Gun owners need to understand that it isn’t a right, its a privilege the rest of us allow only if conditions are met.
If something happens that alters the situation those conditions are set for, they need to respect changes that may come.
Setting themselves up as victims, like they have here, makes me question the participants mental capacity to evaluate their own behaviours, therefore their own risk to those around them.
Two people were killed by a gun owner in circumstances where his ease of access to guns greatly increased the severity of the consequences. Communities have a right to expect gun owners to seriously appreciate the risks of their firearm possession.
Also screw the Nationals for making this a political fight, especially a rural v metro fight. This is bigger than you’re never seen dirt akubra hat and white pressed shirt with rolled up sleeves country cosplay.
I’m off work sick at the moment. I have bursts of time and lulls of sleep this week. I don’t know that I have antigun talking points; you were correct at the start when you said “most of the community don’t think of guns at all”. I genuinely don’t think about this issue all that often. I wouldn’t call myself “antigun”, More “anti guns in populated areas”. I wouldn’t even call myself educated on the topic. I had assumptions regarding the law that were wildly inaccurate.
In case I wasn’t clear prior: I’m not about taking guns away from people who need them. I’m not against hunting or sport shooting. I’ve even gone onto a range in the USA and fired rifles at targets. I was pretty good for a novice.
Not as much “awaiting an opportunity” as the possibility exists for people to snap. I don’t believe I have a breaking point where I could go killing people - I expect very few people do. But, at the same time we do need to recognise that it has happened and could happen again.
While I agree that the new law would have had no difference to that horrible double murder situation, this law has been in the pipeline since 2016 - and was initially introduced by the previous government. It was not introduced in response to recent events. The final vote on it was probably rushed ahead of the winter recess though.
I’m only vaguely aware of most of this in fact. I only know bits of this through talking to people I know with firearms licenses. I didn’t realise you needed to justify individual firearms purchases. I did know you need to secure them. I did not know you could only take them out one at a time.
I didn’t know anything about those different classifications. I can appreciate the frustration with trying to classify firearms on their level of danger. I don’t know nearly enough about guns to begin to try and classify them or participate in such a discussion. It is interesting to hear about though. I would be interested in watching a debate on the topic involving informed parties, and how the assorted firearms are classified. It sounds like an area my needle could be moved on.
I do like your rifle, also. Was that a rifle issued to soldiers? My grandfather served in both world wars. I wonder whether he had such a rifle? He died before I was born so I never met him. Reading service record has been cool though.
And we should also recognise that mental health statistics are not trending in a positive direction, particularly among young people who will, in the coming years, be adults capable of legally owning firearms. It’s pretty common to hear something along the lines of “I never knew” or “I didn’t think they were capable of that” from family and friends following a suicide or act of public violence. Whether people are inherently “good” or “bad” isn’t what should be focused on here.
Woah. Someone other than Mountaineer read this. On a thread this deep on a small community on a post two days old. I’m impressed!
It’s a bit of a tangent, but I don’t buy into the notion that mental health is declining. It’s being discussed in younger generations. The issues were always there. I think it’s great that it is discussed.
The prevalence of mental illness among young people (aged 15-34) has more than doubled within the last decade. It’s possible that is partially due to younger people being more open about their mental health, but the trend is still very significant when compared to middle-aged and older people.
A hell of a lot of the rise in diagnosis is the attitudinal and knowledge change thats happened in this area. I’m not yet middle aged and even in my lifetime i’m noticing the attitudinal difference.
I can’t stop to find it, but there was actually a satirical post on Lemmy All yesterday about this, might still be high in the feed.
It’s not just diagnosis that has spiked, it’s also hospitalisations. The rapid decline of the mental health of young people between 2010 and 2015 is consistent throughout the Western world, not just in Australia. I don’t find it believable that a decrease in stigma or an increase in education could be the sole cause of the same phenomenon around the world, during the same short time period and to such extreme degrees.
Well diagnosis comes before hospitalisation. The receptiveness and recognition has increased throughout the whole population, led by our health systems.
That recognition ‘Led by our health systems’ is actually very important in your other point about the western world moving in unison on this. Sure there is a geographical distance, but due to the shared histories, language, and dominance of the US on the open web the ‘western world’, as its called, is more in unison than we are with other potential country groupings, say in Aus and NZ’s case the Asia Pacific group of nations.
Take this general scenario of closeness, and magnify it even more for the western world’s medical community, due to shared medical and ancillary companys, journals in english, similar medical systems with transferrable skillsets, and the medical schooling.
I find its not hard at all to believe suchxa rapid and in unison rise.
I do have an addendum, i believe there might be some over diagnosis occuring, through no ones fault. But the sudden acceptance, i think, is leading people to overly assess their own and warranted unhappiness and externalise these feelings as more acute medical issues than they need to be, of course that might be creating a treatment spiral with some people, which is a whole thing in itself!
So i guess i don’t disagree with your point really, it probably is due to more factors, but i think the acceptance and actually diagnosing people’s mental health rather than ignoring it is doing the heavy lifting.
Yes, it’s a literal weapon of war.
This particular one was probably never fired in anger, although it has got service markings.
Your grandfather likely carried one yes.
By the time of WW2 they were hopelessly out of date, but the ADF didn’t want to invest in retooling.
They even saw limited use in Korea in the 50’s.
The Factory at Lithgow has a small, volunteer run museum and their website has some history if you’re interested: https://www.lithgowsafmuseum.org.au/milproduction.html