To Rusty Catheter

The now banned book (in the USA) "Hitman" (Palladin Press )which was a "how to" book on how to commit a murder, recommended using a rat tail file on the muzzle of the firearm/murder weapon after committing the murder with it, to destroy the ballistic signature.

When I was a boy in the little southern NSW town of Marulan, it always used to amuse me when on Saturday mornings, the local farmers would all come to town in their Holden utes with a rifle stuck prominently on the shelf of the rear window. Windows open, doors unlocked. Funnily enough, there were never any massacres. But there was some crime. The one that I witnessed, was when the local copper turned up one evening at our farm on a stolen horse, drunk as a lord. My uncle Norm drove him home.

Is Mise is right. You can think up all of the bureaucratic solutions you want, all they are going to do is drive ordinary firearm owners crazy, and prompt them to ignore the law. Prior to the gun buyback, it was already known in NSW that hundreds of thousands of gun owners were neither licensed, or they had unregistered firearms. The police were trying to get them to become part of the system with gun amnesties and programs designed to get gun owners licensed. All the gun buyback did was drive them all underground again.

The Howard government calculated that somewhere bewten 2.5 million and 3.5 million firearms should have been surrendered in the gun buyback. All they got were 860,000. That means that there are around 2 million self loading rifles and shotguns out there. How are you going to ballistically stamp them?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Sydney daily Telegraph interviewed the local Muslim homeboys about obtaining handguns. They boasted that they could get a Chinese manufactured copy of a Colt 45 or a CZ75 pistol "like ordering a pizza."

Well, the committee seems to have it.

O sung wu, I don't dispute there may be difficulties. I am also aware of the specifics you raise regarding sabots etc. I don't see them as reasons to not investigate nor to require innovations that enable even partial traceability from manufacturers. In any case these things and home manufacture do not constitute the total of all gun crimes. Good luck to the investigators I say, wherever they can get traction.

On The Beach raises a few points, including a couple that the gun-happy twits I grew up with hadn't, so thanks for that. I'm sorry you find the inspections onerous. Be assured that highly-trained professionals in many fields are similarly inspected and re-tested over things they too regard as matters of routine competence, usually with goodish grace.

LEGO, I am aware that *some* criminals take the trouble to deface their weapon, or dispose of it in very thorough manner. Probably not many, despite the availability of such books as you mention. I am also aware that some get completely illegal weapons and ammo, probably untraceable and lacking any identifiers. I don't believe that I have suggested to either yourself or On the Beach that these should not be sought, or sternly punished, on as many grounds as feasible. I used to attend seminars given by forensic chemists and other types of forensic analysis at their then new lab on Kessels Road many years ago, and perhaps I developed a little too much optimism based on their more interesting work. It sounds like the solution to the less tractable side of the problem remains out of reach, and that's a shame.

I can't say I wish you any success in your crusade against gun control, I'm for it, and I'm considering relinquishing my own, if not soon. You will probably regard that as disqualifying my opinion entirely.

Whatever.

Thanks for your clarifications, gentlemen. It helps put some things in perspective for me, even if I now find it unconvincing. I doubt I'll be swinging back to your position this lifetime.

Rusty

Hi there LEGO...

I've been out of the game for awhile now, so I'm not entirely across the latest ballistic protocols ? Neither am I up with the more finite propulsion profiling that's currently in vogue today ? Be assured LEGO, most Ballistic specialist are updating their skill set regularly, with the latest developments flowing out of Quantico, steadily as well.

The same applies with the Bomb squad, the moment a new (civilian) IED functions, virtually anywhere in the western world, the AFP's, ABDC very quickly disseminates the pertinent data to all relevant agencies throughout Australia ?

So the 'Techie's' proficiency is always improving exponentially. Furthermore police command seem happy enough to continually update the squad's equipment, whenever required to do so ? Rarely will a Case Officer leave Scientific these days empty handed, as was the usual practice 25 - 30 years ago.

Finally, crooks have to be doubly smart not to leave 'something' notwithstanding how microscopically challenging it may be ? I hope it helps LEGO ?

Rusty Catheter,

It doesn't surprise at all that you are not interested in evidence, after kicking off with that unfair and manipulative 'If you’ve got nothing to hide, then what do you have to fear?' argument directed at another poster. Cheap rhetorical trickery where there should be a convincing, compelling argument based on evidence for any proposed limitations on what he and others can do.

'Gun control' is NOT the same as and cannot be even considered to be in the same ballpark as the proper, responsible management of firearms. Even better, the research and policy should be being directed at violence and its contributors. We might be getting somewhere that way.

Licensing the firearms owner is by far the most effective, robust control. It gives the means to restrict and charge the unsavory few in society who commit crime. Apart from that, there are perfectly good laws and there always were, that cover crimes against people and property.

It is really dumb to have ordinary law-abiding citizens recorded on police computers as 'persons of interest', crazy and an abuse of their rights to be conducting random inspections in their homes, and lunatic to have police and weapons branches constantly watching over the shoulders of ordinary peaceful citizens.

Meanwhile, drugs are freely available in night spots attended by young people and those venues are likely controlled by notorious crime figures and have been for donkeys years. Middle-Eastern Bikies have shoot-outs in Sydney and Bikie gangs surround a police station on the Gold Coast.

The police say they haven't got the resources. Their political masters say there is no money to do better. However there is no problem in wasting police resources monitoring law-abiding, respectable, licensed people, who according to the mantra of 'gun control' have automatically forfeited their rights and privacy These people and thousands more,

http://www.shootingaustralia.org/index.php

Amazing how the political parties imagine they are unlikely to cop some blow-back in the polls from those thousands of good citizens they continue to alienate. Could happen and one day soon.

To OSungWu.

Crime rates have been rising steadily alongside prosperity throughout the western world since the mid sixties. Despite western people being more prosperous than at any time in history, we are seeing manifestations of crime never, or rarely, seen before. The most disturbing of which is serious juvenile crime. In the USA, juvenile homicide is now the USA's fastest growing crime statistic. Here in Australia, in June 2000, the Australian Institute of Criminology realised a public statement saying that it was "puzzled" by the significant rise in very serious criminal behaviour being perpetrated by juveniles.

And this despite very significant advances in crime detection. What with photography, fingerprinting, DNA analysis of the most infinitesimally small traces, mobile phone tracking, GPS tracking, advanced forensics, and security cameras and web cams everywhere, there should be hardly any crime at all.

But prisons in NSW are full and getting fuller. Even the ancient Parramatta and Berrima prisons were reopened, and this despite new, novel punishments like "community service" and "home detention."

Now, the proposition put forward by Steelredux and Rusty, is that banning guns makes society safer. While they may have a point, my premise is, that firearms laws are a litmus paper test of how sick your society is, or is becoming. The easy availability of firearms is not a problem in a functional society. But western societies are sick and getting sicker. They will continue to become more dysfunctional, and crime rates will rise, even after all firearms are banned (as in Britain). We are aiming at the wrong target.

Steelie and Rusty think that banning guns will make everything OK. What I am arguing, is that the problems are, the importation of people from very violent cultures, the glamourisation of criminal behaviour by the media, coupled with a breakdown in marriages resulting in too many fatherless children being educated by the entertainment media to think that criminal behaviour is fun, taking drugs is cool, and that Real Men don't get mad, they get even. With a gun, a knife, or a box of matches.

To all who strive for 'gun control', let it be known that criminals have successfully manufactured and used fully automatic, electronically fired sub-machine guns and moreover killed policemen using them in a shootout in India.
One of the weapons was captured and although roughly made was of a sophisticated though easy to make design.

Google is a mine of information.