[karj]

Originally Posted by flappist

karj you have made it plainly obvious that you firstly are a "gun hater" and secondly have no idea whatsoever about the legal use of firearms.

Examples of stupidity:

If you break you gun and just want to replace it with an identical item there is an up to 6 months cooling off period. This is real and in all states and has even interferred with our olympic training.

All someone has to do is make a complaint and regardless of how unfounded it is your access to firearms is removed. This almost cost us a gold medal in the Sydney olympics after a vexacious claim was made against Michael Diamond.

Should you forget to pay you license fee (and they do not send reminders) you must re-apply from scratch including the 12 months wait and the safety courses. This applies to everyone INCLUDING the guys to actually designed and teach the safety courses, I know of two examples.

Australian gun laws are not designed to make society safer they are designed to make it such a pain to own a gun that you just give up.
Of course that is the main reason why the illegal gun trade is doing so well.

No I'm not a gun hater. I don't like hunting as a sport, but I do actually enjoy the olympic shooting. I'm also nowhere near foolish enough to assume our laws are a model of perfection.

Originally Posted by flappist

Now I am going to make a bold assumption here that you are actually a reasonable person so please answer the questions with you views:

1) Should there be a 6 month delay in purchasing a firearm even though the buyer has other firearms and good history?
Or should it be treated like a car?

Possibly, possibly not. I guess that would depend on what firearms you currently own, and what firearms you want to obtain. If you want to obtain a similarly classed firearm as to what you currently own, I would say no there shouldn't be a 6 month delay. If there was no delay, I would hope that there would be checks in place to ensure that someone doesn't quickly amass an arsenal.

Originally Posted by flappist

2) Should a licensed shooter retain the license and just pay the 5 yearly fee with maybe a small fine if they are late rather than have their property confiscated and have to go through it all again?
Or should it be treated like a drivers license?

If only a bit late, I agree with you. They may not send out letters for renewal because if the mail was illegally intercepted the mailing address would likely be where the guns are stored, and putting that in a letter would be a risk to the public as well as the gun owner.

Originally Posted by flappist

Basically should the gun laws make it easy for legitimate users and hard for criminals or should gun laws make it hard for everyone?

I'm not sure that you could actually create effective gun laws that only impacted criminals and not legitimate users. It's very hard to target legislation in that manner. We have seen it recently with some of the bikie laws that have been passed and then ruled invalid when challenged in court. Also, the world is not just divided into legitimate users and criminals. Poor mental health is another aspect of the debate, and you would find legitimate gun owners with poor mental health. One of my relatives was a farmer with a legitimate use for firearms. His marriage broke down and he suicided with a gun. Maybe he would have committed suicide anyway, maybe not. Who knows, but it is certainly perceived as *easier* or *quicker* to commit suicide with a gun. I've also known two licensed gun owners to be involved in serious domestic violence and in a DV situation, guns are a huge escalation. So it's unfortunately not just as simple as dividing people into legitimate users and criminals.