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"The United Nations has played no role in Australia's new gun laws" - Lisa Gates, Policy Advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister, April 1997. "The specific answer to your question (of whether the UN influenced Australia's gun laws) is no" - John Olsen, Premier of SA, April 1997. "This is not an external matter, it is a matter for Australians only, I must assure you of that." - Alan Cadman, Federal Member for Mitchell, Chief Government Whip, March 1997.
The statement of Alan Cadman's is comical in the extreme, he is either badly informed or a willing participant in a misinformation campaign - he should at the very least read his own mail. I have in my possession a letter that was forwarded to one of his constituents on 17 May 1996. Note that date, that is just one week after the infamous 10th of May 1996 Australian Police Ministers Council (APMC) meeting that gave rise to the "tough new gun laws". The aforementioned letter was in response to an inquiry dated 15 January 1996, requesting certain information about the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) and the United Nations (UN). The letter from the Commonwealth Attorney General's Department (A-G) was dated just four days after the APMC resolutions.
Now remember this is a letter from the Commonwealth Attorney General's office, that is, Daryl Williams's office - the person in charge of implementing the new gun laws. As wont by all slick lawyers, the constituent's questions were redefined by the A-G's office (why answer a question you don't like) and the answers cleverly composed with omissions. After reading the correspondence, I now know why he got the job as top-lawyer.
For example, the first question asked about the relationship between the AIC and the UN. In the answer to the inquiry the A-G's office referred to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed on 7 July 1988 between the AIC and the UN. The A-G's letter states "Under this MoU, the institute provides advice on division programs". That statement in itself seems innocent enough, but wait there's more! Go to the actual MoU between the AIC and the UN and look what the A-G omitted.
(a) provide advice on the implementation of the substantive program of the (division):
Substantive things are things of substance, "expressing existence", you know - real things. Implementation means to implement, that is, "carry (contract, promise, etc.) Into effect". In a nutshell, this subsection means that the AIC is to provide advice on carrying into effect the real programs of the UN. And yes, firearm regulation is one of those real programs.
The best obfuscation in the A-G's letter was left for the last question. In that question it was asked "What is in it for Australia, that is, what benefit is supposed to flow to the people, or the government for the compliance with those terms?" Again the A-G rewrote the question, but the rewriting gave the game away. The A-G rewrote the question as-
"To what extent will they benefit Australia or world peace?"
World peace? Where did that come from? What does an Australian farmer's .22 rifle have to do with World Peace? Further, the actual answer to that question did not list any benefit to Australia or the Australian people, but what it did say should have woke Mr. Cadman up from his afternoon nap with a bolt. It stated, "There has been increasing interest in the UN system in recent years in the disarmament of the people…Increasing UN interest in Microdisarmament (controlling and eliminating small arms etc.) is reflected by the number of resolutions passed by the General Assembly in this area."
The AIC/NCV relationship
The NCV did not support any of the gun control measures with any research; it simply stated them as objectives. The same objectives that, just by coincidence of course, the international gun control community was advocating. As will be shown, the NCV couldn't justify any of the gun control measures.
Public Health issues
John Hopkins School of Public Health has a "Center for Gun Policy and Research". Three-quarters of the faculty of the Center is legally trained, the Director has nine years experience as a trial lawyer. This is the organization that is in the forefront of promoting gun control through litigation. If
you're wondering how law degrees are related to public health, then consider the disarmament agenda within the American context. The problem in America for the global elites is that since both Federal and State Constitutions have Bills of Rights protecting the individual right to arms, a way had to be found to bypass both the Legislatures and the Constitutions. It now appears that civil litigation (along with judicious propaganda) was the chosen method.
I mentioned "global elites", well, you may have heard of the recent Brooklyn, New York case of Hamilton -v- Accu-Tek wherein various gun manufacturers were absurdly held legally responsible for the illegal activities of someone who had illegally obtained firearms. This in a case where there was no firearm recovered to show a nexus to any of the manufacturers. As you might expect, the litigation was very expensive, the Plaintiff's representative stated that the matter would not have proceeded without the funding of the Soros Foundation. Soros? - That is right, George Soros, the international financier. (The MAI isn't the only pie he has a finger in!) The use of tax-free foundations by the financial elite to manipulate a society has been going on for years, but the disarmament of the people has not been a serious objective, until now.
There was also someone who is familiar to Australians that attended the Brooklyn court case every day. You may remember her; short hair, got lots of media coverage, showed up in Australia about the time gun control became an issue - then left when the new laws were in place? If you guessed Rebecca Peters, your' right! Peters was awarded a Senior Fellowship in March 1997 by the Soros Foundation (stipend and all) and completed her postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for Gun Policy and Research at John Hopkins School of Public Health. Peters is still being bankrolled by the Soros foundation as she continues to work out of New York on international firearm issues. (perhaps it is because the pomo-left are offended by concepts of logic and linear thinking, that they will never be able to connect-the-dots).
Although there are many, one of the reasons in Australian that there has never been an in depth analysis of the gun control issue has been the squandering of health funds on gun control. (You didn't think the levy on Medicare for the gun buyback was a coincidence did you?) I remember the Coalition for Gun Control had a rally in the Domain in Sydney, it must have cost a lot of money with the billboards around Sydney, the advertisements on the TV and radio, the bands, balloons, sound stage, miles of port-a-loos - too bad about the lousy turn out.
Health system resources were used for that rally, even proudly proclaimed on some of the flyers that were handed out. In a bizarre twist, the Friday before, the medical profession had a rally in Macquarie Street (just the other side of the Domain) protesting the closing of two wings at Westmead Hospital. I wonder if these educated fools understand the concept of robbing from Peter to pay Paul - here's a reality check for the medical profession - if you take money out of the health system for gun control, there will be less money for the health system. Think about it Doc.
Statistics
After all, they were supposed to be a committee concerned with violence in the community, not self-inflicted violence like tattooing, body piercing, or suicide. Well, firearm homicide amounted to only approximately 80 people a year. Nobody in the NCV was going to be able to justify spending millions of dollars for a policy that affected so few persons, but more importantly, even if firearms were totally eliminated, the homicides would have probably been committed by other means. As it was, the highest form of homicide was assault - beating, kicking, stomping someone to death, and the next highest was homicide with a knife. Take away the gun and you were still faced with the same intent to kill.
The NCV got around the problem by padding the figures with suicides with a firearm (also accidents, see negligence in terms of reference). If you, the reader, have noted that the inclusion of suicides was completely contrary to the NCV terms of reference, congratulations, you have just connected-another-dot. Whereas, there were only about 80 homicides with a firearm every year, around 450 people chose to end their life with a firearm every year. Easy enough mathematics for the NCV, just adds the two and says that 500 people die every year from firearms. Actually, the NCV didn't say 500 - they said 700, but what the hell, as long as your' padding statistics why not add a few more.
To be fraudulently consistent, the NCV omitted the fact that suicides and homicides involving a firearm had been on the decline for years; however, suicides in total had and still are increasing. Whether the person next door hangs, shoots, gases, or poisons himself is a tragedy, but it doesn't affect a person's fear in the community. Violence does, and that is what the NCV lost sight of - if it ever had it in its sights at all. Of course, suicides are still included by the anti-gun crowd, even the Australian Democrats (keep the bastards honest?) still refer to them.
The NCV was set up to provide Australia with the "necessary" gun laws. The authority of the AIC was behind the NCV, but what was the authority behind the AIC? Nothing more than what its letterhead proclaimed "affiliated with the United Nations". The correspondence I referred to earlier also asked whether the AIC had a MoU with any legitimate criminology group such as Scotland Yard or the FBI - the answer was no. Apparently, the UN was the ultimate, if not the only, authority for the AIC.
The AIC was not the only government organization aware of the agenda of the "disarmament of the people". In 1992 the Commonwealth Employment Service had this to say in regards to the occupation of "Gunsmith". After a lengthy description about the necessary skills it ended with,
"Restrictions on gun ownership in the future is likely to impact most upon the demand for this occupation. It is expected that private gun ownership will cease within the next 10 years."
Port Arthur
Yes, conspiracy theories surrounding the Port Arthur tragedy are alive and well, move over "grassy knoll". Worse, at least one of the conspiracy writers is a complete nutter, or a master of misinformation/counter-intelligence working to send people up the wrong street (he says that Martin Bryant didn't do it). Of course, if I wanted to find out what happened at Port Arthur, I would just read the Coroner's Report - except there isn't one. Perhaps a survivor of Port Arthur, Wendy Scurr summed it up best in a letter she wrote, "4 people are killed in an accident on board a Navy ship and there is an enquiry sufficient to lay the matter to rest. 17 people are killed in an Army helicopter accident and there is not one enquiry but two. 35 people are killed at Port Arthur and despite the many requests of other people, who were there, like me, there is no enquiry. Why?"
The laws were ready, they had been sitting on the shelf since 1994, the media was ready, and it had perfected the technique in 1991 after the Strathfield massacre. All that was needed was a suitable massacre, preferably in Tasmania of course. Then we had "Port Arthur". Wow, what a coincidence. Was that a lucky break for international gun control or what?
The Buy-Back
The best figures available were from the state of Victoria. Although there were no final figures (and they won't be forth coming!), the state gave a breakdown up until three weeks before the end of the "buy-back". The state also handed in a third of the firearms in Australia, so it is a pretty good sample to draw from. Here is what it shows.
Automatic - .1%, Center-fire self-loading - 3.2%, Pump action shotguns - 15.1%, Self-loading shotguns - 32.7%, Rimfires - 47.5%, other -1.8%.
The automatics came primarily from museums and RSL Clubs and were therefore a non-event. However, the "Center-fire self-loading" firearms were the primary target of the buy-back. The 3.2% are not broken down between military and civilian rifles, but note this, Victoria had registration prior to the "buy-back", without registration the level of compliance would have been lower. So what do the figures show us? It shows that almost half of the firearms turned in were lousy .22 pea rifles, a rifle that not one nation in the world issues to its solders because on its anemic power. The figures also show that 47.8% of the rifles were shotguns, a firearm that Hitler allowed the occupied French to keep.
It has been estimated that there were some 400,000 SKS, SKK and their variants imported into Australian up until the early 1990's. Only about 8,000 were turned in, that is just 2%, or to state it another way - 98% of those rifles are still in the community. There were also some 500,000 M1 carbines sold off in Australia; it is safe to say that at least half would still be out there. From the figures, it is obvious that the people smelled a rat.
A "safer Australia" because of the tough new gun laws, I think not. The non-compliance rate is staggering. If there hasn't been a massacre since Port Arthur, it is probably because the values of society work seven times more effectively than its laws do. Port Arthur shocked the community, a massacre is not socially acceptable, and no one wants to be labeled another Martin Bryant. However, God help us if Hollywood "realigns the paradigm" by producing a film about Port Arthur and the poor misunderstood New Age Hero Martin Bryant, finally striking back against his tormentors. I can just imagine the fruitcakes looking for recognition or revenge that would be walking down the street, humming the theme song to the movie.
If you wonder why the non-compliance rate is so high, just take a careful look at the "tough but fair" gun laws. For example, let's say you go to court for a traffic offence. The magistrate puts you on a good behavior bond. Well, you can still drive, you still can keep your driver's license, but you can no longer have a shooter's license. Now just try to explain to a gun owner why that is logical, why it is fair. Ask yourself, would I be willing to "sit in the back of the bus?"
More AIC Propaganda
The following year the AIC came under fire in NSW with the AIC's sexual violence statistics that stated that Australia was the most sexually violent society in the world! This prompted a Select Committee to look at the credibility of the AIC research on sexual violence. The comprehensive research of the 208-page report is 104 pages of debunking the AIC research. The findings of that Select Committee are significant to the "gun debate", the Committee recommended that the AIC information not to be taken into consideration when making policy decisions. I have no doubt that if a similar committee looked into the firearm research it would come to the same conclusion.
One interesting bit from the Select Committee on Gun Law Reform report is a coroner's table that shows crime in NSW from the year's 82/83 to 89/90, the year before the Committee. In the table, all crime is up except firearm crime. That's right, robbery with a weapon not a firearm up about 83%, assault up about 300%, serious assault up about 165%, murder up about 20%; however, robbery with a firearm is down 44% over the seven year period. Now remember, that NSW implemented most of the NCV (Howard Gun Laws) in 1992. So what happened to the firearm robbery rate after the new laws? - It escalated that's what. It is hard getting the statistics, but at least the newspapers will report 34% in one year, 28% in another year. Of course, there may be other reasons that it skyrocketed, but the rise doesn't give credence to the effectiveness of the gun laws.
A taxpayer might think that the AIC would take that into account when considering the effectiveness of the NCV/APMC gun laws. After all, there would be seven years of statistics available to evaluate the effectiveness of the NCV gun laws. However, the recent AIC report of May 1999, "Firearm-related Violence: The Impact of the Nationwide Agreement on Firearms" does not take it into account. In fact, the report follows the same old waste of taxpayer's money road that all the previous research followed. Yes, suicides and accidents are still counted; yes, the slight-of-hand-techniques are still used. For example, Figure 5 in the report is a class act; it shows firearm robberies in NSW as a percentage of all robberies. Now get this; you have both firearm robberies and other robberies going up, how do you handle the spin. Easy, you note that firearm robberies aren't going up as fast as other robberies, so you make up a chart that shows firearm robberies as a declining percentage of robberies. - I feel safer by the moment.
I'll end my discussion on the AIC with a quote from its new Director, Adam Graycar. In February of this year there was another AIC report entitled "CSCAP Working Group on Transnational Crime - Small Arms Project: An Australian Perspective". In that report Graycar stated, "In order to regulate the traffic of firearms at an international level, it is necessary to begin by regulating it at both a regional and national level."
The International Movement
No, just like the MAI, IMF, World Bank, NAFTA and all the other "New World Order" arrangements, the movement for the disarmament of the people will not be for the benefit of the common people. However, it could be a real benefit to a world elite who may worry about the masses drawing a line in the sand at some future incidence of oppression. There has never really been a legitimate debate about "gun control" in Australia; perhaps this article may start one.
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