the first time it was fired.
Bazz,
You're confusing practical people with those highly educated two-left hands ones.

The Mau-mau used to make highly effective guns in what was then Rhodesia.
The Karen in Burma fought the Japanese initially with homemade guns.
In Afghanistan during the First Afghan War the tribesmen with homemade guns out-fought the British and inflicted on them a humilliating defeat.
In India today 'country guns' find a ready market in the cities.

What do these all have in common?

Lack of machine tools and any sophisticated machinery.

Pity this site doesn't allow pictures as I have a Mau-mau gun, made from the steering column of a vintage car, that is quite accurate out to 70 yards and a single shot shotgun that was made in the workshop of a prominent Sydney City building; only hand tools and an electric welder were used.

What about all those unaccounted for semi-auto military rifles out there?

is Mise,
It goes to show that with just an ounce of pragmatism & another ounce of ingenuity you can achieve as much if not more than with a BA.

Do you guys really think our society would be better off with greater gun ownership? Is the lack of guns to blame for increasing violence? I can't see how allowing more guns into the mix will reduce the escalting problems with violence, particularly gangs and street violence.

I reckon the best defence against violence is better economic policy focussed on reducing disparity, better support for disenfranchised groups using self-help and self-sufficiency philosophies and access to opportunities in education and work.

Even with the best societies you are going to get some violence and some people who are just plainly evil with no respect for other individuals. However increasing gun ownership is not the way to build safer communities and I guess on that point we disagree.

I should not be saying this
Katter is a good bloke lovable but unsuited to run a party.
He will be a huge pain.
For his side of politics, so go for it bloke watch the gravel rash as you come a gutsa.

Pelican, the normal overblown rhetoric about gun ownership put out by people such as above is just WRONG. It is loaded with assumptions about what 'others' want, 'their' moral inferiority, and about the effects of changes - assumptions which are treated as facts.

For instance, suzeonline believes a few 'gun-happy rednecks' exist only in rural Australia, whereas the majority of shooters live in urban areas and are not 'rednecks'. Pelican you assert that guns instill a 'culture' or a 'psyche'; this is an assumption of moral superiority in contempt for gun owners. Club shooters learn strong self-discipline, and past generations saw great social value in gun ownership. Pelican further implies that the only contrast is between 'some' gun control and 'guns freely available'.

In Australia the media and activist groups use this false idea to promote controls with no reference to what is already in place, or how effective it is. Moral worth follows from pretending that any additional law is 'some' and the alternative is 'none'. This is deceptive rhetoric - either wilful ignorance, or deliberate deception.

We look at areas and times when gun control was far less and the shock horror anarchy did not happen until AFTER the gun control activists started hyperventilating. How was this possible? It seems that the whole model of human behaviour used in gun control thinking is flat wrong. People in the presence of guns in overwhelming majority, act exactly like they do in the presence of other objects that are potentially dangerous - they take care to minimise the risk of harm. Somehow the social conditions that changed and brought about gun massacres included an increase in media and activist pressure for gun control.

It seems that the very ideals of gun control proponents are publicly expressed in terms of contempt and even hate, ignoring evidence that their pet laws have little benefit and concealing that their arguments are founded in self-deceptive rhetoric. They deny the basics of human nature that they accept in regard to every other topic, such as sexuality, dancing or religous and political freedom of speech.