from Firearm Owners United

A section of One Nation firearms policy for NSW

Firearms Consultative Committee

NSW One Nation supports the establishment of a Firearms Consultative Committee as proposed by the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (NSW). This would assist Government in developing legislation that is evidence-based, supports law-abiding firearm owners, is in the public interest and targets the criminal use of firearms.

Firearm Owners United say Pauline Hanson and Mark Latham have lost their way with gun laws and do not vote for One Nation

One Nation strongly supports law-abiding firearm owners who deserve greater public recognition for their role in storing their guns as safely as possible, keeping them out of the wrong hands. Our four priorities are to:

  1. Recognise that as a matter of principle, licensed firearm ownership by law-abiding citizens for legitimate business purposes (such as farming) and recreational pursuits is a right in a free society.
  2. Maintain the 1996 national gun laws that have played a role in preventing public massacres in Australia for 23 years, allowing shooters to get on with their sport without constant calls in parliament for gun law tightening and increasingly Draconian restrictions on gun ownership.
  3. Crack down on the illegal importation of guns into Australia as a vital public safety measure.
  4. Minimise the chance of radical Islamic terrorists getting hold of weaponry in Australia for their evil purposes.

When you open with the usual false binary comparison about “USA vs Australia” you know it’s only going one way.

Stating that firearm ownership is a right but first prefacing it as licenced is contradictory – it’s either a right or it’s not. Cracking down on extremists and illegal imports are vanilla statements and plain old common sense.

In fairness, supporting development of shooting facilities and pest control in regional NSW is a good thing, but how they go about this (particularly with the current debacle) is another matter. David Leyonhjelm was able to secure a long-term lease for Malabar in Sydney while also advocating for getting rid of the NFA.

There’s nothing in the policy about self-defence, castle doctrine, eliminating appearance laws, reining in NSW Police’s rampant authoritarian stupidity on firearms and a whole slew of important firearm issues.

To be quite honest, this policy just reads as the usual token nod to firearm owners but maintaining business as usual – explicitly stated with the “maintain the 1996 national gun laws” which aren’t national anyway.

To Latham’s credit, he did go to SSAA Sydney and try out shooting to see the other side of the argument. However, the gun-grabbing elements of the current Labor Party are on display here. The Labor Party of old would never have stood for this, but the Labor Party died long ago.

PHON forget their history and their roots of being elected in 1998 on the back of the 1996 laws in Queensland, as part of the wipe-out of the Nationals in response to the NFA. Now they’ve gone full circle and become Liberal-lite.

Note to political parties trying to capture the shooting vote: any reference to status quo or upholding Australia’s gun laws won’t win you votes, unless they’re Nationals fudds.

Liberal Democrats, SFFP, Fraser Anning’s National Conservative Party and Katter’s Australian Party are the only ones with the track record and subsequently, worth voting for in this space. It’s not worth splitting the vote further.

If PHON are serious about firearm owners then they’re going about it the wrong way – the policy needs a serious rewrite. It’s better than the major parties’ but not by much at all.

You can’t claim to advocate for the working class of NSW while disarming them PHON.

Katters Australian Party has never wavered on removing the registration of long arms.-Editor