Dear All
This is an excellent article on the 1996 Uniform Gun Laws debacle, if you
like it please feel free to print it out with the name of your local politician
on the heading asking him to respond to something like the following:-
Dear Mr ............Politician
Could you please read the following article by Mr T Shulze, Barrister at
Law, Sydney, replying with comments as to being aware of the included statisitcs
and relevent points prior to the 1996 Uniform Gun Law debacle and if so
why you voted for them.
Yours
GUN
RUNNER
“The United Nations has played no role in Australia’s new gun laws” - Lisa Gates, Policy Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister, April 1997. “The specific answer to your question (of whether the UN influenced Australia’s gun laws) is no” - John Olsen, Premier of SA, April 1997. “This is not an external matter, it is a matter for Australians only, I must assure you of that.” - Alan Cadman, Federal Member for Mitchell, Chief Government Whip, March 1997.
The statement of Alan Cadman’s is
comical in the extreme, he is either badly informed or a willing participant in
a misinformation campaign - he should at the very least read his own mail. I
have in my possession a letter that was forwarded to one of his constituents on
17 May 1996. Note that date, that is just one week after the infamous 10th of
May 1996 Australian Police Ministers Council (APMC) meeting that gave rise to
the “tough new gun laws”. The aforementioned letter was in response
to an inquiry dated 15 January 1996, requesting certain information about the
Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) and the United Nations (UN). The
letter from the Commonwealth Attorney General’s Department (A-G) was dated
just four days after the APMC resolutions.
Now remember this is a letter from the
Commonwealth Attorney General’s office, that is, Daryl Williams’s
office - the person in charge of implementing the new gun laws. As wont by all
slick lawyers, the constituent’s questions were redefined by the
A-G’s office (why answer a question you don’t like) and the answers
cleverly composed with omissions. After reading the correspondence, I now know
why he got the job as top-lawyer.
For example, the first question asked
about the relationship between the AIC and the UN. In the answer to the inquiry
the A-G’s office referred to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed
on 7 July 1988 between the AIC and the UN. The A-G’s letter states
“Under this MoU, the institute provides advice on division
programs”. That statement in itself seems innocent enough, but wait
there’s more! Go to the actual MoU between the AIC and the UN and look
what the A-G omitted.
(a) provide advice on the
implementation of the substantive program of the (division):
Substantive things are things of
substance, “expressing existence”, you know - real things.
Implementation means to implement, that is, “carry (contract, promise,
etc.) Into effect”. In a nutshell, this subsection means that the AIC is
to provide advice on carrying into effect the real programs of the UN. And yes,
firearm regulation is one of those real programs.
The best obfuscation in the A-G’s
letter was left for the last question. In that question it was asked “What
is in it for Australia, that is, what benefit is supposed to flow to the people,
or the government for the compliance with those terms?” Again the A-G
rewrote the question, but the rewriting gave the game away. The A-G rewrote the
question as-
“To what extent will they benefit
Australia or world peace?”
World peace? Where did that come from?
What does an Australian farmer’s .22 rifle have to do with World Peace?
Further, the actual answer to that question did not list any benefit to
Australia or the Australian people, but what it did say should have woke Mr.
Cadman up from his afternoon nap with a bolt. It stated, “There has been
increasing interest in the UN system in recent years in the disarmament of the
people…Increasing UN interest in Microdisarmament (controlling and
eliminating small arms etc.) is reflected by the number of resolutions passed by
the General Assembly in this area.”
The AIC/NCV relationship
As already stated, the AIC signed a MoU with the UN division (UNICRI) that is foremost involved with implementing gun control regulations world wide. The person who signed that MoU was Duncan Chappell, the Director of the AIC. The signing of that MoU took place just three months before the convening of the National Committee on Violence (NCV) in October 1988. The NCV is the origin of the “tough new gun laws” in Australia. Duncan Chappell was not only the Director of the AIC; he was also the Chairman of the NCV. Later, after leaving the AIC, he went overseas and worked with his friends at UNICRI. (There are lots of dots to connect, getting them in the right order to see the hidden shape is the objective!)
As already stated, the AIC signed a MoU with the UN division (UNICRI) that is foremost involved with implementing gun control regulations world wide. The person who signed that MoU was Duncan Chappell, the Director of the AIC. The signing of that MoU took place just three months before the convening of the National Committee on Violence (NCV) in October 1988. The NCV is the origin of the “tough new gun laws” in Australia. Duncan Chappell was not only the Director of the AIC; he was also the Chairman of the NCV. Later, after leaving the AIC, he went overseas and worked with his friends at UNICRI. (There are lots of dots to connect, getting them in the right order to see the hidden shape is the objective!)
The NCV did not support any of the gun
control measures with any research; it simply stated them as objectives. The
same objectives that, just by coincidence of course, the international gun
control community was advocating. As will be shown, the NCV couldn’t
justify any of the gun control measures.
Public Health issues
A Freedom of Information request for the internal documents from the NCV was informative, it stated that gun control was “to be marketed as a public health issue, rather than a crime issue”. That connection still exits, just click on The Australian Coalition of Gun Control homepage on the Internet, it states “Gun Control: A public health issue”. The homepage is maintained by the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine and is associated with Simon Chapman at Sydney University. The public health system approach to gun control coincides with the public health system approach in America. The “globalization” mirror image of this relationship is found with the John Hopkins University School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.
A Freedom of Information request for the internal documents from the NCV was informative, it stated that gun control was “to be marketed as a public health issue, rather than a crime issue”. That connection still exits, just click on The Australian Coalition of Gun Control homepage on the Internet, it states “Gun Control: A public health issue”. The homepage is maintained by the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine and is associated with Simon Chapman at Sydney University. The public health system approach to gun control coincides with the public health system approach in America. The “globalization” mirror image of this relationship is found with the John Hopkins University School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.
John Hopkins School of Public Health
has a “Center for Gun Policy and Research”. Three-quarters of the
faculty of the Center is legally trained, the Director has nine years experience
as a trial lawyer. This is the organization that is in the forefront of
promoting gun control through litigation. If your’ wondering how law
degrees are related to public health, then consider the disarmament agenda
within the American context. The problem in America for the global elites is
that since both Federal and State Constitutions have Bills of Rights protecting
the individual right to arms, a way had to be found to bypass both the
Legislatures and the Constitutions. It now appears that civil litigation (along
with judicious propaganda) was the chosen method.
I mentioned “global
elites”, well, you may have heard of the recent Brooklyn, New York case of
Hamilton -v- Accu-Tek wherein various gun manufacturers were absurdly held
legally responsible for the illegal activities of someone who had illegally
obtained firearms. This in a case where there was no firearm recovered to show a
nexus to any of the manufacturers. As you might expect the litigation was very
expensive, the Plaintiff’s representative stated that the matter would not
have proceeded without the funding of the Soros Foundation. Soros? - That is
right, George Soros, the international financier. (The MAI isn’t the only
pie he has a finger in!) The use of tax-free foundations by the financial elite
to manipulate a society has been going on for years, but the disarmament of the
people has not been a serious objective, until now.
There was also someone who is familiar
to Australians that attended the Brooklyn court case every day. You may remember
her; short hair, got lots of media coverage, showed up in Australia about the
time gun control became an issue - then left when the new laws were in place? If
you guessed Rebecca Peters, your’ right! Peters was awarded a Senior
Fellowship in March 1997 by the Soros Foundation (stipend and all) and completed
her postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for Gun Policy and Research at John
Hopkins School of Public Health. Peters is still being bankrolled by the Soros
foundation as she continues to work out of New York on international firearm
issues. (perhaps it is because the pomo-left are offended by concepts of logic
and linear thinking, that they will never be able to connect-the-dots).
Although there are many, one of the
reasons in Australian that there has never been an in depth analysis of the gun
control issue has been the squandering of health funds on gun control. (You
didn’t think the levy on Medicare for the gun buyback was a coincidence
did you?) I remember the Coalition for Gun Control had a rally in the Domain in
Sydney, it must have cost a lot of money with the billboards around Sydney, the
advertisements on the TV and radio, the bands, balloons, sound stage, miles of
port-a-loos - too bad about the lousy turn out.
Health system resources were used for
that rally, even proudly proclaimed on some of the flyers that were handed out.
In a bizarre twist, the Friday before, the medical profession had a rally in
Macquarie Street (just the other side of the Domain) protesting the closing of
two wings at Westmead Hospital. I wonder if these educated fools understand the
concept of robbing from Peter to pay Paul - here’s a reality check for the
medical profession - if you take money out of the health system for gun control,
there will be less money for the health system. Think about it Doc.
Statistics
Back in 1988, when the NCV started to rev up to their figures to support the push for gun control, they quickly ran into a brick wall - bam! You see, their terms of reference stated that “It was agreed that it would be necessary to exclude some types of behavior from the ambit of its enquiry’s. These include self-inflicted violence, motor vehicle deaths and negligence generally.”
Back in 1988, when the NCV started to rev up to their figures to support the push for gun control, they quickly ran into a brick wall - bam! You see, their terms of reference stated that “It was agreed that it would be necessary to exclude some types of behavior from the ambit of its enquiry’s. These include self-inflicted violence, motor vehicle deaths and negligence generally.”
After all, they were supposed to be a
committee concerned with violence in the community, not self-inflicted violence
like tattooing, body piercing, or suicide. Well, firearm homicide amounted to
only approximately 80 people a year. Nobody in the NCV was going to be able to
justify spending millions of dollars for a policy that affected so few persons,
but more importantly, even if firearms were totally eliminated, the homicides
would have probably been committed by other means. As it was, the highest form
of homicide was assault - beating, kicking, stomping someone to death, and the
next highest was homicide with a knife. Take away the gun and you were still
faced with the same intent to kill.
The NCV got around the problem by
padding the figures with suicides with a firearm (also accidents, see negligence
in terms of reference). If you, the reader, have noted that the inclusion of
suicides was completely contrary to the NCV terms of reference, congratulations,
you have just connected-another-dot. Whereas, there were only about 80 homicides
with a firearm every year, around 450 people chose to end their life with a
firearm every year. Easy enough mathematics for the NCV, just adds the two and
says that 500 people die every year from firearms. Actually, the NCV
didn’t say 500 - they said 700, but what the hell, as long as your’
padding statistics why not add a few more.
To be fraudulently consistent, the NCV
omitted the fact that suicides and homicides involving a firearm had been on the
decline for years; however, suicides in total had and still are increasing.
Whether the person next door hangs, shoots, gases, or poisons himself is a
tragedy, but it doesn’t affect a person’s fear in the community.
Violence does, and that is what the NCV lost sight of - if it ever had it in its
sights at all. Of course, suicides are still included by the anti-gun crowd,
even the Australian Democrats (keep the bastards honest?) still refer to them.
The NCV was set up to provide Australia
with the “necessary” gun laws. The authority of the AIC was behind
the NCV, but what was the authority behind the AIC? Nothing more than what its
letterhead proclaimed “affiliated with the United Nations”. The
correspondence I referred to earlier also asked whether the AIC had a MoU with
any legitimate criminology group such as Scotland Yard or the FBI - the answer
was no. Apparently, the UN was the ultimate, if not the only, authority for the
AIC.
The AIC was not the only government
organization aware of the agenda of the “disarmament of the people”.
In 1992 the Commonwealth Employment Service had this to say in regards to the
occupation of “Gunsmith”. After a lengthy description about the
necessary skills it ended with,
“Restrictions on gun ownership in
the future is likely to impact most upon the demand for this occupation. It is
expected that private gun ownership will cease within the next 10 years.”
Port Arthur
Stories - the two police officers on the peninsula being directed to the farthest location from the shooting on an anonymous bogus tip at the time of the massacre, time sequences in tendered documents that don’t match the observation of eyewitnesses, Barry Unsworth’s 1988 statement, “there won’t be gun control in Australia, until there is a massacre in Tasmania”.
Stories - the two police officers on the peninsula being directed to the farthest location from the shooting on an anonymous bogus tip at the time of the massacre, time sequences in tendered documents that don’t match the observation of eyewitnesses, Barry Unsworth’s 1988 statement, “there won’t be gun control in Australia, until there is a massacre in Tasmania”.
Yes, conspiracy theories surrounding
the Port Arthur tragedy are alive and well, move over “grassy
knoll”. Worse, at least one of the conspiracy writers is a complete
nutter, or a master of misinformation/counter-intelligence working to send
people up the wrong street (he says that Martin Bryant didn’t do it). Of
course, if I wanted to find out what happened at Port Arthur, I would just read
the Coroner’s Report - except there isn’t one. Perhaps a survivor of
Port Arthur, Wendy Scurr summed it up best in a letter she wrote, “4
people are killed in an accident on board a Navy ship and there is an enquiry
sufficient to lay the matter to rest. 17 people are killed in an Army helicopter
accident and there is not one enquiry but two. 35 people are killed at Port
Arthur and despite the many requests of other people, who were there, like me,
there is no enquiry. Why?”
The laws were ready, they had been
sitting on the shelf since 1994, the media was ready, and it had perfected the
technique in 1991 after the Strathfield massacre. All that was needed was a
suitable massacre, preferably in Tasmania of course. Then we had “Port
Arthur”. Wow, what a coincidence. Was that a lucky break for international
gun control or what?
The Buy-Back
If you have wondered what really happened during the “buy-back”, you are not alone. The Federal government will not release the breakdown in the figures. Now since at least 500 million dollars was used and possibly as much as 1 billion in all, you would think that the person paying for the tab could get an accounting. Well, the taxpayers of Australia not only did not get an accounting, they had to pay for a Newspoll Market Research push-polling report that was put together to justify the waste. Just imagine what your answer might have been to question number (5) “Do you think you might have a gun which has become illegal under the new gun laws?”. Or perhaps your answer to number (6) “If you owned a gun which has become illegal would you say you personally would be likely to hand in the gun which has become illegal?” Not surprisingly, the poll showed an amazing compliance rate.
If you have wondered what really happened during the “buy-back”, you are not alone. The Federal government will not release the breakdown in the figures. Now since at least 500 million dollars was used and possibly as much as 1 billion in all, you would think that the person paying for the tab could get an accounting. Well, the taxpayers of Australia not only did not get an accounting, they had to pay for a Newspoll Market Research push-polling report that was put together to justify the waste. Just imagine what your answer might have been to question number (5) “Do you think you might have a gun which has become illegal under the new gun laws?”. Or perhaps your answer to number (6) “If you owned a gun which has become illegal would you say you personally would be likely to hand in the gun which has become illegal?” Not surprisingly, the poll showed an amazing compliance rate.
The best figures available were from
the state of Victoria. Although there were no final figures (and they
won’t be forth coming!), the state gave a breakdown up until three weeks
before the end of the “buy-back”. The state also handed in a third
of the firearms in Australia, so it is a pretty good sample to draw from. Here
is what it shows.
Automatic - .1%, Center-fire
self-loading - 3.2%, Pump action shotguns - 15.1%, Self-loading shotguns -
32.7%, Rimfires - 47.5%, other -1.8%.
The automatics came primarily from
museums and RSL Clubs and were therefore a non-event. However, the
“Center-fire self-loading” firearms were the primary target of the
buy-back. The 3.2% are not broken down between military and civilian rifles, but
note this, Victoria had registration prior to the “buy-back”,
without registration the level of compliance would have been lower. So what do
the figures show us? It shows that almost half of the firearms turned in were
lousy .22 pea rifles, a rifle that not one nation in the world issues to its
solders because on its anemic power. The figures also show that 47.8% of the
rifles were shotguns, a firearm that Hitler allowed the occupied French to
keep.
It has been estimated that there were
some 400,000 SKS, SKK and their variants imported into Australian up until the
early 1990’s. Only about 8,000 were turned in, that is just 2%, or to
state it another way - 98% of those rifles are still in the community. There
were also some 500,000 M1 carbines sold off in Australia; it is safe to say that
at least half would still be out there. From the figures, it is obvious that the
people smelled a rat.
A “safer Australia” because
of the tough new gun laws, I think not. The non-compliance rate is staggering.
If there hasn’t been a massacre since Port Arthur, it is probably because
the values of society work seven times more effectively than its laws do. Port
Arthur shocked the community, a massacre is not socially acceptable, and no one
wants to be labeled another Martin Bryant. However, God help us if Hollywood
“realigns the paradigm” by producing a film about Port Arthur and
the poor misunderstood New Age Hero Martin Bryant, finally striking back against
his tormentors. I can just imagine the fruitcakes looking for recognition or
revenge that would be walking down the street, humming the theme song to the
movie.
If you wonder why the non-compliance
rate is so high, just take a careful look at the “tough but fair”
gun laws. For example, let’s say you go to court for a traffic offence.
The magistrate puts you on a good behavior bond. Well, you can still drive, you
still can keep your driver’s license, but you can no longer have a
shooter’s license. Now just try to explain to a gun owner why that is
logical, why it is fair. Ask yourself, would I be willing to “sit in the
back of the bus?”
More AIC Propaganda
The government is still pumping out propaganda to justify this gross encroachment on liberty. When the Select Committee on Gun Law Reform was established in 1991, the report used supporting documentation from the AIC. Many of those supporting documents were International Crime Survey reports prepared with the help of UNICRI. (By the way, UNICRI is an autonomous body of the UN that does not receive its funding from the UN, so where does it receive its funding? If you find out, let me know I believe in the old saying, “follow the money”.) The Report of the Select Committee is probably the worst piece of “junk science” that has ever been assembled in Australia, and yes, the Australian taxpayer paid for it too. There is not one statistic, table, graph or bar chart that supports the conclusion of the Committee. In fact, the very OPPOSITE conclusion can be drawn from the statistics that the more firearms in society, the less firearm homicide result -true.
The government is still pumping out propaganda to justify this gross encroachment on liberty. When the Select Committee on Gun Law Reform was established in 1991, the report used supporting documentation from the AIC. Many of those supporting documents were International Crime Survey reports prepared with the help of UNICRI. (By the way, UNICRI is an autonomous body of the UN that does not receive its funding from the UN, so where does it receive its funding? If you find out, let me know I believe in the old saying, “follow the money”.) The Report of the Select Committee is probably the worst piece of “junk science” that has ever been assembled in Australia, and yes, the Australian taxpayer paid for it too. There is not one statistic, table, graph or bar chart that supports the conclusion of the Committee. In fact, the very OPPOSITE conclusion can be drawn from the statistics that the more firearms in society, the less firearm homicide result -true.
The following year the AIC came under
fire in NSW with the AIC’s sexual violence statistics that stated that
Australia was the most sexually violent society in the world! This prompted a
Select Committee to look at the credibility of the AIC research on sexual
violence. The comprehensive research of the 208-page report is 104 pages of
debunking the AIC research. The findings of that Select Committee are
significant to the “gun debate”, the Committee recommended that the
AIC information not to be taken into consideration when making policy decisions.
I have no doubt that if a similar committee looked into the firearm research it
would come to the same conclusion.
One interesting bit from the Select
Committee on Gun Law Reform report is a coroner’s table that shows crime
in NSW from the year’s 82/83 to 89/90, the year before the Committee. In
the table, all crime is up except firearm crime. That’s right, robbery
with a weapon not a firearm up about 83%, assault up about 300%, serious assault
up about 165%, murder up about 20%; however, robbery with a firearm is down 44%
over the seven year period. Now remember, that NSW implemented most of the NCV
(Howard Gun Laws) in 1992. So what happened to the firearm robbery rate after
the new laws? - It escalated that’s what. It is hard getting the
statistics, but at least the newspapers will report 34% in one year, 28% in
another year. Of course, there may be other reasons that it skyrocketed, but the
rise doesn’t give credence to the effectiveness of the gun
laws.
A taxpayer might think that the AIC
would take that into account when considering the effectiveness of the NCV/APMC
gun laws. After all, there would be seven years of statistics available to
evaluate the effectiveness of the NCV gun laws. However, the recent AIC report
of May 1999, “Firearm-related Violence: The Impact of the Nationwide
Agreement on Firearms” does not take it into account. In fact, the report
follows the same old waste of taxpayer’s money road that all the previous
research followed. Yes, suicides and accidents are still counted; yes, the
slight-of-hand-techniques are still used. For example, Figure 5 in the report is
a class act; it shows firearm robberies in NSW as a percentage of all robberies.
Now get this; you have both firearm robberies and other robberies going up, how
do you handle the spin. Easy, you note that firearm robberies aren’t going
up as fast as other robberies, so you make up a chart that shows firearm
robberies as a declining percentage of robberies. - I feel safer by the
moment.
I’ll end my discussion on the AIC
with a quote from its new Director, Adam Graycar. In February of this year there
was another AIC report entitled “CSCAP Working Group on Transnational
Crime - Small Arms Project: An Australian Perspective”. In that report
Graycar stated, “In order to regulate the traffic of firearms at an
international level, it is necessary to begin by regulating it at both a
regional and national level.”
The International Movement
The international push for the disarmament of the people is gathering momentum. It is aided and abetted by people in our own community, by our own politicians, by useful fool bureaucrats and by the journalists who turn a blind eye. Virtually every month there is another meeting somewhere in the world moving Australia and the other countries ever closer to international laws on personal disarmament. Forget bio-chemical or nuclear weapons, those important issues no longer seem to have quite the backing and press coverage they used to have. Now the emphasis is to make sure the common people can no longer give big government any problems. Stop and think you don’t believe Soros, Rothchilds, Rockefellers, et al. really gives a damn about violence in your neighborhood do you?
The international push for the disarmament of the people is gathering momentum. It is aided and abetted by people in our own community, by our own politicians, by useful fool bureaucrats and by the journalists who turn a blind eye. Virtually every month there is another meeting somewhere in the world moving Australia and the other countries ever closer to international laws on personal disarmament. Forget bio-chemical or nuclear weapons, those important issues no longer seem to have quite the backing and press coverage they used to have. Now the emphasis is to make sure the common people can no longer give big government any problems. Stop and think you don’t believe Soros, Rothchilds, Rockefellers, et al. really gives a damn about violence in your neighborhood do you?
No, just like the MAI, IMF, World Bank,
NAFTA and all the other “New World Order” arrangements, the movement
for the disarmament of the people will not be for the benefit of the common
people. However, it could be a real benefit to a world elite who may worry about
the masses drawing a line in the sand at some future incidence of oppression.
There has never really been a legitimate debate about “gun control”
in Australia; perhaps this article may start one.