Australian Gun Ban Proved Disastrous

Dr. Miguel Faria
Monday, June 26, 2000

Last August, the rugged Aussie survivalist whose real-life exploits inspired the
“Crocodile Dundee” movies died in what then appeared to be a mysterious shootout
with Australian police. A police sergeant was also killed in the incident.

It was reported that 44-year-old blond-haired Rodney William Ansell resembled
uncannily Paul Hogan, the actor who played his part in the movie and the sequel.
Although Ansell was no angel and had had previous run-ins with police, he had been
named 1988 Australian Northern Territory Man of the Year for inspiring the movie
and putting “the Australian Outback on the map.”

What motivated this shooting? In 1996, Australia adopted draconian gun control
laws banning certain guns (60 percent of all firearms), requiring registration of all
firearms and licensing of all gun owners. “Crocodile Dundee” believed the police
were coming to confiscate his unregistered firearms.

In Australia today, police can enter your house and search for guns, copy the hard
drive of your computer, seize records, and do it all without a search warrant. It’s the
law that police can go door to door searching for weapons that have not been
surrendered in their much publicized gun buy-back program. They have been using
previous registration and firearm license lists to check for lapses and confiscate
non-surrendered firearms.

It all began with the Port Arthur (a Tasmanian resort) tragedy on April 28, 1996,
when a crazed assailant opened fire and shot 35 people. Australians were shocked,
and the government reacted quickly.

Draconian gun legislation was passed in the heat of the moment because the fate
of the nation was determined by a handful of statist socialists who find individual
freedom abhorrent. Consider the politics: There are three major parties in Australian
politics: the center right (Liberal Party), the socialist camp (Labor Party) and the
ultra-left (Australian Democratic Party) ? this last one easily tilted the balance of
power toward stringent gun control at the expense of freedom. Moreover, to add
insult to injury, Australia has had to toe the party line of the United Nations on
environmental issues, land/property rights, and now, gun control as well.

As a result of stringent gun laws (really a ban on firearms) in Australia, all
semiautomatic firearms (rifles and handguns) are proscribed, including .22-caliber
rabbit guns and duck-hunting Remington shotguns.

Writing in The Gun Owners (Jan. 31, 2000), the newsletter for Gun Owners of
America (GOA), former California State Senator H.L. Richardson notes: “They
outlawed every semi-auto, even those pretty duck guns, the Browning A5 and the
Remington 1100s. They even struck down pump shotguns: the Winchester model
12 and the Remington 870…Do you own a Browning BAR rifle? Banned. How about
a Winchester Model 100? Out of luck, all semi-auto hunting rifles were outlawed as
well. They didn?t miss a one.”

Be that as it may, at a cost of $500 million, out of an estimated 7 million firearms (of
which 2.8 million were prohibited), only 640,000 guns were surrendered to police.
What has been the result? Same as in England. Like in Great Britain, crime Down
Under has escalated.

Twelve months after the law was implemented in 1997, there has been a 44 percent
increase in armed robberies, an 8.6 percent increase in aggravated assaults, and a
3.2 percent increase in homicides. That same year in the state of Victoria, there
was a 300 percent increase in homicides committed with firearms. The following
year, robberies increased almost 60 percent in South Australia. By 1999, assaults
had increased in New South Wales by almost 20 percent.

Two years after the ban, there have been further increases in crime: armed
robberies by 73 percent; unarmed robberies by 28 percent; kidnappings by 38
percent; assaults by 17 percent; manslaughter by 29 percent, according to the
Australian Bureau of Statistics.

And consider the fact that over the previous 25-year period, Australia had shown a
steady decrease both in homicide with firearms and armed robbery ? until the ban.

Australia, a semi-arid, isolated continent and a vast nation-state, in many ways
parallels the history of the United States. In the 1850s and 1860s, it had gold rushes
and pioneering settlers, reminiscent of our own western migration.

In World War I and World War II, it fought with the allies. Australia remained a
subject of Great British until 1986, when the last ties with the British crown were
dissolved.

With only 19 million people, Australia has an impressive fauna that includes plenty
of varmints, marsupials, dingoes (that wreak havoc on livestock), as well as large
rats and other rodents. Yet, hunting has become prohibitively difficult for all but a
handful of Australians with private lands and the usual connections. Now, the ban on
firearms and the disarmament of ordinary Australians has left criminals free to roam
the countryside as they please.

Bandits, of course, kept their guns. Like in America, only the law-abiding, by
definition, obey the law. Yet, the leftist Australian government has responded by
passing more laws; in 1998 Bowie knives and other knives and items including
handcuffs were banned.

Licensing is difficult. Self and family protection is not considered a valid reason to
own a firearm. The right to self-defense, like in Great Britain and Canada, is not
recognized in Australia, Like Americans, Australians loved and possessed firearms
? that is, until the ban. Freedom has been extinguished. A way of life has ended.
Please, don’t tell me it cannot happen here!

Dr. Miguel A. Faria Jr. is a physician and editor in chief of the Medical Sentinel of
the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS).