Petition to repeal s.6B Firearms Act

A few weeks back I posted this article about the tragic death of Lalin Fernando, who was killed by his daughter Shamin.

Shamin had been suffering with severe mental illness, which caused her to believe that she had to kill her father.  She joined a gun club, and there obtained a pistol and ammunition, despite not having a license.  She took these out of the gun club, and back home, where she used the skills she had practiced at the gun club to shoot her father.

Is it difficult to fathom how someone in such a state of mind could so easily do this.

But they can. The law as it presently stands actually allows a person to attend a gun club, and shoot pistols, without having had any training, without any need to be licensed to handle a gun, and without any background check at all.

The relevant provision is s.6B Firearms Act (NSW), an amendment which was introduced by the Shooters and Fishers Party in 2008, and supported by the NSW Labor government.

6B Exemption for unlicensed persons shooting on approved ranges and for persons undertaking firearms safety training courses

(1) A person is exempt from any requirement under this Act to be authorised by a licence or permit to possess or use a firearm (other than a prohibited firearm) if the person possesses or uses the firearm only:

(a) at a shooting range approved by the Commissioner in accordance with the regulations and while under the direct supervision of a person who is authorised by a licence to possess or use a firearm of that kind, or

(b) while participating in a firearms safety training course approved by the Commissioner in accordance with the regulations and while under the direct supervision of a firearms instructor approved by the Commissioner in accordance with the regulations.

(2) Any such exemption from the requirement to be authorised by a licence or permit to possess or use a firearm is subject to the requirements prescribed by the regulations.

(3) This section does not apply in relation to a person who is under the age of 12 years.

One would think that the exemption would be subject to stringent requirements, but turn to the regulations and you'll find the only requirement is that a person fill out a questionnaire and not answer 'yes' to questions like "are you currently suffering from any mental illness or other disorder that may prevent you from using a firearm safely?"

That and being supervised at all times by a licensed shooter, who must carry the weapon to and from the unlicensed self-declared sane person. Except when they're not supervising and instead leaving the weapon with the self-declared sane person to take home. And except when they are selling ammunition to the same person.

All of this occurred in the case of Shamin Fernando, who only had to lie about having a mental illness in order to legally practice killing her father, and then be in a position to walk out of the club with a gun.

The Fernando family have been campaigning to have s.6B Firearms Act (NSW) repealed. After this tragedy, you might question the case for the retention of the provision and its associated regulations in their current form.

A petition to the Police Minister, Michael Gallacher, has been set up on change.org, urging the government to repeal this law. If you would like your support for the repeal to be registered, please consider adding your name to the petition.

Without this provision in its current form, a severely mentally ill person could not legally get their hands on a firearm. A good idea, you might think.

Ray Hadley interview with Barry O'Farrell and Robert Brown

This week we heard Ray Hadley interview Premier Barry O'Farrell on gun crime, the bail review and the "weak-kneed, lily-livered" Attorney General Greg Smith. Ray then moves on to the Shooters and Fishers' Robert Brown, who talks about a bill to deal with the punishment of gun crime.

Listen to the interview here.

It is interesting in the BOF interview to see how the Premier deals with Hadley's ravings. It appears he realises that a proper, reasonable discussion with Hadley is out of the question, and so chooses the only sensible option: tell Ray what he wants to hear and let him think he's won.

When questioned on the bail review, watch how O'Farrell appears to play a successful judo trick on Hadley. Of course, it could be a sign of a complete capitulation to the Police Association's campaign against bail reform, but we rather hope that it's an example of how a seasoned pro like BOF deals with an absolute galah like Hadley.

The Shooters and Fishers' bill is so far receiving no support. That is not surprising, as the major parties are not, generally speaking, made up of fools. The Shooters say on their website:

"We want the law to regard the possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime as a separate crime in itself, not an aggravating offence, as the law sees it now.

"It will be a separate, additional crime to be dealt with separately by the law both in terms of the judgement and the penalty the court might impose.

"The Bill proposes that on conviction of the separate offence of being in possession of a firearm while committing a crime, the person so convicted will be sentenced to a period of detention NOT LESS than the period of sentence for the core crime, to be served cumulatively.

As it stands, an ordinary robbery under s.94 carries a 14 year maximum. Robbery armed with a dangerous weapon under s.98 carries an almost double maximum of 25 years.

The Shooters idea, as far as we can work out, is that instead of the Court treating the presence of a firearm in a crime as an aggravating feature on sentence, the Court should instead, for example, impose a sentence for a robbery simpliciter under s.94 (assessing its' seriousness without counting the gun), arrive at a number, and then impose a separate sentence for the possession of the gun during the crime, which can't be any less than the sentence first imposed, and must be cumulative.

"Unworkable" does not do this conceptual dog's breakfast justice.

Let's not forget these are the same geniuses that introduced s.6B Firearms Act, the amendment that allowed the severely mentally ill Shamin Fernando to obtain a gun and ammunition from a gun club with no licence or permit, and no background checks into her mental health, take them home and then shoot dead her father.

Not much more needs to be said about this mob or their backwoods ideas.

Hadley clearly knew nothing about the bill when Brown made a failed attempt to explain it, but nonetheless went ahead and wholeheartedly endorsed it. The same man who threatens governments they will be in Opposition if they don't bend the knee before him.

Do something Barry - time to apply the fear factor

Tim Priest | The Daily Telegraph | April 24, 2012

LAST Monday Sydney awoke to the news that there had been five drive-by shootings during the night with both houses and business premises targeted. On Friday, there was another.

These shootings brought the tally to 20 incidents since the beginning of April and more than 80 since the O'Farrell-led Coalition government took power.

In one incident, shots were fired into residential premises where young children were nearby but miraculously missed them.

Both the government and the Police Commissioner have been at pains to describe the shootings as "targeted" attacks, and they are probably right. By emphasising the "targeted" aspect of the shootings, the government and senior police are being clever in attempting to allay the real fears that the residents of western Sydney hold in relation to this now out-of-control menace, the nightly drive-by.

Yes, they may be "targeted" attacks but eventually some of these bullets will miss their intended "targets" and either kill or wound an innocent person, such as the young children playing innocently in their home on Sunday night.

I recently read figures compiled in a study of drive-by shootings in the US, where up to 38 per cent of the victims are in fact innocent bystanders. No doubt many of these shootings were "targeted" attacks - it's just that they hit the wrong "target".

One of the cases I read recently in the US involved a grandmother who was minding her grandchildren while the parents were at work. She was outside a unit block watching her grandchildren play when gang members decided to shoot up the building. A stray bullet struck the grandmother, killing her in front of her terrified grandchildren.

The other issue about the government and police response to this almost daily occurrence is to hold a press conference with senior police calling the gunmen "cowards" and "idiots". We all know this but the problem is, these "idiots" are outsmarting everyone - the police, customs and border security and the O'Farrell government.

The emotion these senior police show has worried a few veteran detectives and journalists that I have spoken to in the last week or so. All of them agree that senior police and indeed the NSW government look beaten. They have few answers left to give and are relying on their media advisers to "prop them up".

The way senior police and the government are dealing with this crisis reminds me of New York before Rudolf Giuliani and his police commissioner Bill Bratton.

Why do we need any more semi-automatic pistols in Australia?

Samantha Lee | National Times | April 18, 2012



Remembering the Port Arthur massacre ... as the law now stands, a licensed gun owner may legally purchase a military-style, semi-automatic pistol with a magazine capacity of 10 rounds.

April is an eerie time of year. Sixteen years ago this month, Martin Bryant opened fire at historic Port Arthur in Tasmania, killing 35 people and wounding 18 others.

This month also marks the anniversaries of the Columbine massacre of April 20, 1999 in the US, where 13 people were killed and at least 21 injured, the Virginia Tech massacre of April 16, 2007, where 32 people died and 25 were injured, and now Oakland's Oikos University massacre, which happened two weeks ago, in which seven were killed and three injured.

Timing is not the only factor these atrocities have in common; the other is the use of semi-automatic firearms.

A semi-automatic gun, also known as a self-loading firearm, is used in most of these types of massacres because of the weapon's automatic reloading capability. Each time the trigger is pulled, ammunition is automatically loaded into the chamber. A person can fire up to 20 shots without needing to stop and reload.

There are two main types of semi-automatics: longarms (also known as rifles and shotguns) and handguns (also known as pistols).

After Port Arthur, Australia banned semi-automatic longarms, but did not extend the ban to semi-automatic pistols. Why?

The explanations that various analysts have provided include that Bryant used semi-automatic longarms, not handguns; that in 1996 the law on handguns was near to uniform across Australia; and that it would have made it extremely difficult to obtain the National Agreement on Firearms if pistols were included.

Whatever the reasons for putting to one side the issue of handguns, this ongoing legal anomaly has become a major public concern for Australia, requiring immediate attention.

A father killed, a daughter lost

Michael Duffy | SMH | April 6, 2012

For 19 months a family has fought for tighter gun laws, so others won't suffer the grief they must endure. Michael Duffy reports.

When Carmen Fernando went into the house that Sunday there was a message on the answering machine from her daughter Shamin. ''Dad: I need help to load some software now, please ring me back.''

It was a surprise. Shamin, who was 43, was mentally ill and had harboured paranoid fears of her father Lalin for a long time: they'd had almost no contact in three years. Carmen then returned to the garden and told her 70-year-old husband the good news. He was delighted. He went inside and had a shower while she made some lunch for him.

Shamin rang again to make sure he was coming: the job seemed urgent. At 2.40pm, believing he was about to be reconciled with his daughter, he drove to her flat in Glebe.

Once there, she sat him in front of the computer where he began to load the software disks. Saying she had to go to the toilet, she left the room and picked up a pistol hidden beneath the doona on her bed. She came back to the room where the computer was, aimed the gun at the back of her father's head and pulled the trigger.

The gun failed to fire and Lalin, his attention on the computer screen, noticed nothing. Shamin returned to the bedroom and corrected the problem with the pistol, then went back to the other room. This time the gun worked. She shot her father many times, pausing once to reload. At 3.14pm she called the police to tell them what she had done. It was August 22, 2010.

Like most tragedies, Vincent Lalin Fernando's death had many causes. One was the mental illness of his daughter, whose medical treatment seems at times to have been less than ideal. Another was the incompetence of officials of the Sydney Pistol Club, from where she stole the pistol that day.

And finally there was the political cause: the Labor state government's support in 2008 for a Shooters Party bill that watered down gun control. In particular, it removed the need to check the background of unlicensed shooters at gun clubs.

This enabled Shamin to obtain the training, the ammunition and the gun to kill her father, who she believed was orchestrating a deadly conspiracy against her. Despite his death and the change in government, the 2008 change to the Firearms Act still stands.