Thank you very much Don for this excellent article: so true and so depressing - curse on US!

So dreadfully true Don.

I had to get my old 22 out last week. A car had hit a cat in the road in front of my place. It was definitely a goner, was in dramatic pain but looked like lasting a while. Someone's attempt to move it obviously caused hugely increased pain. Putting it down was the only humane thing to do.

A group had formed with people from 5 of the 6 homes in the last couple of hundred meters of our little back road, as a neighbour searched for someone with a gun. It transpired I was the only one who owned a gun. I am licenced to own one to protect the foals I bread.

I need a gun to protect them, as we all must keep our dogs locked up making them useless in defending my stock from the packs of wild dogs coming from the larger properties, & the very misnamed national park.

The rifle was locked in its appointed steel box, bolted down most inconveniently to the floor in the shed, but where was the bolt & ammunition? It has been a while since I last cleaned the thing. I keep these separately as an extra safety precaution, but relocated them a couple of years ago in furniture upheaval. It took a couple of minutes to remember where.

At last we could put the cat out of it's misery, delayed 10 minutes by fool regulations.

Incidentally all this compares to when I bought it & the shotgun. I had never felt any need for guns in Sydney, but when I was about to head out into the wide Pacific ocean in my yacht, decided some defence might be a good idea. I walked into a K Mart, bought the guns, ammunition, cleaning equipment & oils, then carried them to the yacht on the back seat of my car, no problems at all.

Thank god Kokoda was before all this garbage, or a bunch of Ozzie kids would have been pretty useless up there. God help today's youth, WHEN shooting starts again.

Hasbeen is you don't see the sense in locking up firearms then there is no hope for you.

Cobber the Hound,

You are missing the whole point of the article. The only effective and robust management control is the firearms licence. Smarter to put the onus on the licensed person to maintain safe custody. They are not the ones responsible for crimes anyhow, or else they would not have qualified for, or retained a licence.

Put on your thinking hat.

We have armed services for training and gun familiarizations. It is not necessary to run around a house block with a gun, to know what one is.

Your opinion of youth is not exactly what it should be, everyone of them are in that same opinion of yours.

Is it necessary to get a gun to destroy a cat.

doog, "Is it necessary to get a gun to destroy a cat"

It is one of the Government and RSPCA recommended humane methods for euthanising animals, there and then. For good reasons too, not the least being that the animal is not subjected to more suffering through delay or having to be transported somewhere else.

What would you have done had you been in Hasbeen's situation? Strangle it or club it to death? It is assumed that you do not meet the standards for a firearms licence - most gun banners don't.

Doog you would be a joke if your stupidity did not actually make you dangerous.

Did you notice the bit about my country back road. I am not in a city or town block. Calling an ambulance for a car crash, or heart attack will see you waiting about an hour for one to travel the 25Km or so to get here.

Calling a wildlife carer or the RSPCA would see you waiting a day or so. Yes you city smart asses would have to get someone to do everything for you, out here we have found we do better doing it ourselves.

Having once watched a vet put down an injured horse, I will never let one near an injured animal again. The gun is so much kinder. Having once called a wildlife carer to an injured kangaroo expecting treatment, never again there either. Why these "experts" don't use enough poison to do the job quickly I can't imagine.

Cobber, you should learn to read, & to follow an argument, if ever you de learn. My post was about the stupidity of regulations that make me keep a rifle to protect my stock, because I'm not permitted to have my dogs do it.

Are you always too thick to see Cobber, or is it just today? I guess I know the answer, you can't understand the physics involved with the global warming scam & you won't try to become properly informed on it either.

Are you just another gravy train rider Cobber, or are you simply an ideological fool, who avoids knowing inconvenient facts. Don't bother telling me, I really don't give a damn either way.

I do prefer the Australia I remember of the 1950s. It was wealthier, better educated and more creative, people lived longer, and there was a much wider range of possibilities and opportunity, for everyone. And note — all the ‘endless ribbons’ were put there by left wing government, acting, so we understand, in our own best interests.

But we contemporary Australians are bound by van Crefeld’s ‘endless ribbons’ in a fashion almost unimaginable in the 1950s. I have NO sympathy for McAuley and Lyons in their exploration of the possibilities for a wider remit for our governments. Because there is a cost involved when the reach of government expands, and this small post of mine has tried to sketch it; and it has everything to do with economics.

the ribbons were designed at the height of the cold war to strategically weaken our economy by Marxists. When you look backwards with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight it is crystal clear that treason, sedition & sabotage perpetrated upon us.

I have thought for some time now that most of us don't get a say in anything much, and the "we" are self-appointed know-alls, lobbiests etc who do not know the rest of us well enough to to decide what is best for us.

So Hasbeen you would prefer your gun just lying about in easy reach so the poor kitty cat could be put down a few minutes quicker.

Or maybe the grandkids could pick it up while you're not looking and blow one another away. Accidentally of course. But a dead kids a dead kid.
Or maybe a burglar would find it and theres one more gun out on the streets.
Or maybe someone in your household will lose their temper one day and pick it up, just to scare, and end up with a murder.
Or maybe something horrific and mental illness inducing could happen to someone and they see your easily accessible gun as a way out. Something they never would have contemplated if your gun was locked away. Or better still didnt exist.

Our gun laws, including safe storage and security, have been working nicely for the past decade.

Do you really want to go back to freely buying guns and ammo at Kmart and having the loons that infest this society carrying them on their back seat as you once did?

ttbn, exactly.

So mikk, you would prefer your gun not lying about in easy reach so your wife, children & home can't be protected from home invasion which gets worse daily.

Or maybe the grandkids could get picked up by pedophiles, while you're not looking and you can't stop the pedophiles getting away with your grand CHILDREN. Accidentally of course. But a fiddled kids a fiddled kid right.
Or maybe a burglar would find it in his face and there's one less criminal out on the streets.
Or maybe someone in your household will lose their temper one day and kill you with a knife, hammer, poison, or run over you with the car for failing to protect the children.
Or maybe something horrific and mental illness inducing could happen to someone and they see jumping off the bridge as a way out. Something they never would have contemplated if they were safely locked away in a secure facility like they were in the 1950s. Or better still criminals didn't exist.

Our gun laws, including safe storage and security, have been working poorly for the past decade, not protecting children from anything.

Do you really want criminals freely buying guns and ammo at the local black market and having the loons that infest this society carrying them on their back seat like they have been ever since the gun laws were introduced?

I too look back on my youth in the forties and fifties with nostalgia. I had the most wonderfully free life in a small beach village, no shoes till high school, no rules and regulations, free to do whatever I wanted, trusted...but I was white, male and good at school with parents earning enough to keep me healthy. The lot of marginalised people was dreadful - and large numbers were marginalised...females, indigenous people, those who didn't like rugby, boys who liked dancing or reading, what we now call nerds, gays and just about everyone who didn't fit the True Aussie Bloke mould.

This reminds me of something I read once that rang true.

"As a parent,if I tried to run mry family as a democracy, I would be eaten alive"

That's the trouble with the non cohesive society we now have in Australia.
The government in trying to pander to all the different interest groups, is pulled in
Too many directions for good governance.

It is said that a benign dictatorship is the best form of governance.

That is like a father figure who has the best interests of the society at heart
And will stand his ground against the baying hounds, in the best interests of the society as a whole.

The politician I see most in the world who is closest to that ideal is Vladimer Putin.

He puts the interests of Russia and the Russian people first.