Gun laws of Australia

Template:Gun politics by country Gun politics have only become a notable issue in Australia since the 1980s. Low levels of violent crime through much of the 20th century kept levels of public concern about firearms low. However, in the last two decades of the century, following several mass killings and rising concern, the Australian Governments co-ordinated more restrictive firearms legislation with all State Governments.

Currently, about 5.2% of Australian adults (765,000 people) own and use firearms for purposes such as hunting, controlling feral animals, collecting, and target shooting.

Current Australian firearm laws

State laws govern the possession and use of firearms in Australia. These laws were largely aligned under the 1996 National Agreement on Firearms. Anyone wishing to possess or use a firearm must have a Firearms Licence and, with some exceptions, be over the age of 18. Owners must have secure storage for their firearms.

Before someone can buy a firearm, he or she must obtain a Permit To Acquire. The first permit has a mandatory 28-day delay before it is first issued. In some states (e.g. Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales), this is waived for second and subsequent firearms of the same class. For each firearm a "Genuine Reason" must be given, relating to pest control, hunting, target shooting, or collecting. Self-defense is not accepted as a reason for issuing a licence, though it may be legal under certain circumstances to use a legally held firearm for self-defence. [4]

Each firearm in Australia must be registered to the owner by serial number. Some states allow an owner to store or borrow another person's registered firearm of the same category.

Firearms categories

Firearms in Australia are grouped into Categories with different levels of control. The categories are:

• Category A: Rimfire rifles (not semi-automatic), shotguns (not pump-action or semi-automatic), air rifles, and paintball markers.

• Category B: Centrefire rifles (not semi-automatic), muzzleloading firearms made after 1 January 1901.

• Category C: Semi-automatic rimfire rifles holding 10 or fewer rounds and pump-action or semi-automatic shotguns holding 5 or fewer rounds. (Restricted: only primary producers, occupational shooters, collectors and some clay target shooters can own functional Category C firearms)

• Category D: Semi-automatic centrefire rifles, pump-action/semi-automatic shotguns holding more than 5 rounds (functional Category D firearms are restricted to occupational shooters; collectors may own deactivated Category D firearms).

• Category H: Handguns including air pistols, deactivated handguns and guns less than 65 cm long. Target shooters are limited to handguns of .38 calibre  or less.

(Participants in "approved" competitions may acquire handguns up to .45", currently Single Action Shooting and Metallic Silhouette. IPSC shooting is not "approved" for the larger calibres, for unstated reasons. Category H barrels must be at least 100 mm (3.94") long for revolvers, and 120 mm (4.72") for semi-automatic pistols, and magazines are restricted to 10 rounds. Handgun collectors are exempt from the laws stated above.)

• Category R/E: Restricted weapons: machine guns, rocket launchers, assault rifles, flame-throwers, anti-tank guns, Howitzers, artillery, etc. (Collectors in some states only, weapons must be comprehensively deactivated. Deactivated firearms are still subject to the same storage and licensing requirements as 'live' firearms in many states.)

Antique firearms can in some states be legally bought without licences. In other states they are subject to the same requirements as modern firearms.

All single-shot muzzleloading firearms manufactured before 1 January 1901 are considered antique firearms. Four states require licences for antique percussion revolvers and cartridge repeating firearms but in Queensland and Victoria a person may possess such a firearm without a license, so long as the firearm is registered.

Australia also has very tight restrictions on items which are far less controlled in comparable societies such as the UK. Air pistols, elsewhere unrestricted, are as difficult to get as centrefire and rimfire handguns, and low-powered airguns are as difficult as cartridge arms to license. Airsoft guns and replica firearms are banned in most states. Suppressors (or 'silencers') which are legal for instance in the UK and New Zealand, are extremely restricted in Australia to a few government bodies.

History

Firearms in Australian history

Firearms were first introduced to Australia with European settlement. They were used for hunting, protection of persons and crops, in crime and fighting crime, and in many military engagements. From the landing of the First Fleet on 26 January 1788 there was conflict with aborigines over game, access to fenced land, and spearing of livestock. Firearms were vital to protect explorers and settlers from Aboriginal attack. A number of punitive raids and massacres of aborigines were carried out in a series of local conflicts. The history of these conflicts is contentious (see History wars).

From the beginning there were controls on firearms. The firearms issued to convicts (for meat hunting) and settlers (for hunting and protection) were stolen and misused, and this resulted in more controls. In January 1796, David Collins wrote that 'several attempts had been made to ascertain the number of arms in the possession of individuals, as many were feared to be in the hands of those who committed depredations; the crown recalled between two and three hundred stands of arms, but not 50 stands were accounted for'.

Australian colonists also used firearms in conflict with bushrangers; in duels, the last in 1854; in armed rebellions, such as the Castle Hill convict rebellion in 1804 and the 1854 Eureka rebellion. The Eureka Stockade in 1854 arose as a result of Government and police abuses against gold miners. A large force of police and soldiers assaulted the miners stockade. Six soldiers and twenty-two miners were killed.

From the 1850s to the 1950s, Australians developed a strong volunteer tradition in preparing defense against possible invaders, and sent volunteer expeditionary forces to most British wars. From this arose an enthusiastic civil marksmanship movement, a form of military reserve supported under the Defence Act until as late as 1996. The movement exists to this day in the fullbore Rifle Clubs affiliated with the State and National Rifle Associations of Australia. The highest trophy shows the significance of this sport to the nation: the Queen's Prize.

Game animals, in particular rabbits, wild ducks and kangaroos, were an important source of food and income for rural Australians. From settlement through into the 1970s Australian and immigrant families developed new land farms, and hunting provided security of food supply in sometimes desperate economic circumstances.

Federation and the rise of regulation in the 20th century

Gun laws were the responsibility of each colony and since Federation in 1901, of each state. The Commonwealth does not have constitutional authority over firearms, but it controls customs and military matters, and the external affairs power can be used to enforce internal control over matters agreed in external treaties.

During the 1920s, Australia, Canada and Great Britain became concerned about the rise of communism after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and imposed restrictions on handguns. However the rise of organised crime in Sydney and Melbourne, and many lurid underworld murders was also a definite factor These restrictions have increased over the succeeding decades. In New South Wales, handguns were effectively banned after World War II but the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games sparked a new interest in the sport of pistol shooting and laws were changed to allow the sport to develop.

Rifles and shotguns were less restricted than handguns. State gun laws varied widely. Western Australia and the Northern Territory had severe restrictions even on sporting rifles and shotguns, but in Queensland and Tasmania they could be bought without restrictions.

Fully automatic arms were banned on the Australian mainland from the 1930s, but remained legal in Tasmania until 1996.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Cold War concerns about ex-military rifles falling into the hands of communist radicals led New South Wales to place restrictions on the legal ownership of rifles of a military calibre (see: .303/25) while members of rifle clubs and military rifle clubs could own ex-military rifles. In the 1970s these restrictions were relaxed in New South Wales and military style rifles (both bolt-action and semi-automatic) once again became widely available, except in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

By the beginning of the 1980s, the relative popularity of shooting and the prevalence of firearms in the community began to fall as social attitudes changed and urbanisation increased. The rise of new values including feminism, environmental awareness and media reports of American gun violence created an awareness of gun control as a potential issue. The 1981 publication of Richard Harding's book "Firearms and Violence in Australian Life" and conferences in several cities involved academics, criminologists, police representatives and gun control activists. As in other countries, public concern over violence and its possible links to media violence also gave rise to a general increase in support for gun control and increased media involvement in the issue. Gun control activism in Australia became organised with the formation in 1981 of the "Committee to Control Gun Misuse" in Victoria, later to become Gun Control Australia.

1984 - 1996 multiple killings

From 1984 to 1996, multiple killings aroused public concern. The 1984 Milperra massacre was a major incident in a series of conflicts between various 'outlaw motorcycle gangs'. (These gangs are a major component of organised crime in Australia and continue to arm themselves illegally.) In 1987, the Hoddle Street massacre and the Queen Street massacre took place in Melbourne. In response, several states required the registration of all guns, and restricted the availability of self-loading rifles and shotguns. In the Strathfield massacre in New South Wales, 1991, two were killed with a knife, and five more with a firearm. Tasmania passed a law in 1991 for firearm purchasers to obtain a license, though enforcement was light. Firearm laws in Tasmania and Queensland remained relatively relaxed for longarms. In 1995, Tasmania had the second lowest rate of homicides per head of population.

Shooting massacres in Australia and other English-speaking countries often occurred close together in time. Forensic psychiatrists attribute this to copycat behaviour, which is in many cases triggered by sensational media treatment. Mass murderers study media reports and imitate the actions and equipment that are sensationalised in them.

The Port Arthur massacre and its consequences

The Port Arthur massacre in 1996 transformed gun control legislation in Australia. Thirty five people were killed and 21 wounded when Martin Bryant opened fire on shop owners and tourists with two semi-automatic rifles: an AR-15 and an L1A1 SLR. Six weeks after the Dunblane massacre in Scotland, this mass killing at the notorious former convict prison at Port Arthur horrified the Australian public.

Bryant said he obtained these weapons from a gun dealer without holding the required firearms licence. In response to the massacre, Prime Minister John Howard, then newly elected, immediately took the gun law proposals developed from the report of the 1988 National Committee on Violence and urged the states to adopt them under a National Firearms Agreement. This was necessary because the Australian Constitution does not give the Commonwealth power to enact gun laws.

The proposals included a ban on all semi-automatic rifles and all semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, and a tightly restrictive system of licensing and ownership controls. Some discussion of measures to allow owners to undertake modifications to reduce the capacity of magazine-fed shotguns occurred, but the Government decided not to permit this.

Public feeling after the Port Arthur shootings overwhelmed the opposition from gun owners' organisations and the Commonwealth cooperated with all states to agree to their proposals without change.

The Government planned a series of public meetings with farmers and sporting shooters to explain the proposed changes. Many sporting shooters viewed the proposed changes as a hasty 'knee-jerk' reaction by the Government that lacked a serious discussion of the issue beforehand. In the first meeting, on the advice of his security team, Mr. Howard wore a bullet-resistant vest, which was visible under his jacket. This was perceived as a deeply offensive act by the shooters, and their outrage was interpreted by many of the media and the public to show that ordinary shooters were dangerous and contemptible.

There were some shooters who applied to join the Liberal Party of Australia in an attempt to influence the Government, but the Government did not want to be associated with shooters who were barred from membership. A court action by 500 shooters seeking admission to membership failed in the Supreme Court of South Australia.

Because the Australian Constitution prevents the taking of property without just compensation the Federal Government decided to put a 1% levy on income tax for one year to finance the "buy back" purchase and destruction of all semi-automatic rifles including .22 rimfires, semi-automatic shotguns and pump-action shotguns. The buyback was predicted to cost $A500 million and had almost total community support.

Monash University shootings

Main article: Monash University shooting

In 2002, an international student killed two fellow students at Monash University in Victoria with pistols he had acquired as a member of a shooting club. As in 1996, the federal government urged state governments to review handgun laws, and, as a result, amended legislation was adopted in all states and territories . Changes included a 10-round magazine capacity limit, a calibre limit of not more than .38 inches (9.65 mm), a barrel length limit of not less than 120 mm (4.72 inches) for semi-automatic pistols and 100 mm (3.94 inches) for revolvers, and even stricter probation and attendance requirements for sporting target shooters. Whilst handguns for sporting shooters are nominally restricted to .38 inches as a maximum calibre, it is possible to obtain an endorsement allowing calibres up to .45 inches (11.43 mm) to be used for Metallic Silhouette or Single Action Shooting matches. These new laws were opposed by sporting shooters groups but also by their opponents, who saw it as paying for shooters to upgrade to new guns.

One government policy was to compensate shooters for giving up the sport. Approximately 25% of pistol shooters took this offer, and relinquished their licences and their right to own pistols for sport. In the state of Victoria $A21 million was spent "buying back" 18,124 firearms.

Measuring the effects of firearms laws in Australia

Changes in social problems related to firearms over time

Historically, Australia has had relatively low levels of violent crime. Overall levels of homicide and suicide have remained relatively static for several decades, while the proportion of these crimes that involved firearms has consistently declined since the early 1980s. Between 1991 and 2001, the number of firearm related deaths in Australia declined 47%.

In the year 2002/2003, over 85% of firearms used to commit murder were unregistered. In 1997-1999, more than 80% of the handguns confiscated were never legally purchased or registered in Australia. Knives are used up to 3 times as often as firearms in robberies. The majority of firearm related deaths are suicides, of which many involved the use of 'hunting rifles'.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics [5], from 1985–2000, 78% of firearm deaths in Australia were suicides, and firearm suicides have fallen from about 22% of all suicides in 1992 to 7% of all suicides in 2005. Immediately following the Buyback there was a fall in firearm suicides which was more than offset by a 10% increase in total suicides in 1997 and 1998. There were concerted efforts in suicide prevention from this time and in subsequent years the total suicide rate resumed its decline.

The number of guns stolen has fallen dramatically from an average 4,195 per year from 1994-2000 to 1,526 in 2006-2007. This is because of a campaign by police. Ironically shooting bodies, such as the Sporting Shooters’ Association of Australia’s ‘Secure Your Gun, Secure Your Sport’ drive, have also encouraged secure storage of guns. Long guns are more often stolen opportunistically in home burglaries, but few homes have handguns and a substantial proportion of stolen handguns are taken from security firms and other businesses. Only a tiny proportion, 0.06% of licensed firearms, are stolen in a given year. Only a small proportion of those firearms are recovered, and in only 3% of thefts were they afterward connected to an actual crime or found in the possession of a person charged with serious offences.

Concern has been raised about the number of smuggled pistols reaching Australia, particularly in New South Wales. However, the ‘grey market’, in which handguns that were made inoperable and then reversed to be made functional again, and longarms that have never been registered in Australia, and then made available illegally to criminals is more of a concern.

Contention over effects of the laws

In 1997, the Prime Minister appointed the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) to monitor the effects of the gun buyback. The AIC have published a number of papers reporting trends and statistics around gun ownership and gun crime, which they have found to be mostly related to illegally-held firearms. In 2002 the AIC announced that they had proof of many lives saved, but their paper which was released months later demonstrated only continuing downtrends in gun deaths since many years before the buyback.

In 2000, the American National Rifle Association claimed that violent crimes had increased in Australia since the introduction of new laws based on some highly selective statistics from newspaper articles. Federal Attorney General Daryl Williams accused the NRA of falsifying government statistics and urged the NRA to "remove any reference to Australia" from its website.

In 2003, CLASS (The Coalition of Law Abiding Sporting Shooters) stated that no benefit-cost analysis of the buyback had been published, and that scientific debate was politicised and ignored benefits of shooting and costs forced on legitimate owners. This has made very little difference to the 96% of the population who have never owned a gun, never used a gun and think that guns should not be allowed into non-military, non-police hands.

The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia states that there is no evidence that gun control restrictions in 1987, 1996 and 2002 had any impact on the already established trends.

Some researchers have claimed a dramatic effect on firearm deaths, by counting the drop in firearm suicides and ignoring rising suicides by substitute methods. One such author is Ozanne-Smith et al. (2004) in the journal Injury Prevention.

The head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn, noted that the level of legal gun ownership in New South Wales increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had had little effect on violence. In 2006, the lack of a measurable effect from the 1996 firearms legislation was reported in the British Journal of Criminology by Dr Jeanine Baker (a former state President of the SSAA(SA)) and Dr Samara McPhedran (Women in Shooting and Hunting). De Leo, Dwyer, Firman & Neulinger, studied suicide methods in men from 1979 to 1998 and found a rise in hanging suicides that started slightly before the fall in gun suicides. As hanging suicides rose at about the same rate as gun suicides fell, it is possible that there was some substitution of suicide methods.

Don Weatherburn described the Baker & McPhedran article as "reputable" and "well-conducted" and stated that the available data are insufficient to draw stronger conclusions. Weatherburn noted the importance of actively policing illegal firearm trafficking and argued that there was little evidence that the new laws had helped in this regard.

A study co-authored by Professor Simon Chapman, former convenor of the Coalition for Gun Control, argued that reduction in firearm numbers had prevented mass shootings because in the 18 years prior to the Port Arthur massacre there were 13 mass shootings and in the decade since 1996 there have been none. Data interpretation of trends in this study differs from other authors, while clearly being based on the same data. Media reports quite naturally gave Professor Chapman wide publicity. Since then, it has been revealed in a Senate Inquiry that Chapman's research would be published by the journal Injury Prevention, after the standard peer review process..

A 2008 study on the effects of the firearm buybacks by Dr Wang-Sheng Lee and Dr Sandy Suardi of Melbourne University’s Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research studied the data and concluded: "Despite the fact that several researchers using the same data have examined the impact of the NFA on firearm deaths, a consensus does not appear to have been reached. In this paper, we re-analyze the same data on firearm deaths used in previous research, using tests for unknown structural breaks as a means to identifying impacts of the NFA. The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates."

Dr Lee and Dr Suardi received criticism about their findings from scientists who believe guns create extra deaths in society.

In early 2009 this was followed by a paper from research at the Australian Institute of Suicide Prevention at Griffith University which concluded:

"The implemented restrictions may not be responsible for the observed reductions in firearms suicide. Data suggest that a change in social and cultural attitudes could have contributed to the shift in method preference.

Major players in gun politics in Australia

State governments and state police

Firearms laws are the responsibility of state governments, and usually these Governments act on the recommendations of their Police services in firearms matters. Before 1996, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia all had different laws, in Queensland long guns were not licenced; however, the owners of firearms were required to be licenced from 1988, and licences were only introduced for long guns in Tasmania in 1991. Western Australia and the Northern Territory had tight restrictions, especially on centrefire semi-automatic firearms.

Since 1996 all States subscribe to the National Agreement on Firearms (NAF). The NAF was instituted through the Australian Police Ministers Conference, with the cooperation of all states.

The Federal Government

Until 1996, the Federal Government had little role in firearms law. Following the Port Arthur massacre, the Howard Government (1996–2007), with strong media and public support, introduced uniform gun laws on the states. The former Prime Minister John Howard frequently referred to the USA to explain his opposition to civilian firearms ownership and use in Australia, stating that he did not want Australia to go "down the American path". In one interview on Sydney radio station 2GB he said "we will find any means we can to further restrict them because I hate guns... ordinary citizens should not have weapons. We do not want the American disease imported into Australia". John Howard had earlier expressed a desire to introduce restrictive gun laws when he was Opposition Leader in a 1995 interview with political journalist Laurie Oakes ([[6]]). In a television interview shortly before the tenth anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre, he reaffirmed his stance: "I did not want Australia to go down the American path. There are some things about America I admire and there are some things I don't. And one of the things I don't admire about America is their... slavish love of guns. They're evil". During the same television interview, Prime Minister Howard also stated that he saw the outpouring of grief in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre as "an opportunity to grab the moment and think about a fundamental change to gun laws in this country". The prime minister had the support of almost all voters, even those people who regularly voted against the Liberal Party.

Gun control has been a source of some friction between the National Party and the Liberal Party, who together formed the coalition Federal Government from 1996 to 2007. The National Party had strong support from rural voters, some of whom were opposed to the Federal government's moves towards gun control. The 1996 National Firearms Agreement has been blamed for the defeat of the National Party in the 1998 Queensland elections and generating much of the support for the 1997 rise of the One Nation Party.

In the November 2007 Federal election, the Australian Labor Party took over government. The new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had once been a patron of the shooting clubs at the Belmont shooting complex in Rudd's Brisbane electorate and had been an active clay target shooter when he was younger, yet he understood the importance of Labor's policy to the voters of Australia i.e. to continue supporting the National Agreement on Firearms.

Gun control organizations

Gun control groups in Australia have huge support and a high media profile. The main focus of these groups is on tightening firearm controls, reducing legal gun ownership to reduce the number of firearm-related deaths in Australia to zero. Active lobbying in Australia is conducted by two main groups: Gun Control Australia and the National Coalition for Gun Control (NCGC).

The NCGC had a high profile in the public debate up to and immediately after the Port Arthur Massacre. Rebecca Peters, Roland Browne, Simon Chapman and Reverend Tim Costello (brother of Peter Costello the former Howard Government Federal Treasurer) appeared in media reports and authored articles to support their aims. In the aftermath of Port Arthur a number of public health bodies added their support to the NCGC.

In 1996 the NCGC received the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s Community Human Rights award.

In 2003 Samantha Lee as chair of the NCGC was financed by a Churchill Fellowship to publish a paper arguing that current handgun legislation is too loose, that police officers who are shooters have a conflict of interest, and that licensed private firearm ownership per se presents a threat to women and children. In a late 2005 press release, Roland Browne as co-chair of the NCGC, advocated further restrictions on handguns.

Gun Control Australia has published a number of booklets, maintains a website and has an office in Ross House in Flinders Lane in Melbourne. The NCGC has no website or public contact details and does not solicit public membership.

Media organisations

The public debate on gun control is essentially conducted via the media. Newspaper and broadcast media usually support gun control, publishing editorials in favour of strong restrictions on firearms. Gun advocates write 'letters to the editor' to put their positions.

Pro-gun organisations

Shooting clubs have existed in Australia since the mid 1800s. They are mainly concerned with protecting the viability of hunting, collecting and target shooting sports, rather than keeping firearms for self-defence as in the USA. Australian shooters regard their sport as under permanent threat from increasingly restrictive legislation. They argue that they have been made scapegoats by politicians, the media, and anti-gun activists for the acts of criminals who generally use illegal firearms. Their evidence has found scant evidence that increasing restrictions have improved public safety, despite what they perceive as the high costs and regulatory barriers imposed on shooters in Australia.

The largest organisation of firearms owners is the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia, with over 120,000 members (2009 figures). SSAA state branches are responsible for lobbying on local issues, while SSAA National addresses Federal legislation and international issues. SSAA National has non-government organisation (NGO) status at the United Nations and is a founding member of The World Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities (WFSA), which also has NGO status. In 2002, the SSAA was the sole shooting organisation to win exemptions for handgun calibre restrictions for its Handgun Metallic Silhouette and Single Action Shooting competitions. SSAA National have a number of people working in research and lobbying roles. In 2008, they appointed journalist and media manager Tim Bannister as Federal Parliamentary lobbyist.

The Combined Firearms Council of Victoria was created in late 2002 and has been very active in the debate in Victoria. The CFCV ran advertisements in the 2002 Victorian State Election. The CFCV made voting recommendations at the 2002 and 2006 Victorian state elections, supporting specific candidates rather than political parties. Four of the six ALP MPs elevated to the front bench after the 2002 Victorian election were supported by the CFCV. A Firearms Consultative Committee, established in 2005 in Victoria, led to several changes to firearms legislation that benefited handgun users and gun collectors.

There are several other bodies, such as Field and Game Australia, the National Rifle Association of Australia and Pistol Australia which with their state counterparts concentrate on a range of sporting and political issues ranging from Olympic competition through to conservation activities. These associations have produced gold-medal winning performances at the Olympics in shotgun, and in the Commonwealth Games in rifle, pistol and shotgun. Field and Game Australia undertake a number of conservation activities and are recognised as leaders in waterfowl habitat restoration.

Shooters Party

The Shooters Party is a political party in New South Wales that "represent[s] the rights of law abiding firearms owners and users". Its founder, John Tingle, served as an elected member of the upper house of New South Wales parliament, the Legislative Council, from 1995 until he retired in late 2006. The party currently holds two seats in the Legislative Council

Other parties

The One Nation Party in 1997-98 briefly gained national prominence and had strong support from shooters. A number of minor political parties such as Liberal Democratic Party of Australia, Outdoor Recreation Party, and Country Alliance have pro-shooter platforms. The Australian Greens and former Australian Democrats policies oppose guns and deaths caused by shootings.

See also

• Gun politics
• Gun safe

References

Weapons Act 1990 (Qld)

Weapons Regulation 1996 (Qld)

Weapons Categories Regulation 1997 (Qld)

External links

• Gun Control Australia
• Sporting Shooters Association of Australia
• The Combined Firearms Council of Victoria "A political voice for shooters"
• Australian Institute of Criminology report, 1999 Firearm-related violence: the impact of the Nationwide Agreement on Firearms
• International Coalition for Women in Shooting and Hunting
• Coalition of Law-Abiding Sporting Shooters
• Coalition of Law-Abiding Sporting Shooters' article alleging media and government bias in the gun debate
• Obtaining A Weapons Licence Details from the Queensland Police Service about obtaining a Weapons Licence in Queensland
• Shooters Party