Friday, February 08, 2013

NSW: O'Farrell Gun Control farce

The issue of gun-crime control turned into a blame game after the NSW Premier accused the federal government of being too soft before he was pulled up for failing to deliver promised regulations on ammunition sales.

The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, criticised the federal government's new firearm trafficking laws as too weak and unlikely to lead to prosecutions.

The new offence for ''aggravated trafficking'' consisted of a threshold of 50 illegally imported firearms over a period of six months.

Mr O'Farrell said the maximum number of firearms detected in NSW so far was 25 over a year and the federal law should reflect those figures.

''My concern is the bar has been set so high that no one will ever be prosecuted under these laws,'' he said. ''This is another case of Julia Gillard seeking to look tough but failing to deliver.''

But the NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge said the Premier had failed to implement his own plan to restrict ammunition sales.

''The Premier is being hypocritical in attacking the federal government's gun laws when he has had ammunition control legislation on the books since June last year which he has failed to implement,'' Mr Shoebridge said.

Documents obtained under freedom of information laws show the state government drafted regulations to restrict the sale of ammunitions for all firearms.

It has abandoned those regulations and instead, will only restrict the sale of bullets for pistols, which it says are used in most drive-by shootings.

No comments: