough, as there are still over 800 models of semi-automatic handguns legally available to anyone over the age of 18, and an estimated 300,000 hand guns still within the community.
In 2004, as a Churchill Fellow, Lee conducted research into handguns here and overseas, and has published her findings in a paper she hopes will assist policy and legislative development in the area.
She points out that “smaller semi-automatics have become the weapon of choice for drive-by shootings. They’re easy to conceal and are very accurate at a short distance”.
She notes also that it’s easier to obtain a gun licence than a car licence.
“To get it, you need only be over 18, join a gun club, wait 28 days for the police to check criminal records and ascertain you are a ‘fit and proper person’, and then, when you have your licence, undertake training at the club. There are even complaints that this waiting period is too long.”
Storage dilemma
Lee describes the storage of club guns as a dilemma. “It’s not a good idea to have guns in any centralised place. They become an arsenal and a target for thieves. But it is also a problem storing them at home because of the possibility that a person might become depressed and desperate to the point of using the gun on themselves or others. The best solution is to get the guns out of the community altogether.”
Police enjoy weekend shooting
Lee said she realised just how difficult it would be to have hand-gun laws changed, when she approached the Police Union to seek members’ support for banning semi-automatic handguns.
“Their response was startling to say the least – ‘But the boys like to shoot on the weekend’.”
That, along with the resistance by police ministers to supporting a ban on semi-automatic handguns, has convinced Lee there is a major conflict of interest between the police and firearms law reform.
Unlike Rebecca Peters, Lee initially had no firm views on gun control.
“I heard Rebecca needed some assistance at the NCGC, so I thought I’d go along and learn a bit – find out what the pros and cons were of the debate.
Guns and domestic violence
“Doing my master’s degree in women studies brought me in touch with a particular perspective on guns.”
So did legal studies.
At the practical level, domestic violence literature has a lot to say on women and guns. In Australia, Lee discovered, more homicides occur within marriage than in any other single relationship in society. This is especially true of gun homicides: nearly 35 per cent of all gun homicides occur within the relationship of intimate partners. The victim in these homicides is almost always the woman.
“But beyond that, there are many more incidents of domestic violence where the victims are not murdered but ‘only’ injured or terrified by guns.
“When a gun is present in domestic violence, the victims are far more likely to end up dead. Domestic assaults involving guns are three times more likely to result in death than assaults with knives, and overall 12 times more likely than assaults by methods other than a gun.”
Lee said domestic violence is a way of gaining and maintaining control over the perpetrator’s partner and children, and cites reported examples of how guns are used to do this: direct threats at gunpoint, shooting the family dog as a warning; sleeping with the gun nearby and threatening to shoot the wife if she ‘tries to sneak away’, wielding the gun during discussions about custody of the children, mock executions – holding the gun to the victim’s head and pulling the trigger, getting the gun out and cleaning it during or after arguments.
“When a woman has left an unhappy relationship, brandishing a gun may be a means of forcing her back into it, or of obtaining access to the children. When she is still in the relationship, a gun can prevent her leaving.
“Certainly, any kind of licensed behaviour that allows arsenals to be built up in private homes is a threat to women and children.”
The law and lobbying
When it comes to arsenals, Lee’s experiences as an activist have persuaded her that legal studies are an essential tool to advance change. So, also, did her work as a policy adviser at the Legal Aid Commission.
“Law teaches you how to understand the system and how to connect with those who run it. Grassroots people tend to take a ‘them and us’ attitude to government departments. They are often too dismissive of bureaucrats. They don’t appreciate the fact that there are passionate people even within the system, willing to offer significant levels of help. Not everyone is the enemy.
“It’s very chaotic at the grassroots level. Personalities tend to drive the issues. Activists at grass roots think that passion is enough to bring about change. They need to understand process, to look at reform more as a business that requires writing and oral skills, negotiating skills, savvy in dealing with the bureaucracy. And it’s vital to know the political history of the issue. That’s where Rebecca Peters is well grounded. She knows all the political history surrounding gun legislation and the conflict between shooters and anti-gun activists.”
Lee was surprised to find that legal education does not have activism and process slotted into the curriculum.
“You have to work it out yourself.”
On that score she seems to be rating well. Though less charismatic than the cosmopolitan Rebecca Peters, Lee’s calm and level-headed manner is one that femocrats have demonstrated to be very effective in achieving policy change in controversial areas.
And if web posts are anything to go by, the gun lobby is keeping her well within its sights (sic), evidence that the NCGC is maintaining the pressure.
MARY ROSE LIVERANI
