Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697641768637.pdf (Australia)
The ability of Australian Law Enforcement Authorities to eliminate gun –related violence in the community.

Committee Secretary Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee I have some concerns in relation the heading of this Committee hearing as it is pie in the sky wishing to believe that it is even possible.

Organized crime and other participants concerned with profiteering from drug distribution use firearms to as a means of intimidating competitors and for pay backs.
Almost without fail, every time that Police make a drug bust, they uncover a cache of illegally held firearms.

It is impossible to disassociate gun violence from drug trafficking.

The committee should be focusing on organized crime instead of legitimate firearm owners and this should have been reflected in the heading.
There doesn’t seem to be much of a point made in relation to illegally imported firearms since the majority of handguns (which have been registered for 80-90 years) confiscated by Police have never been registered.

On the 31st May 2012 the Hobart Mercury reported that Tas Pol confiscated what they describe as a selective fire SKS assult rifle as a car drove off the Spirit of Tasmania ferry.
What make this significant is that this firearm is military grade (selective fire means that is capable of a firing rate same as a machine gun ).

These firearms were never available to legitimate firearm owners even prior to the National Firearms Agreement.

Quite clearly this was illegally imported.

This firearm that was featured on the front page of the paper that day sported a drum magazine.

On doing some research I discovered that these drum magazines hold 75 rounds.
These firearms have the potential to cause far more devastation than a handgun.

SOLUTION In order to discourage these kind of imports, it is vital that the Aust Customs service has its funding increased to meet these challenges.

Only a tiny fraction of shipping containers entering Australia are searched due to lack of manpower and this is contributing to the ability of organized crime to access illegally imported firearms.

The lethality of illegally held firearms makes an interesting study.
The ability of Australian law enforcement authorities to eliminate gun-related violence in the communitySubmission 247 I read a Sydney Morning Herald article that put the number of licensed firearm owners at 1.2 million prior to the NFA and at about 500,000 after.

This means that 750,000 licensed firearm owners disappeared off the screen most likely with their semi auto firearms.

Most likely, more banned firearms remain in the community than were handed in 1996.

It is simply impossible to know.


This begs the question – why have we not had another mass shooting.

The answer is simple- our basic humanity, not gun laws prevent mass shootings.

There are now 750,000 licensed firearm owners who privately hold more firearms than after the NFA and yet no mass shootings.

This of course doesn’t include the 4 (non firearm) mass killings that claimed 41 innocent lives between 2000 and 2012.

The ABS has kept track of gun murders from 1915 to the present day.
These have varied between a yearly low of 15 to a high of 124 and in only 4 years did the number exceed 100.

1996 was one of these at 104.

The current number is between 30 -35.

The reality is that the chances of any one individual in a population of 23,000,000 being gunned down are astronomically insignificant.

The danger of firearms to the general population has been greatly inflated by the media.

There simply is no epidemic of gun violence.


In order to put this into perspective we need to compare it to a list of causes of premature deaths in Australia (many of these come from the health warnings displayed on cigarette packets and these vary from year to year) Tobacco- 19019, Alcohol-2831, suicide -2500 (it is sobering when you realize more Australians on average, suicide a week, every week than were killed at Port Arthur 18 years ago.
This is certainly a more worthy cause for support than proposing punitive regulation aimed at legitimate firearm owners – mental health initiatives such as Beyond Blue, headspace etc should receive more govt support).

Illegal drugs- 863 (These deaths will always out number gunshot deaths – the real face of drug trafficking), asbestos 600, murders 203 (gun murders represent about 17% of these) , house fires 100.
When you factor in that about 90% of gun murders are carried out by perpetrators who aren’t licensed and are using an unregistered firearm, it becomes fairly evident that legitimate firearm owners are not the problem.

Target shooting as a sport is also benign as far as death and injury to its participants.

There has never been a recorded accidental shooting death or injury on any gun range in Australia.
Many other sports cannot make the same claim and in 2007 Sports Medicine Australia data showed that Australia wide, 4000 football players were sent to hospital for injuries acquired on the field.

In 2002-2003 Tasmanian footy players recorded 1006.3 injuries per 100,000 participants – most of these were head injuries and Tasmanian scuba divers recorded 653.4 injuries per 100,000 participants.
In 2010 -11, an Australian Institute Health and Welfare study showed about 12,000 Australians were hospitalized as a result of skating, scootering, skiing or climbing on play equipment.

Yep even having fun is more dangerous than a day at the gun range.

The negative stigma attached to the shooting sports is simply undeserved.
I don’t believe that it is necessary to increase the powers of law enforcement authorities in relation to technological advances in illegal firearm manufacture since unauthorized manufacture of firearms The ability of Australian law enforcement authorities to eliminate gun-related violence in the communitySubmission 247 is already punishable by a jail term.

There is no difference between 3D printing and turning up a firearm with a lathe in someone’s backyard.

There is no point in reinventing the wheel.


I have no problem with addition resources being granted to foil illegal imports as long as it is not used as an additional hurdle to discourage legitimate firearm imports.

Penalties for illegal possession and use are adequate and if the judiciary applied the full force of the law, drive by shooters and gun thieves would find themselves doing jail time.
I am reticent to recommend mandatory minimum jail sentences since the judiciary should be able to conduct sentencing without hindrance.

It is disappointing however to see many of these individuals get off with a slap on the wrist.
Banning legitimate handguns will have no effect on illegally held handguns since the drug trade makes possibly billions of dollars in profits every year and with that kind of money, accessing firearms from overseas, from Police stations, Police vehicles and military armories as well as backyard manufacture would not present a problem.

A further problem with this proposition is that firearms regulation is a State responsibility not a Federal power.
In states like Tasmania, that would be hard to justify since according to Assistant Police Commissioner Donna Adams, speaking to the Sunday Tasmanian April 13 2014, stated only 2% of Tasmanian thefts involve firearms and there had only been 6 armed robberies involving firearms in the year to that date.

By successfully applying for a firearms license, gun owners have satisfied the Commissioner that they are fit and proper people.

A gun license is essentially a certificate of good character.
Legitimate firearms owners by definition have to be accountable.

They are accountable for their own actions; it is manifestly unfair and unreasonable therefore for them to be made accountable for the actions of people over which they have no control.

There is also talk of tightening up storage laws –before that happens it needs to be acknowledged that in many instances the current storage laws have prevented the theft of firearms.
I was told by one of my acquaintances that his shed was broken into and the only thing that was stolen was the alcohol out of his fridge but the gun safe was untouched.

On the other hand another acquaintance told me that thieves had taken his safe after they had cut the floor joists and wall studs with a chainsaw.

As it stands it is physically impossible for a normal human being to lever a gun safe off the structure of a residence without tools.
It is physically impossible to break into a gun safe without tools.

It is also beyond the physical capabilities of a normal person to lift and carry a gun safe holding a number of firearms.

This requires the use of a trolley.

It needs to be pointed out that determined thieves are able to take away ATMs.

No thief goes to a residence carrying this kind of gear unless their purpose is to steal firearms and they know that firearms are present.
This draws into question the security of the various firearms databases.

When Jason Clare was federal Justice Minister he stated in an interview that there were approximately 16 different data bases with firearm owners details in them.

There are simply too many people with access to firearm storage details.
The ability of Australian law enforcement authorities to eliminate gun-related violence in the communitySubmission 247 Has anyone challenged the wisdom of having the location of every legally held firearm stored on a central data base?

Especially since let’s face it, there is no such thing as a secure data base especially since the Pentagon and some of the world’s largest companies have had their data bases compromised.

A registry is potentially providing a shopping list to organized crime.
Having monitored alarm systems certainly won’t stop the theft of firearms, in fact the local gun shop was robbed a couple of years ago.

The thief managed this by stealing a four wheel drive and smashing through a concrete block wall at the rear of the shop (there is no suggestion that we ban cars because they are used in the course of criminal activity).

Despite having a monitored alarm, the thief made his getaway before the Police the Police arrived.
Having had a monitored alarm system myself, I would not recommend them as it is possible to subvert their operation.

It is now coming to light they will also not work with optic fibre.

SOLUTION Close down the registries –they have proved to be white elephants in countries like New Zealand and Canada.

In Canada on the day that the legislation was passed to close the registry down, Vic Teows the Canadian Minister for Justice stated that the “ registry has not saved one Canadian life”.
The same can also be said of the Australian registries and in fact not one crime has been solved as a result of the existence of the registry.

Yes Police can identify stolen firearms but that can happen without it if gun owners keep their receipts.

Knives don’t have registration numbers; despite this, crimes carried out with knives are still solved.

As a crime fighting tool, the registry is of no practical use and it does not make Australia any safer.
If organized crime is accessing the database, it is counterproductive and the same arguments that have been advanced to give us the gun laws we have now also apply to closing down of the registries.

It is an indulgence that we can no longer afford.

In order to take illegally held firearms out of the community, the money saved by closing down the registries can go towards ongoing buybacks.
Many of the people who kept their semi autos after the buyback 18 years ago may now be more favorably disposed to handing in these firearms if they could get a fair price for them.

Criminals will never hand their firearms in but if the authorities are fair dinkum about taking firearms out of the community this should be seriously considered.

If they are not, then the problem is obviously not as big as it is claimed.
This won’t solve the problem of drive by shootings or hold ups or even murders, because drug abuse is at the core of many of the ills in society – you cannot compartmentalize criminal firearm use as a separate problem without first dealing with the core issues that promote drug use.

Eliminate these and the media will have nothing to hyper sensationalize.

Any perceived gun problem will go away.


The biggest peer reviewed study on the effects of the Gun Buyback in 2006 by Dr Jannine Baker and Dr Samara Mcphedran came to the conclusion that it achieved nothing.

A study by Dr Lee and Dr Suardi in 2008 also came to the same conclusion.

In the words of a prominent New Zealand jurist “Gun laws need to be based on solid research, not pious hopes”.
The ability of Australian law enforcement authorities to eliminate gun-related violence in the communitySubmission 247 I humbly ask that the Senate Standing Committee hold these hearings in a fair and unbiased manner in regards to legitimate firearm owners.

Kind Regards Carlo Di Falco The ability of Australian law enforcement authorities to eliminate gun-related violence in the communitySubmission 247