More from the Herald Sun on the Adler
The Herald Sun has once again, run stories on the proposed Adler ban.
On Thursday, the day before the police ministers were due to meet in Melbourne to discuss the Adler once again, the paper ran two articles and an editorial.
For a change, the paper provided more balance – at least in the articles.
The articles
The first article, which appears below (clickable link), includes comments from SSAA Vic’s CEO, Jack Wegman (also our Vice President) arguing for the firearm, and Walter Mikac against the firearm.
Finally there is this piece by the editor (clickable link). Not only is it wheeling out old arguments, but they suggest the Lindt Café inquiry imply the shooting would have been worse if Monis had a lever action shotgun. Not only did the Commonwealth report say no such thing (it said very little about firearms) but Monis had no firearms licence: he would have been a prohibited person.
While it is disappointing that the editor is having problems finding truthful arguments, it is to the paper’s credit that they provided more balanced coverage in the other articles. They also did not plug the Allannah and Madeline Foundation, which they had done in the past.
It’s not possible to tell if our collective efforts to get the Herald Sun clean up its act worked, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
The Police Minister’s conference outcome
Fortunately the police minister’s conference failed to result in agreement to recategorise it. Some states, NSW in particular, wanted our lever-action shotguns moved to cat B for 5 shot and D for 7 shot (therefore if you got a cat C licence, you might as well go for a pump action..) – while Queensland would not accept that because it knows it would get through its state parliament.
You can call that the Katter factor. We hope the Nationals can learn something from it.
A temporary reprieve
For the second time, our levers have had a stay of execution. It means the issue is likely to come up again sometime in the next year. We can only hope people lose interest in this, and the push to reclassify dies off.
One positive benefit though, is that it helps those of us in Victoria, buy some time while the industry embarks on a new business plan for 2017-18. This includes hosting an industry wide forum next April, which is open to all shooters, to help bring more and more shooters up to speed on what has been happening and what they can do about it.
(PSSSST. We’ve got something for you…)
We’ll be posting about the forum tomorrow, but given you have been good enough to read this so far, you can put your hand up for a ticket now, by clicking here.
Don’t forget to claim your Earlybird discount in the “Enter Promotion Code” area (the code word is “Earlybird”).