Is Mise, while it's true the gun laws didn't prevent Monis from obtaining a gun, taking hostages and committing murder, the fact that the gun laws also didn't prevent men with guns stopping him severely weakens the case against them.

And just because the gun laws failed to stop one man from illegally obtaining and using a gun doesn't mean they've not prevented others from doing so. Do you seriously doubt those laws have made guns harder to obtain on the black market?

Facts for Aiden.

Nobody has a clue how many guns are in Australia because for almost 100 years, nobody bothered to keep any records. One thing is very clear, firearms have a very long life. Some semi autos which were handed in were the original 1887 Winchester .25 calibre semi autos as well as 1885 model Winchester pump action shotguns.

The best idea of how many now illegal firearms were in Australia was compiled by the SSAA after they asked for and obtained cooperation from the firearms importers to gain some idea of how many guns were out there. The SSAA came up with the figure of around 2.5 million to 3.5 million fireams which should have been handed in. The actual number "bought back" was 860,000. That means that there are now around two million semi autos and pump action shotgums which were once part of the legal system whuich are now part of the black market.

But it does not end there. Firearms owners were so distrustful of government attempts to take our firarms from us that an unknown number of shooters simply hid their bolt guns and refused to register them. How many millions of these exist is anybody's guess. Prior to the buyback, gun shops sold out of cheap firearms (and ammunition, and reloading kits)) as shooters bought cheap guns in the calibres of their already owned and hidden firearms so that any attempt to limit ammunition sales to the firearms registered to each shooter could be frustrated. Buy a crappy Chinese $120 dollar Norinco .22, register that, and you can buy all the ammunition you want for your stashed $2000 dollar Kimber .22 bolt gun.

Prior to the gun buyback, it was believed that there were twice as many unlicensed shooters in NSW as there were licensed ones. The NSW Police had been trying to bring the unlicensed shooters in from the cold, and all the buyback did was drive them right back out again.

Aidan,

"Do you seriously doubt those laws have made guns harder to obtain on the black market?"

Yes, I seriously do; the gun laws created the black market and evidence by the NSW and other State Police highlights the facts that black market firearms are readily available and are being illegally imported as well as being illegally manufactured.
I have friends living in East Bankstown and to them, BANGS in the night are routine.
It's either illegal fireworks or shots, they don't pay much attention anymore.

Hi there IS MISE...

It's been awhile since I worked with several TF's in Bankstown, but from what I've been told by former colleagues it's worse than when I was there. I think it's deplorable that Bankstown and it's surrounding suburbs, have degraded into such an undesirable area save for a number of middle eastern crime gangs. This is despite the public face successive governments have tried to paint. Irrefutable evidence, of a massive failure of (Islamic) multiculturalism ?

Somehow I don't see the Bankstown LAC being overrun with potential F/A applicants, considering how many illicit F/A's we'd seized that were simply incidental to our warrant's. It's all very well for A J PHILLIPS quoting this statistic and that statistic, but at the coal face this data, notwithstanding how accurate or how current it may be, means nothing to coppers executing a high-risk warrant ? And I'm not rubbishing his chosen vocation in this instance either, simply stating a fact.

What can be done about Bankstown ? How can we prevent 'other Bankstown's' from evolving. There're other suburbs, with a similarly high Islamic concentration in Western Sydney ? How many more 'Bankstown's' can Sydney adequately handle ?

Aidan,

I missed the significance of your ".... the fact that the gun laws also didn't prevent men with guns stopping him severely weakens the case against them."

How so?

Before the gun laws of 'Little Johnny' there were armed police who would also have shot a terrorist to save others' lives.

Is Mise, one of the NRA's purported objection to our gun laws is that they prevent good people with guns from stopping bad people with guns. But reality doesn't match that claim.

I still very much doubt that it's anywhere near as easy to find someone willing to risk a lengthy prison sentence to sell you a gun than it was to find someone to sell you the same weapon legally twenty years ago. If it's true then there's a very serious problem with police ineptitude!