Former Police Commissioner in Australia Makes Excellent Point on Gun Control Ramifications

Australia isn’t the United States. That’s abundantly clear from the way they’ve been able to trample on gun rights there. They don’t even think of them as gun rights, apparently.

We have people here, though, who want us to follow Australia’s lead on guns. It’s never going to happen, but they want it just the same.

However, a former police commissioner down under has some thoughts on the potential ramifications of some recent gun control down there.

Western Australia’s former police commissioner says the state government’s tough new gun laws “unnecessarily” target regional shooters amid fears they could spark a surge in feral animal numbers.

Set to take effect on March 31 the laws, which the government has labelled “historic reform”, impose tougher licensing restrictions, limits on the number of guns owned, and a string of other new rules and regulations.

But former WA Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan says the reforms would not combat crime in Perth, and have unfairly targeted law-abiding firearm owners in regional WA.

Mr O’Callaghan, who has worked in land management and pest control roles since retiring from the force, says the government may not realise the impact the law reform will have on feral animal management.

This is a valid point here. 

See, many people think of guns in a very limited way. Take the piece I wrote earlier today where Guns Down America thinks that if they can just reduce crime, coupled with regulations, they can make it so no one wants to own a gun. 

But a lot of defensive gun uses each year have nothing at all to do with humans.

When I’m in the woods, I carry a gun. It’s not that I’ve seen too many slasher movies and think there’s some psycho running around the Southwest Georgia forests. It’s that there are wild animals out there. Coyotes and snakes are two of the big ones, but wild hogs are common enough that I’d rather have some way to fight back if one decides I’m a threat.

Then we have animals that are technically domesticated but still get aggressive. Every year, someone’s pet dog attacks someone else and kills them. A lot of times, the victim is a young child. 

I’m not even getting into cases of rabies or the like.

The truth is that guns aren’t just about two-legged threats. That may account for a lot of our problems, sure, but I have guns for threats of all varieties, including our animal friends who forget that I’m an apex predator.

Yes, in Australia, things are different. For one thing, they have more critters that’ll kill you per square mile than the rest of the planet combined. Feral animal control is probably a more pressing issue there than there.

But it’s not exactly nothing here in the United States, either.

It’s just too bad that most of the people pushing anti-gun policies don’t know what wild animals look like without the cage at their local zoo in the way. It’s easy to think that we have tamed nature when you’ve never seen it untamed.

Leave our guns alone. Threats come in many sizes.