BRISBANE MARINERS CLUB Inc Confidential

INTRODUCTION The writer is the President of Brisbane Mariners Rifle Club Inc situated in the Belmont Range Complex at 1485 Old Road Belmont Queensland 4153. The Management Committee of the Club has authorized the President to make this submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee which will enquire and report into “the ability of Australian law enforcement authorities to eliminate - related violence in the community.” The Club would like this submission to be dealt with as a confidential document.

Brisbane Mariners Rifle Club (BMRC) is a Full bore target rifle club which can trace its origins back to the Queensland Naval Detachment’s rifle club formed in 1895. Post federation BMRC was known as the Royal Australian Naval Reserve (RANR) rifle club, until the early 1970s when the Chief of Navy wrote to the Club and informed them that it could no longer use the RANR name. The Club was therefore re- named the Brisbane Mariners Rifle Club Inc.

BMRC has 40 members, both male and female because our is the only Commonwealth sport where men and women compete on an equal basis. Our members come from all walks of life eg university graduates, health professionals, tradespeople, entrepreneurs, policing and the Australian Defence Force. The membership demographic in many other clubs is similar to BMRC. A small percentage of BMRC’s membership is also involved in competitive .

Although BMRC is a target rifle club, many of its members regard this enquiry of the Committee as a thinly veiled attempt to target all people in the shooting . Further, the Club’s membership is concerned that eg compelling alarms to be installed for home pistol storage, if it were to gain traction, could eventually be forced upon all Australian rifle shooters and for no good compelling reasons.

I was first alerted to this enquiry a few days ago when I received my copy of Sporting Shooter magazine and found that the “irrelevant Greens” (the SSAA’s inference not mine, although the SSAA is spot on in my opinion) supported by the ALP had brought on the current enquiry. Let me state at the outset how disappointed I am that the ALP supported the setting up of this enquiry, given that they should be fully focused (together with the Abbot Government) on fixing the economic mess that the ALP (and the Greens) left from their time in government. It is about time that the ALP started showing the required leadership and maturity it will need to demonstrate that it can once again be a party of choice at the next election, or at least one in the foreseeable future.

I am a law abiding, 64 year old male who has been attending rifle ranges in one form or another for 50 years. Just so that you don’t get the wrong idea (you know red necked gun owner) I have a degree from Queensland University and I have taken post-graduate courses at Australian and Cambridge Universities, I was an SES band officer for 15 years in Queensland’s public sector (including more than 10 years as a CEO) and I served for 8 years in the Australian Army, including active service as an infantryman in South Vietnam. I consider that I am more than qualified to expect that Australia’s legislators will ensure nothing but the best outcomes in Australian public policy, in terms of both legislation and enforcement, and the future well-being of this country. Page 2

Before I turn to each of the terms of reference in the enquiry, I want to say that the submission deadline is far too short. If this matter is of such import then the public (and here I include all shooting clubs and associations) should have been given a reasonable period in which to respond, including carrying out their own member consultation. As a case in point during a similar exercise in Queensland in relation to proposed changes to the Weapons Act, the Queensland Police reacted positively when the short time allotted for public consultation was pointed out to them. In fact the Queensland Police have come a long way in recent years in their willingness to listen to what the people most involved with firearms have to say about firearms’ related issues. Queenslanders now enjoy a good relationship with the Queensland Police Service, which could not have been contemplated in the years immediately following the introduction of Howard’s gun laws.

As the officer in charge of New Zealand’s ’s bureau once remarked, nothing gets law abiding citizens offside faster with the police than ill-considered and hasty firearms legislation. I earnestly hope that the Committee will heed that officer’s advice when they publish their findings.

a. the estimated number, distribution and lethality of illegal , including both outlawed and stolen guns, in Australia.

RESPONSE

All firearms are lethal in the wrong hands and it does matter a jot how they came to be in the wrong hands in the first place, once a lethal crime has been committed. Lethal crimes can take different forms. For example, prior to Port Arthur (which everyone keeps harking back to) the largest mass murder in Australia was the Whisky au Go Go fire in Brisbane. Fifteen people died, but I can’t recall anyone seriously suggesting that petrol and matches should be regulated and licenced for a select group of people by a newly established and special police bureau. I also recall that a fellow ran amok in a Sydney cinema (back in the 1960s) with a tomahawk, randomly killing people in the darkened theatre but no one seriously suggested that small axes which are capable of being concealed upon the person should be subject to a public ban/increased regulation.

One of the reasons why firearms are attractive to criminals is the very legislation which limits their ownership in this country. When you prohibit firearms every dimwit criminal wants to have one. The solution? Make sure the police are better armed and trained to deal with criminals who carry firearms.

You can’t legislate firearms out of existence. I’ll give you examples of what I mean. Any fitter and turner who can use a lathe and read exploded drawings downloaded from the Internet can make a .45 calibre semi-automatic pistol based on the one used in the US Army. The Internet also has at least one article on how to make your own sub-machine gun at home. In both cases neither firearm will have a serial number, neither will be registered with the police, nor will the criminals

Page 3

mis-using these firearms as weapons possess firearms’ licences. In my view it is only a matter of time before the police encounter a criminal armed with one (or both) of these illegal examples.

Before I close my response to this term of reference, could someone explain to me why air are categorized as firearms (sic). The UK has strict firearms laws and yet people can own air rifles without all the attendant restrictions of firearms. In two homes in England I recently visited the owners had air rifles in the home (dining room and kitchen respectively) on hand to kill grey squirrels (imported during World War Two from the USA) which are a pest in England and destroying the native brown squirrels. Registering air rifles is really going too far when none has ever been used in the commission of a lethal crime, as far as I know.

b. operation and consequences of the illicit firearms trade, including both outlawed and stolen guns within Australia

RESPONSE

I will leave it to others with the statistics at their fingertips to table the relevant data. From the data I have seen I don’t believe that firearms stolen from home safes is all that significant and installing alarms will certainly not overcome the problem. Suffice to say it is not genuine licenced firearms’ owners who are behind illegal firearms’ usage in Australia. That this term of reference is even on the Committee’s agenda demonstrates that the registration of firearms has been a complete waste of money and effort in Australia and it is time to face up to the fact that registration and licencing do not impact upon the activities of criminals. I understand that the Canadian Government has seriously questioned the expenditure of billions of dollars on firearms registration for no apparent gains and it is time we did the same here in Australia. The money that is wasted tracking every single firearm (and air rifles) should be directed into police (and Customs) enforcement to stop the illegal importation of firearms in the first place. As a case in point I can recall it being said that Customs only scans/physically checks three (3) percent of the containers imported into Australia. Even if this figure is in error by a factor of say 20, the gap in customs’ surveillance is wide enough to drive the proverbial truck through it.

c. adequacy of current laws and resourcing to enable law enforcement authorities to respond to technologica advances in gun technology, including firearms made from parts which have been imported separately or covertly to avoid detection, and firearms made with the use of 3 D printers.

RESPONSE

I would like to see the data on which this term of reference has been based. It implies that already there is a significant illegal trade in imported firearms parts. I have no doubt that parts are imported in this manner but I am yet to be convinced that the trade is that sizeable. Spending as much time as I do around rifle ranges I know that it would soon get around among shooters if illegal importing of parts is taking place. I can say without any reservation that it has not been mentioned in my hearing. Perhaps, the Committee could define “parts”. For example, I do not Page 4

consider a for a rifle to be a part. Nor, do I think that the or butt pad for a rifle can be regarded as a part and yet I am certain that some officers in law enforcement would disagree with me. When I brought in an aperture sight for my target rifle from the USA (the sight is not available in Australia) I applied to the Queensland Police for the required permit, and it was granted. Could I ask “does my legally imported aperture sight get tallied with other so called firearms parts and become a statistic implying that there is a major importation of firearms parts into Australia?” And, has the volume of legally imported firearms parts been extrapolated to produce a notional illegal quantity for the purpose of advice to this enquiry, since illegal imports (by definition) are not recorded in the first place?

Like everyone else in Australia I saw the Commissioner for Police in New South Wales appear on the news and warn of the dangers of 3D manufactured firearms. A rather non-lethal looking pistol was held up for the benefit of the TV audience.

My response (and I am sure others thought the same) was that I would not like to be holding that particular 3D pistol when it was fired. My current understanding is that existing 3D technology falls well short of being able to reproduce a firearm eg an or semi-automatic pistol, which would be capable of dealing with the inherent stresses of live firing. As I said above a capable person can machine a pistol/rifle on a lathe at home and history has shown it can be done, for example the Sten gun used by the Resistance in Europe during World War Two can be made in any home workshop.

By all means “keep an eye” on technological advances but don’t lose sight of the fact that firearms manufacturing can be done anywhere, at any time by people who have the requisite skills and equipment and a reason (valid or otherwise) to do so. d. the extent to which the number and types of guns stolen each year in Australia increase the risk posed to the safety of police and the community, including the proportion of gun-related crime involving legal firearms which are illegally held.

RESPONSE

My initial reaction is to say that “legal firearms which are illegally held” is a nonsense. By definition an illegally held firearm is an illegal firearm. It can’t be anything else.

From the data already available to the Committee, they will know that illegal firearms stolen from licenced firearm holders is very small in the totality of illegal firearms’ use in Australia. Firearms cost their owners a lot of money and they are self- interested enough to want to protect their investment, which can be expensive to insure.

I am a Full bore target rifle shooter. My rifle is 4 feet (1.3m) in length and single ie it does not have any magazine capacity. It is not the type of firearm that is easily hidden upon the person by someone who is intent on committing a crime. Yes, it could be cut down and made slightly more

Page 5 concealable however I am confident that expert advice to the Committee will confirm my opinion that the rifle would be unmanageable to fire.

Let’s face it the Committee is being driven by the Greens who want two outcomes viz: a) a complete ban on the private ownership of firearms of every description in Australia; and, b) a complete ban (in the interim at least) on all self-loading ie semi-automatic in this country.

And, if and when the ban the Greens so desperately want comes into being the only people in Australia who will have access to pistols apart from law enforcement will be criminals. This is what has happened in the UK since the complete ban on was introduced. Whist visiting the UK some years ago I read an article in a newspaper published for the immigrant community expressing editorial concern that as many as 70 percent of the black youths who loiter around the underground railway stations have been exposed to illegal handguns and, that many of these same youths also are known to be carrying illegally obtained pistols. Why? Because the once legally held pistols, confiscated by the UK authorities, were sold in Europe and later smuggled back into Britain by criminal gangs. Some (now disarmed but nevertheless law abiding) Anglo- Saxon people in the UK have been intemperate (or is that perceptive) enough to suggest that this is social engineering by stealth.

The late Dr Ulf Sundhausen once defined “government” as the “monopoly on violence”. Did Dr Sundhausen (during the 1970s) foresee a time when governments in this country would declare legally held firearms were illegal by a stroke of their legislative pen, as we witnessed with Howard’s gun laws in 1997? Does the Committee seriously think that disarming law abiding citizens will deter serious crime involving firearms, when 17 years after Howard’s gun laws were introduced we know that it does not?

In 1997, the law abiding firearms’ owners of Australia felt obliged to do the right thing and complied with the new gun laws.

Seventeen years later, I can assure the Committee that lawful firearm holders in Australia no longer hold to that point of view and will use every legal means at their disposal available to oppose any further draconian legislation.

e. the effect banning semi-automatic handguns would have on the number of illegally held firearms in Australia.

RESPONSE

Now we are getting to the nub of the issue. If the Committee was being honest this term of reference would have been placed first in order. After all this is the reason why the Committee was set up in the first place. Page 6 Just for the record I do not have a pistol and I voluntarily surrendered my pistol licence about eight (8) years ago when I was diagnosed with cancer. However, I have a good deal of regard for those people who pursue the discipline of pistol shooting and I know from personal experience that these same sports men and women would be the first to inform the police if they saw any person acting in an untoward manner. Like my fellow rifle club members, pistol shooters are unwilling to tolerate any behavior which puts their sport at risk. I understand that it was a pistol club in Melbourne which alerted the authorities to the behavior of a Chinese national who later went on a shooting rampage. Afterwards he was found to have a small cache of illegal firearms. Apparently, the man was granted a pistol licence by the responsible Minister, after the Chinese community complained that their member had been discriminated against by being denied a pistol licence. If this was the case (and I have no reason to doubt my informant) then clearly you can legislate but you can’t stop illegal activity be it in relation to firearms or some other unrelated activity, such as manufacturing illegal drugs which probably kill more people in Australia every year, than all firearm incidents for the past decade, including those involving police. Again, the answer to better controlling the spread of illegal firearms is stiffer penalties and better training and equipment for police forces, including the introduction of “no fault” legislation to protect police officers, who have to resort to lethal force in carrying out of their duties.

I don’t consider that a ban on semi-automatic pistols would not have any real effect on crimes involving firearms in Australia any more than it has done in the UK. Europe may be closer to Britain for the purpose of smuggling in firearms (and easier to get away with) but criminals who want guns to carry on the street are determined and will overcome the problems of shipment from all over the world to get what they want.

f. stricter storage requirements and the use of electronic alarm systems for guns stored in homes

RESPONSE

We already have strict laws for the storing of firearms at home. Mine is not alarmed. I turned off the alarm system years ago because the lizards kept setting it off. My storage has been inspected by the Queensland Police and complies with legislation. Alarm systems don’t deter determined house breakers and burglars but good policing will.

I totally reject your “we must be seen to be doing something” mentality which currently pervades the Senate and I consider underpins the reason for this enquiry.

g. the extent to which there exists anomalies in federal, state and territory laws regarding the ownership, sale, storage and transit across state boundaries of legal firearms, and how these laws relate to one another

Page 7

RESPONSE

Australia’s states do have different laws, we all know that. For example, the laws in WA are draconian and the reason why I (and would think many other shooters) don’t go there for . Since the average competitive Full bore rifle shooter in Queensland spends about $7 500 pa on their sport WA is missing out on the tourism dollars.

This term of reference is about legal firearms crossing state boundaries. I have often taken my legal firearms across the border into NSW and the ACT. So what is the purpose of this term of reference? This is not the US where every county and state has a jurisdictional border. I’m licenced and comply with the NSW and ACT laws on storage, whilst I am in that state or territory because I am a law abiding citizen and a responsible member of a rifle club.

In recent years the Commonwealth and States have gone out of their way to close down rifle ranges, to the detriment of law-abiding citizens who have an interest in the . Rifle and pistol ranges are where people handle firearms in a controlled environment and safety is paramount. When ranges are closed down, people have no choice but to go into the bush and do their shooting. Most people are responsible but there will always be people in our society who are not. I know from personal experience that people in the US will go to wooded areas in built up areas and shoot their pistols. This type of behaviour is an absolute anathema to me and it only serves to reinforce my view that pistol and rifle clubs operating at approved ranges remain the best means of safely managing firearms in Australia.

CONCLUSION

My final submission to the Committee is that you cannot legislate the banning of firearms in our society for law abiding citizens and then expect the criminal element to co-operate and conform.

In the early 1970s I was in Jamaica, about 10 years after the country gained its independence from Britain. The Independence slogan was “out of many, one people” acknowledging that Jamaica was an ethnically diverse country. Crime involving firearms was rampant, and some eight (8) fatal took place in Kingston most nights of the week. The Government of Jamaica headed by socialist PM Michael Manley (trading on his father’s good reputation) was determined to re-make society by driving out the white middle class, by violence and intimidation and nationalizing the country’s industry. Worse still, the political dichotomy of Jamaica pitted black against brown, with two dominant political parties. For example, I recall that a brown truck driver, held up and robbed at gunpoint near where I was living in Jack’s Hill, was shot and killed because his killers said “he was not black enough.”

The Jamaican Government’s eventual response was to introduce new laws aimed at controlling the spread of firearms, with its attendant and spiraling crime rate. The laws were known locally as Page 8 “gun court”. The police could enter a home without warrant and arrest a person for something as minor as being in possession of a spent case. The court proceedings were held in camera and people were sentenced to indefinite detention in a “stalag” type prison in Up Park Camp Road, adjacent to the Army barracks. Nevertheless, the rule of law was not completed obliterated by Jamaica’s legislators, because the “gun court” laws were eventually and successfully challenged by reference to Australian case law.

Today, Kingston is one of the most dangerous cities on the planet, with out of control armed criminal gangs running the city. Apparently, the Jamaican Police have a “shoot on sight” policy for armed criminals but that still doesn’t appear to deter them.

Draconian firearms laws failed in Jamaica and certainly had no effect on the activities of armed criminals. Once again however, it was the law abiding citizens who were asked to pay the price for the “gun court” laws, with erosion of their personal liberties.

I have devoted considerable time to writing this submission knowing full well that what I think will probably not be of any consequence to the people involved in this enquiry. Like other people who own firearms my viewpoint will be dismissed by self-interested Senators with their own agenda and Canberra-centric social scientists, who are completely out of touch with middle Australia on firearms and many other issues. I was fortunate to be born in the “Lucky Country”. Now, it seems I am expected to just stand by and see all the hard work of my forebears destroyed by a self-interested minority trying to remain relevant in the Australian Senate.

To conclude Brisbane Mariners Rifle Club members consider that the Committee’s enquiry is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt by certain members of the Senate to impose further draconian legislation on Australia’s shooting disciplines, under the guise of doing something about gun related violence perpetrated by criminal elements in our society. The Club considers that better resourcing and training for police and border protection agencies is required to combat illegal firearms’ activity, combined with stiffer sentences for unlicensed persons found in possession of firearms, whatever their origin. The Club considers that the Committee already has access to reliable data that show Australia’s shooting disciplines are not the cause of firearm’s related violence in Australian society. Further, the experiences of Britain and Jamaica which introduced draconian legislation to combat gun related violence show that criminal elements are not deterred from firearms’ crime, but the right of law abiding citizens to pursue their sporting interests is taken from them when draconian legislation is enacted.