Gun laws weakened in NSW
I unfortunately had two disallowance motions overturned in the NSW Upper House this week. They related to two regulations that the NSW Labor government had passed in December last year, which weakened gun ownership laws in NSW.
One of the regulations concerns licensing for international visitors visiting NSW for shooting competitions, and exempts them from requiring a permit for NSW as long as they have one from another state. The main problem with this regulation was that it was open-ended, allowing the visitor to possess and carry a firearm in NSW for an indeterminate period before and after the competition.
The more contentious regulation concerns a serious weakening of NSW's gun ownership laws. It allows security guards with gun licences to obtain, carry and use certain shotguns and high-powered pistols. The same types of pistols so tragically used in the Dunblane Primary School massacre in Scotland in 1996 and the fatal shootings at Monash University in 2002.
The debate on the issue was extremely disappointing, with none of the speakers from Labor or the Liberals actually referring to the issues brought into question. They focussed on minor aspects of the regulation and wouldn't engage with the issue of having more high-powered weapons in circulation.
During the debate, Shooters' Party MP Robert Brown stated "whether (security guards) carry a high-powered weapon is probably of very little consequence to the average citizen in this state."
Unsurprisingly, I disagree with this completely. 
It doesn't take a genius to work out the correlation between having more high-powered weapons in circulation, whether to registered gun owners or not, and those weapons ending up on the black market.
Theft of firearms is on the rise across Australia, and particularly in NSW. A report by the Australian Institute of Criminology showed that 1,712 firearms were reported stolen in Australia between 2007 and 2008. This was an increase of close to two hundred from the previous year. Almost a quarter of these thefts occurred in NSW.
More recently, on October 20, 2009, 12 semi-automatic high-powered glock handguns were stolen from security firm Westsure in Morley, WA. Over a period of six weeks, from November to December 2009, 18 firearms were stolen from private residences in Mt Isa in Queensland.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported on January 13 of this year that in NSW there is a growing trend for criminals robbing armoured vans and stealing the guns of the private security guards.
It is estimated that less than 70 per cent of stolen firearms are recovered by police and that the majority of them make their way onto the black market.
But NSW Labor and the Shooters Party are not to be persuaded by research or statistics. You have to wonder where they think criminal organisation get weapons from - do they imagine a shady blacksmith's forge hammering out high-callibred weapons long into the night?
We have to wonder why Labor would introduce regulations weakening NSW's gun ownership laws, and why the Opposition would support it. The answer is unfortunately likely to be to be in the hope of winning the support of the Shooters Party MPs in the NSW Upper House.
The NSW government lost this support last year when they decided not to back the Shooters Party legislation to allow recreational hunting in National Parks. Like a child throwing a tantrum when they don't get their own way, the Shooters Party responded by refusing to support any government legislation, and forced the government to table damaging papers in a number of areas, like the M4 East project.
The Liberals are eyeing off a majority of some sort in next year's state election. Their behaviour in parliament suggests they may also be willing to placate the gun lobby.
You can read the Hansard of the full debate here:
For more information about my work in the firearms portfolio see here:
Read the full SMH article reporting the disallowances here:
