ONE of Australia’s leading shooter representative organisations says it has uncovered a secret State Government plan to make wholesale negative changes to the state’s firearms laws, and are now fighting back to demand a fair go for gun owners in the Sunshine State.
Shooters Union Australia president Graham Park said the organisation had been reliably informed there was a plan, coming from the Premier’s Office, to implement baseless changes to the gun laws in an effort to shore up sliding poll ratings ahead of the next election.
“On April 18th, we along with some other large firearms organisations, sent a letter to the Police Minister asking about the information we had received and saying that, in the spirit of co-operation, if there was any merit to the rumours, we would like to work with the Government to ensure law-abiding firearm users were properly represented and given a fair go,” he said.
“We have worked with both the current Police Minister and the previous seven or eight Police Ministers – from both major parties, depending who was in power at the time – and are very concerned about the secretive nature of what we’ve been hearing, which is why we wrote a letter asking if these rumours were true.
“A month later we hadn’t received a reply, so we and the other organisations sent a follow-up letter, which at this point has not been responded to either.”
Mr Park slammed the lack of any response at all, along with the secrecy, and said if there was nothing in the works, it would be a simple matter for the State Government to clarify the situation – but that hadn’t happened, and indeed Shooters Union had been told about the plans directly by Government employees involved in the intrigue.
“We don’t know the detail on things, but you can expect – based on some other states and what they’re doing – things like calibre limits, vastly increased security standards which are completely impossible for any renter and many homeowners to meet, and increased restrictions on who is or who is not considered a ‘fit and proper person’ to have a gun licence; we will likely see people being prevented from getting a gun licence because they have a couple of speeding tickets on their record, or a DUI from 20 years ago or something ludicrously irrelevant like that,” he said.
Mr Park said every single Queensland Member of Parliament should consider themselves on notice that they would be hearing from their constituents over this issue.
“We are telling every single one of our members to contact their local MP, regardless of which party they’re from, and tell them exactly how unhappy they are with the way the ALP Government treats them and demand these ever-increasing restrictions and punishing of law-abiding firearms users ends immediately.
“Even if that MP doesn’t like guns or doesn’t care about law-abiding firearm users, they do like being in Parliament and they’d also like to be re-elected.
“If they feel that their votes are going to be hurt, trust me, they will be saying ‘Hey, Premier, this might cost me votes’.”
Mr Park said there were more than 200,000 licensed shooters in Queensland, and they were all fed up with being used for easy political point-scoring when the Government needed a polling boost.
“We are sick and tired of legitimate shooters, who go through far more hurdles and security checks than any member of Parliament does, being used as a political football.
“We’ve had enough, we’re fed up and we are going to exercise our democratic right to make our views known, loud and clear, across Queensland.”
