Port Arthur Victims’ Father Takes Issue with Pro-Hunting Gun Law in Australia

An oft-repeated phrase in the gun rights world is that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting. We shouldn’t have to say it, because the text speaks for itself, but some people routinely attack certain types of weapons by claiming you don’t need them for hunting.

I’ve addressed why that should never be allowed to fly by anyone previously.

But that argument is an American argument. Most other countries have absolutely nothing that looks remotely like a Second Amendment. The tiny number that do, mostly Mexico, have mangled it into meaninglessness.

Australia never did have any such thing, and after the Port Arthur massacre, they cracked down on guns. It hasn’t worked worth a damn, of course, but they did.

Now, one state down there is looking at loosening some rules and preserving the right to hunt. While that would never be acceptable here, pro-gun folks there are kind of excited because it’s a major step forward.

And a man who lost his family at Port Arthur is speaking out over it.

For Walter Mikac, the gun reform that followed the Port Arthur massacre was the slimmest of silver linings to come from that day.

After a gunman killed 35 people, including his wife, Nanette, and two young daughters, Alannah and Madeline, Mikac became one of the strongest voices on the need for better gun laws across Australia.

Almost 30 years after he first lobbied the then prime minister, John Howard, on the need for tighter gun controls, Mikac is again entering the public fray, alarmed by the gun lobby’s push for new hunting laws in New South Wales.

For Mikac it is frustrating and disheartening.

“I would happily just go off into the sunset and get on with my normal life but I was quite blind-sided by the extent of this bill,” he says.

“All it is really is a wishlist for the gun lobby and a weakening of the laws.”

Praised by the shooting industry as potentially the “biggest victory for hunters” in two decades, the NSW “conservation hunting” bill was introduced by the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party MP Robert Borsak in May.

To the surprise of many, the NSW Labor government under the premier, Chris Minns, agreed to support the bill – albeit with amendments – which will expand access for the hunting of feral animals in state forests and crown land.

Australia has never had a legal “right to bear arms” but the bill would enshrine the “right to hunt” in law – deviating from a key principle underpinning the national firearms agreement.

“This [national firearms agreement] is something as all Australians we should be incredibly proud of, and we just want to enshrine that as the legacy,” Mikac says.

“We don’t want that to be like a statue that has had big chunks taken off – like the arms ripped off, or parts of it taken to with a jackhammer,” he said.

Why not?

Keep in mind that this is ostensibly about hunting, as Australia doesn’t recognize gun rights like we do. It’s about feral animals and being able to keep them from destroying people and property.

In Australia.

You know, the place where everything wants to kill you?

The place where the military lost a war to flightless birds?

It’s not hard to see that there’s a legitimate reason for people to want guns for animal control purposes. If it involves taking chunks off of a gun control law, so be it.

More than that, though, let’s remember that this is a law that’s worked so well, the government keeps having amnesty periods for people to hand over their illegally owned firearms. It disarmed people so severely that they keep getting guns, and there’s nothing the government can do about it, but sure, let’s leave it in place like a statue, a memorial to the victims of Port Arthur.

The difference between a law and a statue, though, is that statues don’t typically infringe on people’s rights. It doesn’t put them in danger from feral animals, destroy crops, or leave people defenseless before violent criminals. No, statues just stand there and look pretty. People can come and look at them, maybe remember or maybe mourn. Maybe they celebrate something.

Still, comparing a gun control law to a statue makes sense if you think about them as both being largely useless beyond symbolism.

Editor’s Note: The radical gun control lobby will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment right, just like what has happened in Australia.

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