A relative of mine who is a staunch believer in the right to bear arms recently told me that in Australia, after that nasty incident in Tasmania a few years back, the gun control laws were tightened so dramatically that the Australian Olympic shooting team actually has to leave the country to practice. Well, that instantly set off my Sagan Baloney Detector - after all, there’s still a lot of wilderness and outback and such in Australia, and it seems like those folks might need some weaponry to scare off the odd dingo every so often. So I started combing the 'net looking for evidence supporting or disproving that assertion, but, sadly, all I could find was a column by Cal Thomas in which he makes that statement but offers no source. I even appealed to the infinite wisdom of Cecil Himself, but so far no response is forthcoming. So now, I turn to the collective wisdom of the Teeming Millions.
I don’t know for sure, but I would be highly suspicious of that. Australia has a pretty big gun culture, and people living in the outback often need one.
What may be the case is that the shooting team has to go outside of city limits, or to a licensed gun range, or something like that.
I don’t know how you ‘combed the net’, but you may want to brush up on your research skills. I went to my default search engine and typed in, “Australian Gun Control Laws”, and came up with the following good links (among dozens):
I think the first link is interesting. It claims that strict gun control has been followed by a drastic increase in most forms of crime including homicide. This would correlate with the Lott study in the U.S., which found that concealed-carry laws decreased the crime rate in most jurisdictions that implemented them.
Anyway, back to you OP. It seems clearly wrong, unless the shooting team is using high-capacity self-loading weapons (i.e. semi-automatic weapons). I don’t believe the guns used in the olympics are typically semi-auto. High-accuracy firearms are usually bolt-action. And if they are semi-auto, they wouldn’t have high-capacity magazines. And, shooting clubs can get waivers.
Sam Spade: I don’t know where you learned to read, but you may want to brush up on your reading comprehension skills. Start with the title of this thread. A retarded monkey can find a dozen links to current Australian gun control laws using any search engine, as you have so ably demonstrated. I found the same thing when I first started looking for a source to support the assertion made by Cal Thomas.
However, what I did not find was any report or article that explicitly stated that any Australian Olympic shooting team had to leave the country in order to practice. Any articles about disgruntled team members complaining about having to schlepp over to New Zealand to shoot? Nope. Any other respected columnist pointing out the obvious absurdity of an Olympic team being unable to practice on their own country’s soil? I couldn’t find any. That, of course, doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, only that I couldn’t locate them.
Powerful B O, good name, I can smell the stink from here.
The OP said you were “combing the 'net looking for evidence supporting or disproving that assertion”
Sam’s search is disproving the assertion by showing there is no prohibition on the team practicing. Their laws do not prohibit the type of guns they use. If the is no prohibition, there will NOT be any headline news about the team not being able to practice.
I think it is pretty clear that the Australian gun control laws would not make it neccessary for the Australian Olympic team to have to practice shooting in a different country thereby negating any reason to search for articles by disgruntled Aussie Olympians.
You might want to take a chill pill before you’re subjected to moderator smackdown.
Look, maybe I didn’t make myself clear to start with. Assuming Cal Thomas wasn’t basing his article on a misreading of the Australian Civil Code, then he had some sort of source on which he based his assertion. All I am doing is wondering if anyone has run across an article or something on the net to support his assertion. Yes, I’ve run across the pages on the Australian gun control laws, and it makes absolute sense to me that there would be an exemption for the Olympic team. I totally agree with that. I’m just wondering how Cal Thomas got such a funny idea in his head.
And as for Sam Spade, I didn’t appreciate the snide remark at the beginning of his post. I didn’t feel it was appropriate or necessary, and I responded in kind. My mistake.
No hard feeling, guys. Let’s lighten up and have a good time…
The event calendar list several upcoming competitions in Australia which would lead even a retarded monkey to believe that these types of firearms are not illegal there.
I also learned from this site that shooting is the only event in which Australia ever won medal. It seems likely that the Australian government would be happy to let their athletes practice shooting all they wanted.
Finally, the frickin’ olympics are in Australia this year. Over 100 countries sent athletes to compete in shooting at the last olympics. (more than any other sport) Were the Aussie police going to arrest all these athletes?
A couple of places (2nd amendment message boards/newsletters) attribute this story not to Australia, but to the UK. The closest thing I could find to the OP was this.
Who is Cal Thomas? Could he be a humor columnist? If it was obvious, you would have said so, but if you’re not from Australia (you’re not, are you?), maybe you’re just missing the joke. You never know with humor from another country. Can you give a link to his column?
I don’t have a cite, but I can recall a television segment on this problem during the Nagano Winter Olympics.
The Biathalon competitors(xc sking and shooting)had to keep their guns in some computerized, locked vault at the range. IIRC, they needed key cards and voice recognition to get in.
I wish he were. He’s a far right columnist, about as far right as you can get. So much so that he can’t even see the self contradictions in his own assertions (for instance, he has asserted that it is always wrong to lie, but thinks Oliver North is an American hero for lying to congress.)
Wait…you mean he’s not intending his columns to be hilariously scathing satires of the stupider side of the right wing?
Oliver North – lied to Congress to protect the President’s ass: HERO
Richard Nixon – lied to Congress to cover his ass: STATESMAN
Bill Clinton – lied to Congress about getting some ass: TRAITOR
Bill Clinton lied to some judge in a civil trial about getting some ass.
No one else, in public or in Congress, even cares if he got some. What he did was completely legal UNTIL he lied in court about it. Had he told the truth, all he would have had to do was pay a civil fine. I still don’t know why he never just said “Yeah, I did, so what.” Then there would be no problem.