24 October, 2015. 8:35
ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A STUDY FUNDED in part by The Greens and various anti-gun groups has discovered that the inability to read and write often goes hand-in-hand with legally owning a firearm.
The report also found that people who enjoy shooting guns are twice as likely to be involved in a road rage incident and to vocally air their deep loathing of cyclists. Sadly, owners of a legally registered firearm are up to twenty times more likely to own a four-wheel-drive vehicle that never gets taken off road.
Lead researcher Liam Wasser has outlined that “there’s only one type of person who owns a registered gun”.
“These people are strange,” she said. “We don’t fully understand what makes a person want to legally own a firearm. I mean, plenty of farmers and agriculture professionals have guns but they’re intelligent enough not to register them.”
It’s true that primary producers have a legal and moral purpose to own a gun, for example, the humane destruction of livestock and for shooting feral animals. But what the study has concluded, is more and more people from the up’n’coming fringes of our capital cities are wanting to own guns, legally.
That fact has sent a shiver down the spine of Detective Superintendent Grant Stork from the Castle Hill LAC.
“Normal, literate people are typically the ones who own illegal firearms,” said Stork. “The drug trade is fuelling the gun-violence in this country, so we aim to take the guns out of the hands of these people.”
However, the 21-year veteran said that these people, who jump through the many hoops and undergo extensive background checks, just to own “a rifle that they can shoot down a range at nothing” is what alarms him.
“There’s people in the community who want a gun so bad, they subject themselves to hundreds of forms, interviews, safety and training seminars and a very, very close look through their history,” he said. “That’s what keeps me up at night.”
