An open letter to Australia’s police ministers:

Gentlemen, tomorrow each of you is a key player in what can be a proud national moment or a giant squib in Australian history. You stand at a fork in a road, where one path is paved with the pre–Port Arthur excuses to continue to embrace US-style policies that consider it reasonable for virtually anyone to own a gun – an instrument designed for one purpose: to kill. The USA in 1994, with 250 million people, had 39,250 deaths from firearms, a 64 percent increase from 1968. The other fork takes us down the path of Britain and Japan, where, in populations of 57 million and 124 million respectively, and with tougher gun laws now being promised, they had 70 and 34 gun deaths each in a recent year.

John Howard speaks for all civilised Australians in understanding that we’ve been staring at a sign on the first road. It reads: “Go back. You’re going the wrong way!” It has taken 35 gruesome deaths to finally drag bipartisan support to this issue. Thirteen other massacres in the past ten years in Australia and New Zealand, where between five and 13 victims died, were apparently not horrendous enough to motivate political courage. Neither were the 522 gun deaths in Australia in 1994, dominated by suicides and domestic killings.

Many Australians have found the pandering to the gun lobby to be the low-water mark of Australian politics. Many are also bracing for the excuses. Let’s rehearse some of the main ones.

“Killers will always get guns.” Britain’s tough gun laws didn’t stop Dunblane, they argue. But no laws will eliminate all gun violence. Just as our internationally acclaimed policies on road deaths have given us our lowest ever road toll, John Howard’s proposals will almost certainly reduce gun violence in Australia.

“Restrict military-style guns, OK. But most models of semi-automatic rifle are not dangerous.” Not true. Although two-thirds of the victims of local mass shootings were shot with military-style semi-automatic rifles using “high power” centrefire ammunition designed for the battlefield, a large proportion also died at the hands of men wielding the most common semi-automatic rifle of them all: the ubiquitous .22 calibre “bunny gun”. Although these fire “low-power” rimfire rounds, .22 semi-automatic rifles have been used as the principal weapon in four mass shootings in Australia and New Zealand. The police killed at Crescent Head were shot by such a gun.

“Victoria has gun registration&nbps;.&nbps;.&nbps;.&nbps;tens of thousands of gun owners refuse to register their guns.” Oh really? Without registration, no one knows how many guns are in the community. If the gun lobby claims to know the size of this group, and claims to represent law-abiding shooters, why doesn’t it report them? The gun lobby likes to talk up the number of shooters and guns in the community. My files on John Tingle’s utterances on unlicensed shooters in New South Wales include “half a million” (11 July 1995) “as high as 700,000” (13 July 1995), and “as many as 750,000” (8 August 1995) – a 50 percent growth in less than a month! Ted Drane of the Sporting Shooters’ Association said on Channel 7 this week that there were “2 to 3 million” shooters in Australia, which means nearly one in four is said to have guns. Yet the New South Wales Health Department’s recent survey found that only 11.7 percent of those interviewed reported a gun in their house. This translates to some 250,000 houses in a state with 32 percent of the national population. And if many lied, having refused to be licensed, are we not entitled to ask why?

“Many won’t register their guns.” Some, often with criminal intent, don’t register their cars, boats or vicious dogs either. So do we hear a call for the abandonment of car registration? Registration will only work if it is accompanied by a high-profile confidential hotline, like Operation Noah for drugs, where people can report those they know who are keeping illegal guns. Penalties for possession of unregistered guns after the amnesty period must also be spectacular and police directed to take all reports seriously. Anything less will be an abject failure.

“Let’s have a prohibited persons register.” The gun lobby argues that 99.9 percent of gun owners are totally law-abiding: leave us alone and crack down on criminals and the mentally ill, they argue. If there are a million gun owners in the country, by the gun lobby’s own rhetoric this means there are 1,000 who are dangerous. The AMA’s code of ethics already allows doctors to report those who endanger the community, whether it be the poorly sighted who refuse to stop driving or the shooter who exhibits violent intent. However, prior to Martin Bryant, Australia and New Zealand’s 13 gun massacres in which five or more people died resulted in 92 deaths. Seventy-one (88 percent) of the victims in these incidents were killed by someone with no record of mental illness. Besides further stigmatising the mentally ill, a register of the mentally suspect would still allow the majority of potential killers to get guns.

“How can we possibly fund a buy-back?” Yacht owners pay mooring fees. Recreational pilots pay landing fees. Car drivers pay licence fees, hefty registration and parking fees. The users pay. It is likely that there will be many more legal guns remaining in the community than the semi-automatics that the prime minister wants recalled. These hundreds of thousands of legal guns that will remain will each need to be registered. Some would argue, “Why should their owners escape the sort of fees that are standard and accepted for other user groups?” If each gun cost, say, a one-off $300 to register, a pool of money would gather that would more than pay for the one-off buy-back of prohibited weapons. Such a fee for each gun will give many pause to wonder if they really want to keep a gun. However, being a voluntary “tax”, it may motivate many shooters to ignore registration. A rise in sales tax on new guns and on all ammunition should therefore be considered.

The buy-back should also have extended to guns not proposed to be banned. There will be many with single shotguns who will be inspired by Port Arthur to hand them in. A buy-back incentive can only increase this response.

John Howard has shown remarkable leadership in setting an uncompromising minimum standard for reform. New South Wales premier Bob Carr, leader of the Opposition Peter Collins and leader of the National Party Ian Armstrong’s belated common ground has neutralised the Shooters’ Party. New South Wales Farmers, through Ian Dungess, has given its support to a total ban on semi-automatics. All that remains is for you to fulfil the will of over 90 percent of the community who want strong gun laws.