rstuart, the 'far-fetched' idea that Australia's massacres were copycat massacres comes from academic papers including Philip Alpers the anti-gun researcher, leading Australian suicide researchers and the leading forensic psychologist in Australia, Prof Paul Mullen. The idea that news and current affairs reporting is influential in providing a guide to action for some twisted individuals is old news, and for some reason or other news and current affairs people find it far-fetched.

I agree that the buyback money seems to be too small to bother with by today's standards, but its significance is that it was spent to express moral outrage, at the expense of the self-respect of people like me. It was spent to destroy what we value as good.

Ordinary people think the guns destroyed were some kind of especially dangerous military-style rifles but 93% of them (Vic figures) were ordinary sporting guns of no particularly threatening nature, that had been in use since the 1890s - sporting pump and semi-auto rimfires and shotguns.

Anyway, in case I don't get back to reply again, its been great to discuss with the two of you. I look forward to next time.

ChrisPer, there seems to be an anomaly if an established collector of antique firearms has to go through the same rigmarole as a sporting shooter on the purchase of subsequent firearms.

Seems there should be different licensing requirements with different criteria for the different reasons why people might want guns. Can't really see why that shouldn't be so. Certainly sounds like an area where you and like minded individuals should lobby for changes.

Steel, owning a gun is no more a democratic right than driving a car is, even though it could be argued that a car is a necessity.

Thanks yvonne!