Australian here, I’m literally less than ten metres away from 2 rifles and a shotgun. Used for pest control, which is mostly eaten cos rabbit and goat is delicious. Haven’t been bold enough to eat a fox yet. But yeah, they’re there. Have been visited by the cops a couple of times over the years to make sure they’re appropriately stored. Hell, you can even get a handgun here. The kicker is, you have to be a member of a gun club, regularly compete in competitions through said gun club, and the gun has to be stored at said gun club (although it can be transported from gun club to another venue for competition). So, yeah, they’re out there, but they’re heavily controlled. And we actually had an Olympic shotgun shooter get in shit a while back cos his gun was improperly stored in his car between competition and home. Nobody wants what happened in Port Arthur to happen ever again. Kids fucking died. That’s fucked. How America didn’t do something after Sandy Hook absolutely blows my mind…
BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 1 year ago
I hear you, I have 5 rifles about the same distance, locked in a safe. The bolts and ammo are both in seperate lock boxes and not stored with the firearms; the keys to all are not store with any normal keys.
I think Australia has about 15-20 firearms pr 100 people and New Zealand about 25-30 (depending on where you get the stats from), compare that to the US where it’s above 150.
The whole culture around firearms is screwed there - you have senators posing for Christmas card photos with the whole family posing with a small arsenal of military firearms, or a guy guys caught on camera (clearly carrying side arms) saying “I feel threatened”, in a power pose/alpha-male stance, while advancing on some other guy in a mall.
From here, on the outside, the whole US feels quite fucked; and it’s not just gun violence…
CameronDev@programming.dev 1 year ago
The weird one for me is archery equipment. No licence, no checks, no storage requirement. And sure, you cant go on much of a spree, it still seems a bit odd that anyone can buy one. Crossbows are restricted though.