BARVENNON.COM
JOHNES
LATEST  SPIN
KILLERBELT
GUNS
TRANSPORT
FUTURE
SOUTH ASIA
LINKS

25 April 2000.
AUSTRALIAN   SPIN
Editorial opinion expressed on this site is unbiassed by any advertising dollar.

AGE PENSIONER RAPED.
IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST, CIVIL LIBERTIES MUST BE CURTAILED.

Australia has not allowed it's citizens to carry handguns for half a century.  Yet with a population less than one tenth that of the USA, we seem to get more than our share of horrific civil violence.  Gangsters regularly "shoot it out" (i.e. the Milperra Massacre") killing bystanders, and we have the hugest mass murder incident (~40) by gun.  Gangsters drive by shooting up police stations.  It seems that despite their illegality our criminals have no problems obtaining handguns.

Perhaps in retaliation the police seem to be regularly shooting citizens.  In a population less than 20 million we seem to get about five or six people (who are subsequently described as "crazy" or "suicidal") shot by police each year for allegedly waving a knife around on the beach or in their own home.  Not actually threatening anybody except the police, perhaps only threatening the police because they want to approach and take the knife away from them.

Circa 1996 the shooting of about 40 people by a person who was in and out of psychiatric help caused the Federal government to legislate restrictions on semi-automatic rifles and pump action shotguns.  The knifing of an off duty policeman by a teenager outside a Sydney hotel circa 1998 prompted our state parliament to enact draconian search laws.  Any NSW citizen can now be stopped and body searched on a policeman's suspicion.  The premier proudly proclaimed that of 50 searches carried out in the past week only one of the searched people was not carrying a knife.

(That same week two students I knew at the Sydney Institute of Technology complained of being searched.  Neither was carrying a weapon, and (irrelevantly, I am sure) neither was white anglo saxon, although they may have been protestant...)

Recently, 98% (about 200) of the pubescent male citizens of the small & remote town of Wee Waa voluntarily contributed samples of DNA in an attempt to identify the brutal rapist of a 98 year old pensioner.  Some days later police made an arrest.  A lawyer from the Aboriginal Legal Aid Service was retained for the arrested man's defense.

It is so obvious.   We must enact more restrictions on our civil liberties.

QED
 

ARCHIVES