This is to warn everyone that the shooting world as we know it will end soon if we don't all step up.
Jewish people and others who were shot are not the only victims of Sunday's Bondi tragedy!
Having nodded on their own watch, the Federal and NSW governments need to blame someone else, and I'm afraid it is us, the licensed shooters and hunters of Australia.
The NSW government has already announced plans to ban various kinds of guns and to limit the number of others any shooter can own - and to legislate next week!
That may be impossible to stop but if enough sporting shooters get off their butts and start writing/emailing their Federal and state governments AND OPPOSITIONS, we may be able to limit the effect, in NSW and the other states. What to say?

Well, you could point out in your own words that fewer murders have been committed by licensed shooters with licensed firearms over the past 29 years, esp. compared with unlicensed knives and pistols. This was the first 'mass murder' in Australia since 1996, so the present laws cannot be all that bad.
Secondly, you could protest the proposal to limit the numbers of guns we can have.

That the father in the Bondi killings owned six registered guns is really a red herring. If all six were not taken to the beach, that number ceases to have meaning. If they all were taken there, they probably limited the number of people killed because the murderers would have had to carry them and assorted ammunition or limit their own movements with consideration of where the stuff had been left.

Premier Minns has not established how many guns shooters might be allowed to hold in future but the figure of four has been mentioned. If that is also the number the terrorists took to Bondi, then that would make a strange irony.

THINK ABOUT IT. That would be saying: You can have just the number of guns those terrorists took to Bondi that Sunday.

The anti-gun lobby plays a zero-sum game, of course, and would like the number to be none - but that is unlikely unless our governments go completely mad. Their Rebecca Peters, who fears crime so much she now lives in Guatamala (with three times our gun homicides), can see no possible reason even a farmer should need more than three.

Most of us keep firearms for some number of distinct purposes: to shoot paper targets, clay targets, rabbits, foxes, ducks, quail, small deer and pigs, larger deer and even buffalo and other dangerous game. Every one of those is best done with a different kind of gun or calibre of rifle. Many of us have inherited guns of sentimental value, too, or keep more of some categories to use in different circumstances, like wet weather, thick bush or on the plain. Over time we may upgrade but still have a connection with the older guns we like to keep.

As with CDs and records, even ones we don't use much still have value to us. Some are collected purely for their historic or aesthetic interest. Is that a greater sin than collecting cars or art?

The anti-gun brigade might contend that we don't need to hunt at all. Well, our ancestors did it to live, for at least 2 million years, during which time it became deeply cultural, if not an instinct. If they say that five or 10,000 years of agriculture have interrupted that 'instinct', I would answer that for many of us hunting has been continuous. I was brought up on a farm initially overrun with rabbits and foxes and my father's family have been farmers at least since 1650, doubtlessly needing to deal with pests and keep their families fed without constant journeys to the shops.

An old Italian friend told me that he'd never tasted store-bought meat until he was 14, eating only what could be caught before that.

Unlike most other countries, Australia is filled with animal pests, the majority exotic, even feral. To assert there is no need to control these animals and that city dwellers should not be allowed any part in any control is ridiculous.

Even if you are young and have not gathered many guns yet, think of the future and your brothers and sisters who are about to be gutted by the proposed changes.

What of the gun types Minns is proposing to ban?
Well, the Turkish auto-substitutes brought in since 1996 were a dodgy idea all along, even if they were handy for pig and duck shooting. Not only do they thumb nose at the 1996 laws, but gunsmith reports say they are hell to fix if they break, anyway. The early ones were still too slow for skeet shooting and often bite the hand that feeds them.
They are well known to have been used on Sunday 14 Dec. and, since the politicians are baying for blood, I think we should volunteer them to be sacrificial burnt offerings, expecting compensation, of course.
I worry that our treasured old Winchesters and Remington’s may get swept away with them - but don't see much way to stop that unless guns are banned by brand/model.

So, don't protest unless SSAA blesses any march stay home Instead pick up a pen or open ur computer but do it soon

Published with the permission of - 'Samuel B. Mann'