With the announcement of the new firearms amnesty, it's now official that the Howard Gun Laws failed.

The Government admits that there are 260,000 unregistered and illegal firearms in the community; an admission of failure if ever there was one.
Further, the Minister says that criminals are not likely to hand in their guns, so it would appear that the amnesty is not aimed at the criminal element of society; one wonders what the Government plans for the criminals who have illegal firearms, probably some tougher gun laws that won't affect them at all.

When you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns.

Oh lordy lordy, do we really have to do this again?

Howard's laws were a brilliant success eliminating mass shootings in this country which was exactly what they were designed to do.

The latest amnesty is an attempt to reduce the number of firearms illegally held in the community. These are the ones ending up in the hands of criminals and terrorists. Why on earth wouldn't you two old codgers support it?

In fact every one that is returned during this amnesty will have a crim on the other end of it as it is a criminal offense to hold weapons without proper licences. These are blokes who your lot will call law abiding gun owners who are just showing a bit of civil disobedience. Rubbish. They are putting the rest of the community in danger as most of these weapons will not be held in gun safes and thus easy pickings for thieves.

So ultimately this is an acknowledgment there are still people out there selfishly flouting the law. Time to put aside your NRA membership and do the right thing.

"So ultimately this is an acknowledgment there are still people out there selfishly flouting the law"

Precisely, and that shews that the laws, designed to "make Australia safe" have failed; it's over twenty years, long enough that there should be no more drive by shootings (failure), no criminals carrying guns (failure), no terrorists able to get their hands on illegal pistols (failure) no illegally manufactured guns (failure).

While our streets should be weapon-free, the fact that criminals know that the people in the houses they break into are helpless and cannot defend themselves, does more damage than any (regrettable) weapon-stealing. While only a small minority would actually choose to have weapon(s) on their property, what's important is for criminals to BELIEVE that they can be opposed and even killed.

For that, it must be legal to have weapons in your own home/farm/business and for the owners to use them to defend themselves, their families and their property. Perhaps some GPS device should be attached to weapons, to alert police if a weapon is ever removed from its registered property.

Dear Is Mise,

Stop being so idiotic. The laws were a reaction to the Port Arthur massacre and designed to stop random shootings of that kind.

To do what you want we would have to have laws like Japan where hand guns are completely banned and hunters are strictly monitored even down to each individual piece of ammunition. There the police force of the entire country are unlikely to fire more than half a dozen rounds in a year.

So if you really want to stop 'drive by shootings', 'criminals carrying guns', 'terrorists using illegal pistols' and 'illegally manufactured guns' then the path is very clear, we need to enact laws that emulate those of Japan.

But these are not real concerns of yours at all are they. You instead are another second amendment wannabee seeking to dilute laws which are held in high regard by the majority of Australians. Your motives are selfish and base.

Shame on you.