The Governments New Gun Laws are Mental

The Governments New Gun Laws are Mental

It seems the government finally has recognised that there are stakeholders who exist outside the anti guns brigade who they should be talking to.

Last week WAFarmers, the Pastoralists and Graziers Association and the Sporting Shooters Association were all invited separately to a briefing with the Minister for Police on the redraft of the States firearms laws.?

It was a briefing not a consultation, there was no discussion paper to discuss, no invitation to listen to the Ministers thinking, just the Minister going through the motions of engaging with stakeholders on parts of the new Bill that had already been dropped to the media.

We were repeatedly told that the Firearms Act is out of date, WA is the only state that has not complied with the national firearms agreement, that there are too many guns in the community, too many in the city, too many linked to farming properties, too many big calibre guns, too many illegal guns, too many stolen, too many suicides and too many people with mental problems with access to guns.?

It was all big picture stuff we had heard 12 months before when the redraft of the Act was announced, the Minister got no disagreement then from WAFarmers and got none at the latest meeting.

But when it came to the detail or the merits and complexity of imposing mandatory ongoing mental health checks the Minister was not open for discussion, simply pushing us off to an expert panel to discuss the detail as the decision had been made.

In our world it’s hard to support a process that drops decisions without building the case with the stakeholders.?Such an approach smacks of a Minster who comes from the world of command and control, where the officers point and the troops fall into line without question.

Unfortunately for this Minister our system does not work like that, good Ministers take the time and pain of direct consultation, a process that will always end up with a better outcome.

Dropping decisions and then inviting stakeholders in, to tell them of the fait accompli invites a relentless political pushback which if it goes on long enough can see the end of a promising career.

Think of the hapless Dave Kelly with his attempt to nationalise the rock lobster fishery or MacTiernan with her tin ear on regenerative farming.

Failing to engage with powerful peak bodies is the pathway to the backbench, when the Premier gets frustrated with the bad press and poor policy outcomes, he cuts Ministers loose.

The looming fight over the firearms changes has all the hallmarks of a career ending policy for Papalia unless he gets the politics right.?While his intentions might be laudable the politics of firearms has destroyed more than one political career.

But credit where credit is due.

Papalia knows a thing or two about guns having served in the Defence forces for 26 years including a stint in the counter terrorist squadron of the SAS and two tours in Iraq.?No doubt he has seen what terrible damage guns can do and wants to ensure that the gun culture of America remains far from our shores.

He has however made it clear that he believes firearms have a place, either as a tool used by?farmers, pastoralists and professional vermin controllers or in sporting competition. But he also believes there are too many guns in the hands of people who have no need for them.

This gives us the first hint of who and what he is targeting.,

Currently there are around 350,000 firearms in the hands of 80,000 license holders, of these there are around 10,000 farm businesses with say 2 license holders each (20,000) plus 10,000 sporting shooters which leaves 50,000 or so purely recreational gun license holders holding around 200,000 firearms.

What percentage of these are at risk of being involved in a shooting death we have no idea, just as what percentage of the illegally held guns of which there could be up to 20,000, are likely to be involved in a future shooting is also an unknown unknown. Questions that a good discussion paper would no doubt have explored.

From the information available we can assume that the Minister is going after the 50,000 law abiding voting people in an attempt to remove their 200,000 guns while leaving 20,000 guns circulating illegally in the community.

Any changes to the firearms laws that does not include a well funded campaign supporting the police to go after the illegal guns deserves to be called out as both poor policy and policy on the cheap.?We await the announcement with interest.

For the 50,000 recreational shooters to keep their firearms, they will need to find a farmer or pastoralist that will allow them to reapply to have ongoing access to their property for vermin control.

This will all be logged on a new data base that will no doubt cost millions of dollars and is likely to be cost recovered, pushing up the annual impost of holding a license from the current $67 to $? but let’s assume the $100 mark.?

For those who can’t get a letter from a rural property owner they will be forced to join a sporting shooters club or buy a farm to retain their weapons.

No doubt some enterprising sort will start a virtual gun club to save people from having to attend a minimum number of competition days a year, or to fork out the full $300 annual fees many clubs charge.?

Add to that is the mental medical that will be required every 2 or so years at around $200 and the cost of a recreational shooter will shoot up from $67 to around $500 a year.?

This should go a small way towards the Ministers goal of culling down the 50,000 down, but will it reduce the total number of firearms in the community.?

My guess is like increases in fuel prices hitting four wheel drive owners, most will take the hit and drive on or in the case of gun owners fire on, as people love the utes and guns.

As for the illegal owners they won’t be out of pocket or inconvenience, unless targeted by the police so those 20,000 firearms and their unknown number of owners will carry on undisturbed by the new laws.

As to additional restrictions on farmers and pastoralists we are told there will be limits on the number of family and friends that can be linked to properties along with calibre restrictions on small farms plus the burden of a trip to the shrink every year or two to separate the sane from the depressed or the insane.

It’s all designed to push up the cost and inconvenience of owning firearms, but will it help reduce the 20 - 35 or so gun deaths a year, half of which are suicide. We have no data or peer reviewed papers just political promises.?

However rhe global evidence is tight gun control does reduce suicides and domestic violence related deaths but has limited impact on crime related deaths.?But how tight is tight, we don’t know.

What we do know is the culture around guns is important, take the United States where 1 in 3 own a gun vs Switzerland which is also?awash with guns with 1 in 4 owning a firearm, vs Australia 1 in 15.?

The rate of gun homicide in Switzerland is similar to Australia at 0.17 per 100,000 vs Australia 0.18 while the United States is a war zone at 4.46 per 100,000.?

Interesting to note is Switzerland does not require regular mental health checks, in fact I can’t find any jurisdiction around the world including Japan demanding regular mental check ups, which raises questions of the legitimacy of the policy as an effective tool to reduce gun deaths.?

Will the mental health checks make a difference, all the evidence is, they wont unless they are so regular and so comprehensive that they can pick up changes in peoples mental state in a timely manner.

Then there is the unforeseen consequences of attempting to select the suicidal depressives from those just depressed and the mass murdering psychopaths from the psychologically safe but different.

You can see the problem now.?Lets take a doctor ticking off the check list, asking a farmer if they are depressed and they say yes (but fail to mention its because it has not rained) or asked if they have angry outbursts and they say yes (because they get frustrated with new technology in the tractor) and asked if they ever get angry with animals and they say yes (because the sheep would not load on a hot day and the dog went home) and if they get mad and yell at family and they say yes (when their son bent the new boom spray).?Recommendation : Deny Application.

Any mental assessment is rife for problems.?As to how the Ministers expert steering group will come up with an assessment process that repeatedly picks up those who are a danger to themselves or others, while avoiding those who are having a bad day is doomed to failure.

I would suggest asking a bunch of psychologists how often firearm owners should be assessed as safe, is like asking Dracula how often people should give blood, monthly would be a bare minimum.

If community safety is important then I can think of a whole range of communities that should be put on the couch on a regular basis.?

The Minister should start with his own department the Police, should they not be given regular mental health checks as they carry a lethal weapon? We have seen in Australia and America?high profile cases of police that have been involved with questionable killings, how much was their mental state a factor.?

Shutting down violent unlawful aboriginal communities where women are 35 times and males 22 times as likely to be hospitalised due to family violence would have to be at the top of the Ministers agenda when it comes to community safety.??

Why not impose compulsory mental health checks for all people living in high risk communities that receive some sort of government benefit, would such a policy not go a long way towards identifying people at risk of hurting others.?Would this not help close the gap.

What about youth suicide, more young people aged 15 to 24 die in Western Australia than by any other means with 58 losing their lives in 2020 nearly double the number of gun deaths.

Why not make it compulsory for all youth to undertake an annual mental health check to be able to retain their drivers license as this might pick up high risk behaviour or underlying problems.

Are not our youth our future. But imagine the political backlash, there are lots of voters in that age bracket.

To focus on mandatory mental health checks as the core solution to addressing community safety when it comes to firearms leaves the Minister and the government open to accusations of selective bias.

Eyes wide open when it comes to firearms owners as they are an easy community to target, but eyes closed when walking around indigenous communities, as any intervention could be accused of being discriminatory and as for the youth why upset a demographic that regularly vote labor unlike the shooting fishing farming community.

My argument is if the Minister is serious about community safety, then he should be convincing his cabinet colleges to introduce mental health checks across the board to target at risk communities of which we have many.?

The alternative is to accept that the government cannot address every risk and every community safety issue and target its resources and impositions on civil liberties to where the cost benefit generates the biggest returns with the least impact on law abiding individuals.

If I was the Minister and I wanted to make a difference I would stop the media drops designed to?raise the profile of the government and produce a discussion paper that reviewed the various systems in operation around the world that would help reduce gun related deaths.

Start a discussion on the merits of the Swiss system that focuses on community involvement by asking family and friends to look out for those with mental health problems and for them to engage early with authorities to gain help protect themselves and others.?

A well resourced mental health unit that is linked to the police and medical services will do more to save lives by intervening early to remove firearms, children, women and men from situations of danger than any compulsory visit to the doctor every couple of years to roll over a firearms license.?

As to the new restrictions, most will find a way around them, the illegal guns will remain in the community and the recreational shooters will join virtual gun clubs.?

Around the time of the next election when the homicide and suicide stats come in I suspect the Minister will be explaining to the Premier in an attempt to keep his job why there are still vast numbers of illegal guns in the community, why the legal numbers have not fallen and why the gun deaths still keep coming.