Avoid gun culture
I was appalled to read the remarks attributed to Chris Campbell (BDN, 3/10).
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Like many, Chris confuses illegal guns in the hands of criminals with legal guns owned by people who are “law-abiding”.
Of course there should be effective gun laws to combat the use of guns by criminals and the police should be adequately resourced to enforce these laws.
On the other hand, there is an important flaw in the concept of the “law-abiding” citizen who owns a gun.
It assumes implicitly that such a person will always be careful and responsible, and observe the law at all times and in all circumstances.
While they have access to a gun they must not allow their normal calm judgement to be affected by alcohol, domestic disputes or provocation by neighbours or government officials.
I doubt that anyone can claim never to have really lost their temper or acted impulsively.
Tragic events earlier this year illustrate this.
Chris’s assertion that “more guns in the community won’t increase gun crime” is nonsense.
In the US, “legal” gun ownership per head far exceeds that of Australia and many people, including children, are killed every day by these “legal” guns.
Do we want to go there?
There are some in the community with a legitimate need for firearms and ownership should be restricted to them.
The Narooma HuntFest promotes the gun culture we should avoid.
Allan Baxter
Dalmeny
Misinforming community
It seems every edition of our various local papers heralds a new deception about HuntFest, but the one favoured above all others is the use of the emotive term “arms fair”.
HuntFest’s chief adversary, the Greens group SAFE, has even incorporated the deception into its name.
We are told over and over that HuntFest is a “US style arms fair” and we do not want “US style arms fairs in the Eurobodalla”.
HuntFest is not a US style arms fair and never will be!
Opponents have clutched at this emotive straw because it is the name applied by a bureaucracy to the licence required to temporarily display or sell firearms and ammunition at a public venue.
That is the truth of it.
In no other way does HuntFest quality as an “arms fair”.
HuntFest is a camping and outdoors expo that includes some hunting gear, because whether the Greens and their kith like it or not, hunting is legal.
If a fully equipped sports store were to open in the main street of Narooma it would likely carry guns and ammunition, just as they do in surrounding towns where such stores are never referred to as “arms fairs”.
Arms fairs of the kind SAFE wants you to envision can never be conducted in Narooma’s leisure centre, nor I suspect at any other facility in town.
Such events require a licence known as a Prohibited Arms Fair permit and I’m advised Narooma lacks a public facility that meets the very stringent requirements to obtain such a permit.
HuntFest is required, by law, to hold an “arms fair” permit simply so that it can display and sell for two days in June what is displayed and sold year-round in sports stores in neighbouring shires.
The Greens and SAFE would have you believe you can buy stealth bombers, surface to air missiles, Uzis and antipersonnel mines along with your sleeping bag, your tent and your barbecue tools.
They have pressed this deception specifically to frighten you!
To call HuntFest an arms fair because it has a permit of that name is like referring to the Bega agricultural show as a liquor store because it must hold a liquor licence for three days in February in order to sell beer at the bar.
Finally, in a recent edition of the Bega District News and elsewhere too, a vocal HuntFest opponent misinformed the community once again by claiming that firearms and ammunition need not be sold in Narooma at all because they are “not hard to obtain – even online”.
This is another deception!
Neither firearms nor ammunition may be legally purchased online.
Garry Mallard
Bega