HS2K Coming to Australia

[MikeA]

Originally Posted by mulder

Thankyou everyone for your replies and Welcoming to the Forum, I appreciate being made feel welcome.
aiformula I read your articles and found them to be very informative. They were well written and easy to understand. Thankyou.
Chromechicken and others you can own pistols in Australia and no I am not a LEO.
The following is a very very short run down on pistols in Australia.
No pistols above 38 cal except when issued a commisioners permit to own calibre above this. You can only own above 38cal to shoot certain matches ( metalic silhouette, western action ) but if your club doesnt run those matches then you have vertually no chance of getting a permit.
Semi Autos. Barrels not shorter than 5 inches
Revolvers. Barrels not shorter than 4 inches
Magazines. Capacity maximum of 10 rounds
Specialised Target pistols may have barrels less than the above minimum lengths but must be checked by the police and passed. Certain rapid fire guns are an example.
If you have had a pistol licence for more than 12 months ( I think it is) and wish to buy a pistol then you need to apply for a "Permit To Acquire" (PTA). A PTA is $30. Acooling of period of 28 days applies then an extra wait for it to be sent to you. Minimum time I have heard of is just over one month, the most I have heard is 6 months. ( they are really understaffed and overworked at the firearms registry and that statement comes from the government its self!)
Before you can apply for a PTA you have to satisfy the Secretary of your pistol club that you need a new pistol ( no biggy that one ) and you have to satisfy the Police that your storage of your pistols meet the minimum requirements. Once the Police are satisfied they issue a certificate of compliance and you give a copy of that to the secretary of your club. (minimum safe, 1/4 inch walls and door, minimum 20,000 combination lock system, bolted to the wall and floor using approved anchor bolts, no more than 1 mm gap around the door and consealed hinges, etc)
If you have had your licence for less than 12 months you are not allowed to buy anything bigger than a 22 cal pistol. anything above this and you will have to wait your time.
Once you have your pistols you have to, for each catagory of firerm you own ( air, rimfire, centrefire, black powder ) you have to compete in at least 6 competitions and have at least 4 attendances for each. Its hard to explain but if I had 3 different catagory pistols I could shoot say 6 matchs for rimfire and none for the other two but I would still ahve to have 4 attendances for the other two catagories.
I wont go into transportation or ammo storage or powder storage etc as this short intro the Aussie law is getting longer by the minute but I think you all get my drift by now.
You can own a pistol but the barriers are there.
Thank again everyone
mulder (david)

GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!

mike

oh yeah...welcome to the board...it will be great to have someone from "down under"

[The Grand Pooh-Bah]

Im curious now……what is the crime rate like their?
Are there a lot of home invasions/burglaries while people are home?
Do the bad guys ignore the gun laws like they do here, in cities where it is extremely difficult for "Average Joe" to obtain a firearm?
Has it always been a P.I.T. A. to obtian a firearm?

I'd be real interested in seeing crime stats in Australia compared to a state like North Dakota.

[Captain Ray]

I found these stats from 1997

• During 1997, firearms were used in 23 per cent (75 of 322) of murders, 28 per cent (90 of 31 of attempted murders, 2.6 per cent (1 of 3 of manslaughters, 24 per cent (2,183 of 9,015) of armed robberies, 3.6 per cent (20 of 557) of kidnappings or abductions, 0.7 per cent (806 of 123,940) of assaults, and 0.2 per cent (33 of 14,13 of sexual assaults.
• There were 123,940 victims of assault in Australia during 1997. Victims of assault were males in 57 per cent of cases and 39 per cent were female. Victimization rates for assault were highest in the Northern Territory (1,369 per 100,000 people) and South Australia (928 per 100,000 people). The national victimization rate was 669 per 100,000 people. Victoria recorded the lowest rate of 361 victims per 100,000 people in 1997.
• The total number of sexual assaults recorded in Australia during 1997 was 14,138 at a rate of 76 for every 100,000 people. Victims of sexual assault were aged less than 20 years in 59 per cent of cases and 79 per cent of victims were female. The highest victimization rates were recorded in the Northern Territory (133 per 100,000 people) and Queensland (97 per 100,000 people). The lowest victimization rates for sexual assault were recorded in the Australian Capital Territory with 32 victims per 100,000 people and Tasmania with 41 victims per 100,000 people.
• Robberies were committed on 21,261 victims during 1997 at a rate of 115 per 100,000 people, this represents a 30 per cent increase in robberies over 1996. Armed robberies constituted 9,015 of these robberies (49 per 100,000 people), 12,246 were unarmed robberies at the rate of 66 for every 100,000 people. The most common location for armed robbery was retail premises where 49 per cent of offenses occurred while 46 per cent of unarmed robberies occurred from streets and footpaths. The highest rates for robberies were recorded in New South Wales with 200 per 100,000 people and Western Australia (11. The lowest rates were for Tasmania with 31 and the Northern Territory with 38 for every 100,000 people.
• Motor vehicles were stolen in Australia at a rate of 704 per 100,000 people in 1997. The most common location for motor vehicle theft was the street, from where 41 per cent of vehicles were stolen. The highest rates of motor vehicle theft were recorded in NSW with 872 per 100,000 people and Western Australia (845). The lowest rates were recorded in Queensland (500) and the Australian Capital Territory (504).
• For those murders recorded by police in Australia between Jan and Dec 1997, investigations were finalized after 90 days in 78 per cent of cases (an offender was proceeded against in 69 per cent of cases after 90 days).
  

Details are in Recorded Crime, Australia,1997 (ABS Cat. No. 4510.0) available from ABS bookshops in capital cities.

Crime is everywhere... I have a friend in Canberra, and he is just aghast that we have so many guns here... I guess burglary, rape, and occasional murder are the price he is willing to pay.

I am glad to see that at least under certain circumstances that Australian citizens do have the ability to protect their home/person. Before reading this I had been left under the impression that firearms were completely banned.

I sure love living in America.. I would like to visit Australia some day, but I sure love living in America.

Raymond

(edited to add.. the source on that information is The Australian Bereau of Statistics)

[Dwweeb_5150]

Damn I thought Cali was bad.

[03RangerXLT]

Welcome Mulder! I love your country but not its gun laws. The laws regarding automobiles, registration and the likes, are equally as confusing to a yank such as myself. But damn you guys have some nice cars! ( I have a stack of car magazines a friend from Oz gave me).

Are there laws pertaining to rifles in Oz that are as equally hard as the pistol laws? I take you can't carry concealed there to easily too?

Welcome and hopefully will have an HS2000 to enjoy soon!

[mulder]

Thanks again to everyone for your kind words.
Rifles are in the same catagory as pistols but are easier to get as you dont have to have the training as you do with pistols before you can get one. Once you have a rifle licence you can get what you want but you still have to wait for permits.
Rifle licences have three catagories.
"A" is for air and rimfire and
"B" is for centrefire
"C" Prohibited or semiautomatics.
The "C" class is very hard to get, the other two are not.
You cannot carry concealed pistols in Australia. Some can but the average Joe cannot.
Crimes rates have risen in Sydney and you wouldnt catch me walking anywhere at night in Sydney. As the buy back of pistols were taking place the number of crimes using handguns in Sydney went through the roof. The Police comissoner even said on TV that these crimes were not the law abiding gun owners but by people with illegal guns who dint care about the law. Fat lot of good it did us!
Not one crime ( Robbery, assault not murder ) has been commited using a licenced pistol or rifle for that long its not funny.
The shootings in Melbourne were commited by a Chinese National, here on a student visa. He should never have been given a licence in the first place as he is not a citizen. He did go the court but apparently he is too mentally unstable to be charged and convicted. Yeah Right!
Our main problem is that the court system doesnt seem to jail anyone for illegal firearms acts even though the law allowws for term of 14 years or more for even the smallest infraction. Eg. Woman shoots a 357 S&W and just wounds her flat mate. The reason was she wanted him to leave the flat and she wanted to hurry him up. Pistol was illegally owned. Sentence was periodic weekend detention (jail on the weekend) for 12 months and if she behaves she will only do 9 months.
When it comes down to it Australia is a pretty safe place to be as long as you stay away from certain places at night. Out of the major cities and towns you should be more worried about getting a taxi than being mugged.
Hope this answers some questions for you all.
mulder
David

[mulder]

I forgot about the cars we have. Funny how you think our cars are cool when we think the same of your cars. I would love the new mustang or a Hummer or a heap of others. You are getting our Holden Monaro rebadged as a Pontiac I think. Your version looks better than ours! In Australia they are harder to tell apart as they look the same as the Holden Commodore 4 door sedan untill you see one from behing or notice the monaro has two doors.
Rego.... Cars under 3years old dont need to be checked for faults before registering. Cars over 3 years are to be checked every year. Cost $28.
Green Slip Compulsory insurance between $250 and $300 per year.
Rego cost ( depending on weight of vechicle ) approx $180 to $350 per year.
I could go on but you get my drift.
PS Guns and Ammo December 2004 had a small write up about the XD in it. Reads to be an ok type of pistol. I am looking forward to getting my hands on one.
Cheers
David

[NiK]

Mulder, it sucks that you are subjected to such draconian firearms regulations.

However, you can console yourself with the fantastic beer from your country. And no, fellow Americans, I'm not talking about Fosters. I was doing a joint exercise with some Aussie soldiers once and I mentioned Fosters. "That's piss beer, mate!" was the response, and I was given a can of Victoria Bitter. Great stuff, although I can't seem to find it anywhere in the states.

[whtvrsclvr]

VB, Coopers, James Squire... why do we import the crap beer and not the good stuff? Anything but Toohey's New (the Old is much better).

I remember when the NSW PD was the center of an expose by some news organization a few years back, and a lot of people were indicted. Perhaps this had something to do with a crime increase?

[mulder]

If you liked Tooheys then you would like Tooheys Extra Dry. I dont know anyone who drinks Fosters. Dont drink XXXX it tastes like dish water. We had a bloke at work last year who was here from the States and that was all he would talk about, The beer and how good it was and how much kick etc. We converted him to such a degree that most of his luggage when he went home was beer.
David