Gun thefts: Are the penalties adequate?
The Federal Government has deliberately blurred any rational distinction between the legal and illegal market. It’s looking for some quick wins – at your expense.
The Federal Government was looking at reviewing parts of the National Firearms Agreement in the wake of the 2014 Martin Place siege well before the issue of lever action longarms came up in recent months.
It was also looking at the spate of what appear to be underworld related shootings around Melbourne, again before the Adler matter surfaced.
Instead the government decided to roll these into one issue, with Justice Minister, Michael Keenan, moving to suspend the imports of the Adler A-110 because of some vague and unclear terrorism concern.
From our perspective, there are three discussions to be had here, not one.
The first is access to firearms by terrorists. The second is access to firearms by criminals. The third one is access to firearms by licensed gun owners. They are quite distinct and separate.
The majority of firearms held by terrorists and criminals do not, contrary to the view of others, come from the legal market. We recently posted this article on just how easy it is to smuggle firearms into Australia.
However where there are guns stolen from the legal market – including from the police and military – it seems there is a gap in the criminal penalties that apply to stealing those firearms.
Currently there are provisions in the Crimes Act 1958 that add five years to a sentence when a person is using a firearm in the commissioning of a criminal offence – but what about the person who supplied the gun?
We’d like to suggest that instead of targeting the licensed gun owner, target the thief who took their gun.
We suggest the imposition of a fixed fine of $250,000 and / or minimum of 2 years for the first time offence of intentionally stealing a firearm, and $500,000 and / or 5 years for a second time offence.
At the very least it should make those thinking about stealing a firearm think carefully before doing so. Similar changes could be considered for smuggling firearms into Australia.