Holophobia is new to me. There is such a word, but I can't find any connections to firearms. AI suggests it's just another phobia to do with ‘holism’, and ‘holo’ as an ancient Greek weapon doesn't figure anywhere either.

Why people bulls.t and try to prove their superiority with other than plain language is extremely irritating.

And it doesn't take three pages to explain that guns in Australia are the least of our worries. Guns are inanimate items, not dangerous unless in the hands of dangerous people. And, apart from the likes of a Tasmanian lunatic, the only dangerous people in Australia are religious nutters who are beneficiaries of our reckless mass immigration policy.

#… dangerous people in Australia are religious nutters who are beneficiaries of our reckless mass immigration policy.…# ttbn.

Prevarication over the connection of Muslims to Islam, is the common and very dangerous point of appeasement.

Just say it…Muslims!

It beggars belief that anyone could publish an article on this subject less than 3 months after 15 innocent Australians were murdered by gunmen, and make no reference to the Bondi atrocity. Those victims could be alive today if Australia had more effective gun controls.

"Holophobia is new to me. There is such a word, but I can't find any connections to firearms. AI suggests it's just another phobia to do with ‘holism’, and ‘holo’ as an ancient Greek weapon doesn't figure anywhere either."

The word means a generic phobia concerning weapons. The Hoplon was an ancient Greek shield carried by their soldiers from which the term Hoplite was derived.

Thanks mhaze. I didn't look hard enough.

I see that the wrongheaded idea that the lack of gun "control", not the banning of Muslims entering Australia , still prevails. Sadly, some people will never 'get it'.

ttbn

It is not only Muslim extremists that are a problem. Last month a man threw what appears to have been a bomb at an “invasion day” demonstration in Perth. Fortunately, it did not explode, but if it had it could have killed or injured many people. A friend of mine was among the demonstrators. Australia’s worst terrorist measured by body count is Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 Muslims in Christchurch in 2019.

Guns are designed to kill. Every year about 200 people in Australia are killed by them. There are some people for whom gun use is a necessary part of their job (police, farmers etc). For everyone else it is essentially a hobby. I think it is entirely reasonable for governments to regulate who can own a gun, what types of guns they can own, how many they can own, and how they are stored.

Rhian,

Come on now. Islamic radicalism is the main threat to Australia and the rest of the West. I don't know what the lunatic in WA was representing, but he didn't have a gun, he had a bomb. The Bondi terrorists had bombs that didn't go off.

Explosive devices are the favourite weapons of Islamic terrorists, not guns.

The Tarrant atrocity was not ‘ours’ - it was New Zealand's. Tarrant committed the act there, not here.

Australians are threatened not by guns, but by the Immigration of people who hate us, and the Australian politicians who brought them into the country.

There is something seriously wrong with people who excuse terrorists and blame guns. If there were no guns, terrorists would still find ways to kill us.

Muhammad and his gang were slaughtering infidels long before firearms were available. I wonder if people back then wanted to ban spears and swords.

Banning Muslim immigration, and tipping out, for starters, the people on ASIO'S watch list is the way to go. There are 18,000 such scum on that list.

Guns are designed to kill.
Rhian,
And, to hunt. However, failed education resulting in the dreadful mentality we now witness in society, has killed & will cause much more mayhem yet. Indoctrination removes conscience barriers & results in the emotion-devoid victims of indoctrination.
More deaths are caused by designs that are not meant to kill. Misplaced empathy is presently one of the greater causes of human disunity. Guns & in fact all weapons are only as dangerous as the people being released from the indoctrination facilities & protected by Law. Prevention of crime is now crime thanks to ignorance of intellectuals.

Ttbn

I agree Islamist extremism is the biggest threat of political violence to Australia and most other western (and even more so, Muslim) countries at present. But it is not the only one. The failed Perth terror attack that could have killed or injured my friend was apparently committed by a white supremacist. And while the Tarrant atrocity was committed in New Zealand, it was done by an Australian, using guns.

Terrorists use a variety of means to try to kill people – guns, knives, bombs, and motor vehicles driven into pedestrians. Sensible authorities will try to identify all possible sources of threat and mitigate all means of carrying them out.

The case for gun control is not limited to terrorist or other attempts at mass murder. Mass shootings, whether driven by ideology such as at Bondi, or by nut jobs such as Martin Bryant at Port Arthur, have always accounted for a relatively small proportion of gun deaths in Australia (in the USA, where guns are much more prevalent, mass shootings are much more common). Port Arthur was Australia’s deadliest mass shooting but accounted for 35 of more than 500 Australian firearms deaths in 2006. Before 2006, Australia typically recorded 500-700 firearms deaths a year. After the 2006 and subsequent gun law reforms, death rates fell and have levelled off at about 200 a year in the past decade. Leyonhjelm claims that the downward trend was happening anyway and was not a result of tighter gun laws. I’m not convinced.

Guns are dangerous. Some types of guns are more dangerous than others. Some people are not fit to own one. And while the risk to the community of gun ownership are significant, the benefits are miniscule – outside of the handful of occupations where they are needed, basically they are hobbyist toys for recreational hunters and target shooters.

So I support stringent regulation of who is allowed to own a gun, what types of gun thy can have, how many they can have, and how and where they are stored.

So I support stringent regulation of who is allowed to own a gun
Rhian,
Seeing that cars kill many, many more than guns I'd also support concrete jungle & suburban dwellers to be regulated as they have public transport.

Thanks mhaze for the explanation. However I've left my viewpoint below even though it may not have got the "hoplo" point correct. I suppose that Marxist's must be a very small proportion of the population if they want to disarm everyone.
___

Holophobia seems to be fear of holisticism.

Jung talked a fair bit about holisticism- he described it as looking at a situation from as many angles as possible to build up a cohesive picture of phenomena. Holisticism is often discussed in contra-distinction to analysis which uses one orthodox framework to define the phenomena. Freud is seemingly understood as more of an analyst, and Jung is seen as a holisticist. Zealot's and Ideologues don't want listeners to understand they want listeners to obey- teachers should present a holistic view and let the listener decide. Of course everyone's biased, but at least pretend to show some wisdom.

The question is do you trust people to act in their own interest, and are you wise enough to realise that this is often the best course of action.

In this context there is a very simple propaganda being spread, "guns kill people", but they can also protect people, they are a tool. Is the speaker propagandist an authoritarian or a teacher