At 18:27 23/03/00 +1100, Bill Bartlett wrote:

>I've only seen superficial news reports of that. To the effect that the
>Australian government was protesting about the US NRA taking the Australian
>crime statistics "out of context".

Their stats were wrong though.  I don't have the details at hand, but they
were claiming rises in crimes that weren't rising... perhaps they were
taking stats from one area and generalising to the rest of the country?

>For the record, I am a firearm owner and regard the recent Australian gun
>laws as a knee-jerk over-reaction fed by an ignorance of the issues
>prevalent in the metropolitan areas. Most gun owners in Australia support a
>ban on military/assault rifles, only trouble is the Australian government
>and most city people, were unable to distinguish between an assault rifle
>of the type used by Martin Bryant and a .22 semi-auto rabbit gun.

I found them curious, because I knew that - on occasions - people outside
metro areas need the rabbit gun (what if you miss the first time?).  It's
been suggested to me that a .22 calibre gun is unlikely to be able to cause
a fatal wound with one shot to a person, although I'm not qualified to
comment on that.

>Which is good news for the rabbits of course, including Pauline Hanson. ;-)

Who's going to be bankrupt in a few days.  Apparently her fighting fund to
pay the $502,000 debt she incurred by fraudulently registering One Nation
as a political party raised only a few thousand.  Oldfield + Ettridge have
cast her adrift.  In a way, it's a shame that the neo-fascist-rednecks are
so politically incompetant.  They almost forced the Liberals to shift
slightly leftwards, otherwise people might have noticed the lack of
difference between the Liberal-National coalition and One Nation.

Alister