I get that the United States is relatively unique in the world regarding our views on guns. We recognize the right to keep and bear arms as a basic civil liberty, more or less. We could do a better job of it, but we do infinitely better than just about anywhere else in the world.
On the flip side, you've got, well, everyone else. That includes Australia, which was long considered one of the benchmark nations, a place with a gun control system we should emulate.
Then Bondi Beach happened, and the illusion shattered.
Rather than admitting that maybe gun control doesn't work, officials there are trying to double down, and anti-gunners in the land downunder are smelling the blood in the water. One even made a comment that should terrify every decent human being worldwide.
Australians will face more frequent security checks and will be forced to hand over firearms above a certain limit in sweeping gun reforms expected to pass as parliament returns early to respond to the Bondi terror attack.
The government was forced to split its sweeping omnibus bill — encompassing gun laws, hate crimes, migration changes — and abandoned racial vilification provisions on Saturday, after it became clear neither the Coalition nor the Greens supported the changes.
However, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did secure the support of the Greens for its gun control measures, which will be introduced in the upper house on Tuesday.
Firearm safety advocate Stephen Bendle is pushing for the bill to pass with bipartisan support, urging the Coalition demonstrate it's "serious" about "the right people having access to the right firearms".
Just who are "the right people" in Bendle's mind? More importantly, who are "the right people" in the Australian government's mind?
See, the problem with "the right people" is that someone has to determine just who is the right sort of person and who isn't. That makes gun rights a privilege, for one thing, though that ship has long set sail in Australia.
Even as a privilege, though, the truth is that "the right people" will always mean whoever the government in power wants it to mean. That could be all white people. That could be all minorities. It could just include the government officials and their lapdogs. It could mean any particular group at any particular point.
What it means, though, is that someone the government considers "the wrong people" will be denied access to firearms via lawful means. For criminals and terrorists, this doesn't actually mean anything.
For people critical of the ruling elite, who see tyranny forming before their eyes, it could mean everything.
Throughout history, many people have talked about "the right people." Almost universally, they were elitist jackwagons who simply wanted to deny something to people who weren't part of the in crowd. What Bendle is talking about here is, ultimately, the exact same thing.
It means that anyone the government of Australia thinks of as the wrong sort will be left defenseless. They'll be denied firearms not because of anything other than they're just not what someone in power thinks of as worthy.
If this doesn't horrify you, there's something very wrong with the way your brain works.
More accurately, how it isn't working.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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