Queensland’s Commissioner of Police asks firearm owners to lobby for tighter gun laws
Imagine if an employee of your company hired publicly complained about the way your company conducted it’s business? They’d be sacked in a flash.
However for some reason this does not apply to our police. Or, apparently, Queensland’s Chief Commissioner of Police.
The police have form in lobbying via the media
Earlier this year we took a senior member of the Victoria Police to task for lobbying on our firearm laws via the media.
It resulted in the then Minister for Police and senior members from our firearms regulatory branch apologising to the Firearms Consultative Committee for his actions.
However he has not been alone in doing this.
Even a Chief Commissioner thinks its ok to lobby
Queensland’s Chief Commissioner is a chap called Ian Stewart. While Mr Stewart is to be congratulated for being active and engagable on social media, two recent tweets about our gun laws caught our attention because they venture into the political arena.
On 14 December, Chief Commissioner Stewart responded to Tommy Keevers who made the point that shooters are not seeing new laws dealing with illegal firearms.
This is what the said.
He also posted other tweets supporting the B and D classification for our lever-action shotguns.
Not only did Stewart miss Tommy’s point about illegal firearms, but here is Queensland’s Commissioner of Police openly encouraging people to become political on the laws he administers!
His response also insulting to Tommy’s – and our – intelligence by linking a ‘gun control focus’ to the discussion about the illegal market. The better response would have been to acknowledge the need for more effective enforcement by his own force.
David Zielinski, a keen shooter, responded by saying: “Your role is not to lobby, you are supposed to enforce the law. Untenable position”
David, you were spot on.
Tommy, your question about the illegal market remains unanswered.
Do our police need guidelines to stay focused on their jobs?
Chief Commissioner Stewart’s tweets are hardly a sackable event.
However it raises a question of whether those in charge of our police forces need guidelines on what their roles as regulators are, and are not, when it comes to our firearm laws.
The police are important stakeholders in the firearms debate, but they are not the only ones. There are hundreds of thousands of shooters who have a right to expect their regulator will focus on their job, so that the discussion on firearms policy can be done in a more open, impartial and challenging manner. Then there are the shooting organisations and hundreds of businesses which support the industry which also have important and legitimate concerns about the laws affecting them. In fact our industry supports the police for training in the very firearms they use.
Commissioner Stewart’s statements discriminate against a section of the public which he would not get away with, with other sections of the community. Imagine if he tweeted something about tighter laws affecting gays, the elderly or children?
We encourage Mr Stewart to stay active on social media. However he needs to leave the debate and lobbying to others. Either that, or the Queensland government needs to vest responsibility for firearm regulation in someone who won’t take sides on the issue.
