Dear FrankGol

Excuse me for having an OPINION on Opinions on LIne and then having the audacity to honestly admit not being able to currently produce the specifics. Maybe this forum should be renamed, Academic Papers on Line, may suit Frank's standards, which he can presumably meet.

The topic is tangential but you have self righteously asked the question. Note the year.

PS our legislation is virtually unchanged from the draft that hit the parliamentary desk 3 days after Port Arthur. Efficiency?
News Release 9626
Gun Control Advocates
at State of the World Forum
From: Political Intelligence Review and Newsletter
Date: October 5, 1996
Of approximately 500 participants in the State of the World Forum are a substantial number of supporters of global collective action through international organizations such as the United Nations.
The United Nations is currently working on a project to "harmonize" world gun control laws, work that is being funded by Japan and largely staffed by Canada. Gun rights policy leaders have warned that President Clinton will use the United Nations to "back door" severe gun control laws in the United States through U.N. treaties. They say that "harmonization" of U.S. firearms laws to conform to the laws of other nations under U.N. treaty would be unconstitutional and would render the Bill of Rights meaningless.
The most famous of Forum gun control advocates is Gorbachev himself. As a top Soviet leader, Gorbachev supported and enforced Article 182 of the Soviet Penal Code, the main law requiring strict gun control of the Soviet and Russian people. About 20 million anti-communists and anti-Stalinists died under Article 182 and related laws between 1929 and 1959. Communist Party domination depended upon a monopoly of the ownership of firearms. A logical method to achieve this monopoly was gun control laws enforced upon the general population.
In today's Russia, the general public remains disarmed and helpless, while hoodlums, Communist Nomenclature and other criminals rampage.
Other well known advocates of gun control at the Gorbachev inspired Forum includes cable television executive Ted Turner and Marian Wright Edelman, a close friend of Hillary Clinton. http://vikingphoenix.com/news/stn/1996/pirn9626.htm

Horus may have cracked it, but I think Cowboy Joe is just cracked.

Cowboy Joe

We all have opinions. Some are based on better information and clearer argument. Just as you are free to challenge other opinions on this forum, I am free to challenge your opinion (but not your character). At the end of the day, we go to bed having had our say. What’s the problem?

Thank you for sharing the opinion of the foreign gun lobby media release dated October 1996. It suggests that some people tried to warn that President Clinton was conspiring to introduce severe gun control laws in the United States using U.N. treaties as a "back door".

Two questions if I may ask:

Did Clinton actually make this happen in the US?

What has this - or the Gorbachev conspiracy - got to do with Australian gun laws?

What the heck has the U.N. got to do with it?

This was your question Frank, but you seem to have latched on the least important point. The UN has a policy of banning firearms from civilian use which answers your question. Issues such as these need to be viewed as a process not with finality. Evidence is there if you choose to look for it.

At some point one of the main issues becomes cost/benefit. It is fairly clear that Australia's 500+ million could have been better spent on mental health. NZ never had a registry and Canada is getting rid of theirs due to the minimal return on the enormous investment of public funds.

Tuesday, 24 October , 2006
Daniel Hoare
"TONY EASTLEY: The introduction of Australia's tough new gun laws in 1996 has done little to reduce the rate of gun murder or suicide, according to a new report. And it says the $500 million buyback of guns after the Port Arthur massacre, where 35 people were killed, has had no effect on the homicide rate.

The study, prepared by Australian pro-gun lobbyists and published in the British Journal of Criminology, argues that the money spent on buying back more than 600,000 weapons would have been better spent on a public health campaign."

Not only was the study published it was peer reviewed and accepted the Journal mentioned is a preeminent body beyond reproach. Not only that the Australian Inst Criminology has reported the same. I recall a recent newspaper survey stating that 97% of Australians think the laws are strict enough but the anti-gunners continue the politics of fear. Who benefits? Not the public because they believe they are safe enough.

The UN has been and is still trying to take firearms of civilised law abiding people in western countries while genocide reoccurs at a mind numbing rate in Africa.

Our own governments can be unresponsive when they are elected by us. Why in the hell would any rational person feel the need to be dictated to by the UN?

I think it's essential to look at immigration as giving and getting with a caveat. Australia requires+migrant seeks=new citizen is not the end of the equation. There is a culture in place(no matter how much you hate your culture), there are laws that need to be followed(no matter how much you hate the idea of any social restraint), there is a form of government(no matter how much you hate your leaders), And for those not born to a nation there is the oath of allegiance of citizenship or to nation(no matter how much you hate your fellow citizens). Every new immigrant family or nationality has had to prove itself to those already there. Prove their committed to citizenship by word and deed. It's not that filthy Australia. It's human nature and takes place every where on earth when a "foreign" person goes to live among a "established" society.
It's one thing to import your culture, which can bring about a period of social readjustment, it's another to import your cultural strife and hatreds and spread it among your new community as by right of citizenship. No new culture, no new nationality, no new religion, no new individual, is going to walk in and run the show. Showing up means zilch. Proving ones allegiance, ones value to community and defense of the totality of that nationhood achieves that nations embrace.
If you think you can walk into another country or any culture and be accepted by virtue of simply showing up on the doorstep your either delusional or have never stepped outside your own culture or country to be more than a tourist.
Keep in mind that all rules and regulations are in defense of the acts and attitudes of the exception, and are then impressed upon the whole as a result of those few.

Cowboy Joe, my last post asked two simple, direct questions:

(a) Did Clinton actually make this (U.N. dictated gun reform) happen in the US?

(b) What has this - or the Gorbachev conspiracy - got to do with Australian gun laws?

You tried to answer another: What the heck has the U.N. got to do with it? And, sadly failed to provide a convincing argument.

Instead you cite a single study - on your own admission, prepared by Australian pro-gun lobbyists - that claims to find that Australia's tough new gun law has done little to reduce the rate of gun murder or suicide. And that the money spent on buying back more than 600,000 weapons would have been better spent on a public health campaign.

Then you finish your post by again asking the rhetorical question: Why in the hell would any rational person feel the need to be dictated to by the UN? It seems you are arguing that because "Our own governments can be unresponsive when they are elected by us", it must be because of the U.N. Did the U.N. steal our rocket launchers? Are they propping up that well-known anti-gun hero John Howard at the expense of Peter Costello?

Now how did Gorbachev get into the action?