Australia to implement gun registry after police murders

AP Photo/Keith Srakocic

Australia is a bit of a meme, what with the idea that pretty much every animal there wanting to kill you being what many Americans first think of when they hear the country’s name. However, it’s a fascinating nation with an interesting history, one many of us should be able to relate to.

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After all, I was born in a former British penal colony as well.

But Australia departed from much of that by fully and completely embracing gun control. Now, they’re at it again following the recent murder of two police officers there.

National cabinet has agreed to an Australia-wide firearms register to counter crimes such as the murders of two police officers in the Queensland village of Wieambilla last year.
Law enforcement agencies are currently relying largely on state-level gun registers, which in some instances are considered out-of-date or incomplete.
But at a meeting of premiers and the prime minister, the leaders agreed a nationwide register would be implemented.
“It’s quite clear we need to do better in cooperation between jurisdictions when it comes to firearms,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
“It’s agreed that that would be a necessary measure.”

Missing from this discussion is just how a registry would stop people who basically believed the government was out to get them in the first place. Even if guns were automatically placed on the registry when purchased, such information is only useful for as long as it’s accurate.

When people don’t trust the government, do you really think they’re going to clue them in to their exact location at all times? Hardly. I don’t even like Uncle Sam having my address, much less knowledge of where I am at any given moment.

Imagine how much harder it would be to know where a gun was if someone didn’t want that information known.

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After all, these are people who blew through a checkpoint meant to contain COVID. It’s unlikely they’d play nice with regard to guns.

But then again, this is what anti-gun regimes do. They use every single tragedy to enact more and more draconian measures in what they at least claim is an attempt to prevent such tragedies from happening again, all while failing to do anything that actually would.

What happened in Queensland, Australia was awful. As the son of a retired police officer, this was my nightmare when I was growing up. I can only imagine what their families are going through right now. While I recently lost my father, at least we’d had a few days of knowing he might not get better first.

They didn’t get that.

But Australia enacting a gun registry isn’t going to stop this from happening again. That would be bad enough over there, but we also know that a lot of people want a gun registry here as well, even if the law prevents a federal registry.

They want it and think it will do some kind of good. They’ll see this happen in Australia and likely try to use it as some kind of evidence that such things actually work.

They don’t.

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