Guns

Bad stuff happens when you drive stolen cars on the footpath.

The footage over the weekend of two Aboriginal youths - both bleeding from bullet wounds and being dragged from a car in Sydney’s Kings Cross - is hard enough to watch from the comfort of your loungeroom. Imagine being the police officers now accused of “shooting at little kids”.

The driver and passenger, just 14 and 18, had been shot after the allegedly stolen vehicle mounted the footpath and ran down a 29-year-old woman.

Continue reading "Breaking news: Actions have consequences…" »

There were four shootings in Western Sydney the night before last. Actually, no, make that five. Bullets fired at one home narrowly missed two young children who were playing computer games. It’s a quiet night if only one bullet goes through the front window lately.

So it’s a little disconcerting at first to note that one of the two parties holding the balance of power in the NSW Upper House is the Shooters and Fishers Party (the other being Fred Nile’s Christian Democrats). The O’Farrell government has to deal with them to get its legislative agenda passed over the objections of Labor and the Greens.

Obviously, the Shooters find the recent spate of gun crime in western Sydney abhorrent. They’ve proposed legislation that would make it a separate offence for someone to possess a firearm while committing a crime. It sounds sensible - having a firearm while committing a crime is only an aggravating offence under the current law. But as recently as last year the Shooters were arguing that all kids should be able to perform shooting as a school sport, as students at some private schools are currently allowed.

Continue reading "As bullets shatter windows, let’s keep the safety on" »

About fifteen years ago I spent an inordinate amount of time at One Nation meetings.

The organisation was formed at Sydney’s iconic Rooty Hill RSL, where the parmigianas hang off your plate, and where Pauline Hanson made her first appearance as the party’s national leader before an adoring throng. The adulation was repeated across Australia, at the Gympie Town Hall and Caloundra RSL, in the logging communities of Gippsland, the pensioner enclaves of Bermagui and Batemans Bay.

One Nation received a hefty one million votes at the 1998 election. Its support came from disparate sources – blue-collar voters who disputed the free trade consensus between the major parties, oldies yearning for a whiter Australia – but the political ballast of the party’s support came from tragedy and its aftermath, the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre, which prompted John Howard to implement a national guns buyback just two months into his prime ministership.

Continue reading "How Australia disarmed everyone except the crims" »

Vince Focarelli – alleged leader of the feared New Boys street gang and, briefly, an Adelaide group of Comancheros bikies – had already walked away from three attempts on his life.

It seemed unlikely that those who wished him harm were about to stop trying.

Last weekend, Focarelli’s aura of invincibility was shattered with tragic results. A hail of gunfire left the man himself with a head wound and claimed the life of his son Giovanni, who was just 22.

Continue reading "Outlaw bikies cannot be judged outside the law" »

It’s advisable to never get in the way of a woman’s love for fashion and accessories. But now it seems, in the US, you could pay the price by getting your head blown off.

With an 83 per cent increase in women buying firearms in the States, a need to add sparkle, glamour and a supposed feminine touch to a deadly weapon has also arisen. Handguns donning a pink mother-of-pearl grip, Swarovski crystals or Hello Kitty designs are providing colourful options for the gun-toting fashionista.

While a Mail article is quick to blame celebrities such as Rihanna for glamorising guns with her neck tattoo, and heck - while we’re at it - let’s blame Paris Hilton for originally jazzing up a perfectly fine mobile phone to resemble a disco ball. But this latest trend actually exemplifies the core at the gun problem in the States – weapons intended to kill have become accessories.

Continue reading "The latest lady’s must have: A handgun?" »

It’s been a weird year for weather. Irrigators who haven’t been careful with what they wished for have had their biggest watery dreams overflow. “We need the rain” quickly morphed into “... but not that f..king much!”.

Still, there is one tiny group of Australians that has risked drowning not in floodwaters but in its own salivations as each new wave of rain fuels mounting excitement: the nation’s duck shooters.

Ducks love water and rain acts like an aphrodisiac to shooters. They are probably hard at it right now on a small patch of water near you. For people with a modicum of compassion, this brings the joy of ducklings, but duck shooters have other plans.

Continue reading "Guns don’t kill ducks, heartless bastards kill ducks" »

I went shooting recently. A couple of old friends and I spent a few days on a farm in northern NSW which can only be described as a target-rich environment.

I’ve never seen so many rabbits in one place ... between us we nailed about 300 of them and left thousands more chewing up the paddocks.

So numerous were they that at night you could have walked through the pastures with a cricket bat and scored a century.

Continue reading "Wowser-watch: shooters are making environment’s day" »