Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Many gun control supporters like to point to Australia as an example of what we should be doing. After all, they argue, Australia reacted to a mass shooting quickly and enacted extremely draconian gun control and all their mass shootings went away. They didn’t, but that’s beside the point. What matters is what they want you to think.
However, it’s important to recognize that Australia doesn’t have the same relationship with civil liberties the United States has. They have a tendency to take a more European model of rights where sure, you may have them in theory, but the government can infringe in any way imaginable and you just have to suck it up.
“Oh, that’s unfair. You just don’t like them infringing on your precious gun rights,” some might say, and they’re not wrong. I don’t like them infringing on gun rights, but it actually is fair to say.
After all, this is the same country where some lawmakers decided it was a good idea to pass a law penalizing rape victims for speaking out.
Victorian sexual assault survivors could be jailed for up to four months or face fines exceeding $3000 for telling their stories using their real names.
The Judicial Proceedings Reports Act was changed in February, prohibiting victims from identifying themselves publicly if their attacker has been found guilty.
The new law applies retrospectively, meaning victims who have lawfully spoken out previously are now censored from speaking out publicly. Media outlets who defy the law can also be prosecuted and face fines of up to $8,000.
The only way for victims to identify themselves and tell their stories is to obtain a court order – which is not only time consuming, but would cost more than $10,000 in legal fees.
Now, note that this applies if the attacker was found guilty. In other words, it’s protecting pedophiles and rapists, not the public at large. Moreover, it prevents the victims from identifying themselves. It doesn’t just protect the identity of the attackers, but actively seeks to keep victims from being able to speak out about what happened to them, even in a general sense.
And these are the people you’re looking to for how to proceed on gun control? Seriously?
Anti-gunners are seriously going to tell me that Australia’s gun control somehow takes consideration for the rights of gun owners when parts of this same country are actively trying to punish people for speaking out about the crimes for which they were the victims of? Please tell me how the public is better served by forcing rape victims to be quiet. I dare you to try.
So no, I’m not going to support Australian-style gun control. I wasn’t going to before, of course, but if you can’t see this as downright evil and start questioning anything they do with regards to civil liberties, you need your head examined. If you can see this as evil and still think Aussie-style gun control is a winner, you need to ask yourself why you are so unquestioning on that issue.
The truth is, no other country has the respect for civil liberties our nation has. It’s why so many of us refuse to give any ground on these issues. There’s literally nowhere else to go if they matter to you.
You damn sure can’t look to Australia, that’s for sure.
Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. He's also the host of Unloaded TV on YouTube. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/
https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2020/08/27/aussie-gun-control-rape-victims/