LETTER TO THE ALICE SPRINGS NEWS
Shooters in the NT recently received a letter from the police saying that as part of the Territory’s implementation of the National Firearms Register (NFR), shooters would be asked to complete a form requiring “basic information about the licence holder and details of any firearms owned, such as serial numbers and photographs”.
While it is good the NT is modernising its licensing processes it set off alarms about what might be on the cards as other States and Territories started bringing their registries in line with the NFR.
It’s well known that most police officers know barely anything about guns, so photographs of a licence holder’s individual firearms aren’t going to help police at all. They will compromise shooters’ privacy and safety completely unnecessarily.
Most modern bolt-action hunting rifles look more or less the same to the untrained eye, so if someone from the police wants to know what a Howa 1500 rifle (pictured) looks like, they can look it up on the internet.
As the shooting industry, we get told the NFR is supposed to be a way of getting all the state firearms registries to talk to each other effectively, but it’s clear that something with much further reach is planned, and it’s not going to benefit responsible firearms users.
This over-reach was exactly what the Shooters Union is afraid of, and the various firearms registries were so hopelessly inaccurate that it is unlikely to be possible to fix them.
There’s no information about who is overseeing these NFR harmonisation projects or what firearms knowledge they have. Even in the shooting industry there can be multiple ways of correctly recording the information for a particular firearm.
We have said for years that the solution is to do away with individual firearms registration, and stick to licensing the person, as New Zealand and Canada do. It’s much easier to keep track of, costs a lot less, and still ensures public safety by making sure only fit and proper people have access to guns.
Graham Park
President, Shooters Union