Perth / Western Australia

Limiting the number of firearms won’t improve safety. The same people who currently own firearms will still own them. Just less of them. And they can only use one at a time when they go hunting or target shooting. So whether they have 5, 10, or whatever number in safe storage, they are all locked away where they can do no harm. Reducing the numbers is more about PR than improving safety.

I’m all for more detailed background checks and more frequent inspections. There needs to be a process to red flag firearm owners with mental health issues, or any sort of violent offence so that access to firearms can be taken away from them either temporarily or permanently. Making firearms harder to obtain and to keep in a way that doesn’t punish the majority that do the right thing will make a difference. Not a PR stunt like reducing numbers.

As to the limit of 5 firearms for hunters. I think that’s a little low. It might be just enough to have one hunting rifle in each calibre suitable for the range of animals being hunted. But a lightweight hunting rifle isn’t suitable for much practice at a rifle range. They can be punishing to shoot on a bench for practice. Target rifles are much heavier and more comfortable to shoot for longer when practicing, but that makes them too heavy to hunt with. Practice makes you more accurate, which means much less chance of wounding an animal. It might surprise people how important it is to hunters to be able to make a quick kill. Anyway, a limit of 5 for hunters will be too low for many.

These aren’t drivers licenses we’re talking about that are relatively easily to get, and where a mistake will get you a fine and the loss of some points. They take effort to get and keep, and the consequences of making even a minor mistake are much more serious. You might not understand why we own them, but we take safety and not breaking any laws way more seriously than the average driver.

Apologies if I rambled on a bit. Also, I’m not from WA, so these changes don’t affect me personally.