John MacDonald: Are we serious about gun control or not?

Would you rather the police could only search a place for illegal firearms if they believed there were illegal guns there, or would you rather they could search a place for illegal firearms if they suspected illegal firearms were there?   There’s quite a difference. If you believe something, you’ve generally seen or heard information that gives you reason to believe.  But if you suspect something, it’s one of those things where you can’t quite put your finger on it, but you reckon there’s something going on.   And that’s where things are potentially coming unstuck a little bit for the Government’s crackdown on gangs and illegal firearms.  Because Parliament’s Justice Select Committee has come to the conclusion that some changes the Government wants to make in relation to firearms prohibition orders would give the police too much power to search without search warrants.  And my response to that, is “so what?” Because, if we’re going to get serious about getting weapons out of the wrong hands, why wouldn’t we give the police more powers?  The particular piece of legislation that the justice select committee has been considering is the Firearms Prohibition Orders Legislation Bill.  Prohibition Orders are handed-out by the courts, and they’re supposed to stop people from having a firearms licence, stop them from using a firearm, and stop them from associating with anyone who has a firearm.  And they’re given out to people who the courts believe are high-risk and shouldn’t have anything to do with firearms.    Another change the Government wants to make is to apply the law to more people. At the moment, the bar is pretty high, but the Government wants to see people convicted of lower-level offences also given Firearms Prohibition Orders.   Apparently, this could see three-and-a-half times more people banned from having a firearms licence, banned from using firearms and banned from having anything to do with people who have firearms.      But people like gang members, generally, don’t give two hoots about things like prohibition orders. Which is why the Government also wants the Police to be able to turn up somewhere without a search warrant - even if they don’t have reason to believe there are illegal firearms there.  The Government wants the cops to be able to act on a hunch and go in somewhere without going through the malarkey of getting a search warrant and I’m all for that.  It seems the select committee, which has gone through the proposed changes, is concerned about innocent people getting caught-up in police stings.  They reckon it’s not good enough to search on the basis of suspecting someone might have an illegal weapon. They say the police should only search if they believe it.  Which is all fine and dandy when you’re sitting in Parliament at your select committee meeting, having morning tea breaks and lunch breaks and looking at the proposed changes from a position of relative comfort.  These politicians might think slightly differently if they or someone they know was at the wrong end of a gun barrel.  Because so what if a few innocent people get taken-in for questioning now and then? Surely we should be more concerned about the safety of these innocent people. Not any inconvenience that might be caused if they have to spend a couple of hours down at the cop shop and are then allowed to go. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.