From the deep and rednecked south…....
If it moves shoot it, if it doesn’t…chop it down, if you can’t…blow it up and if none of that works….dam it.

The problem the Greens and the antigun lobby have with firearm owners is exactly the same problem the timber industry apologists have with greenies.

Both groups fail to realise that the world does not consist solely of “them” and “us”.

It is this failure to recognise that between the extreme limits there are a majority who basically wish a pox on both their houses that perpetuates the division, and hence, the rorting of this state.

Christine Milnes intemperate outburst on this subject just cost her party around 8 votes, and that is just amongst my immediate neighbours, all of whom are plagued by a wallaby menace despite spending countless dollars on fencing. Her, and other’s stupid comments attempting to portray this small, and rather cosmetic, change as the end of all our freedoms and the imminent outbreak of armed chaos are pathetic and infantile. All the good work on the pulp mill wasted, and for what, exactly?

Just for the record, to counter the ludicrous suicide argument around this subject, only one of my schoolmates has commited suicide, and yes we all used firearms from around 14 years old, with bugger all adult supervision. Shit, I used to buy packets of ammunition on the way home from school. Perhaps we should ban rope and roadside gum trees as well. The manner of Sam’s death? He squeezed a tube of poison down his throat at 22 years of age.

I submit that the gun thing is yet another example of our being persuaded to be afraid, and you have to ask, to what end. I suspect that those whose interests are being served by fewer guns in the hands of responsible owners are laughing up their sleeves at the greens driving the argument for them.

I do not know who I will vote now for but as sure as hell it won’t be for a party whose representatives regard me as some sort of risk to society, because I own a gun for a legitimate reason and wish to teach my son the skills required to use it safely. This is a shame, because on many other issues, the greens are really all there is as a rational choice.