[TheForge] Sighting in Rifles

[toni smith]

for one we have laws here that mean you have to jump through hoops to be
able to get a licence in the first place. then you have to be a
financial member of a gun club or  be a property owner and i don't mean
residential but rural property or have property owners who give their
written consent for you to go shooting there regularly in which case you
also still need to be a member of a gun club which at a minimum is about
$100 a year (a lot more for pistol clubs). the taxes on firearms are
luxury taxes e.g. very high and then there is licensing for which you
have to go through a safety course which i have done and find to be
severely lacking. but then i did a very comprehensive one years ago
before any of this came in and passed with a high enough score to become
a range officer (97%). that was when i was only 15 and most of it i
already knew. the ones now are so basic as to be ridiculous and cost
about $150. then the licence itself costs about $100 a year and even
dubious quality second hand rifles here you are looking at $400+. you
also have to register your firearm and any changeover of ownership must
be witnessed by a gun dealer who charges a fee or  just buy one from
said dealer and you can't buy anything larger than a 9mm handgun anymore
even with all the other restrictions yet the cops have the glock 10mm
and what i consider to be terribly insufficient training to use it. with
the training that they get i would not even allow them to carry a single
action revolver and they are given no incentive to practice and improve
their skills with them. to give you an idea when they first started
using the glocks quite a few were known to shoot themselves in the foot
trying to draw the gun.

reloading is hardly any cheaper here anymore than buying the live ammo
and i know there are restrictions on what calibre rifles you can have
too though what they are now I'm not totally sure.

in Victoria (southern part of Australia) you have to have a safe that is
basically a bank vault with CCTV surveillance running 24/7 with the
bolts stored in a separate safe as well as separate storage for the
ammunition. NSW you just need a heavy safe that is capable of holding
the firearms and again a separate one for the bolts and separate storage
again for the ammunition. in NSW when you register the rifle you
register the rifle using the serial on the action but not the serial on
the barrel and in Queensland it is the other way around. and in
Queensland you just need a lockable metal cabinet with the bolts and
ammo stored in separate locations. it is illegal to have a semi auto
rifle and the only reason they allow any semi auto handguns is that they
are used in competition shooting but again they are calibre restricted.
many people had to hand theirs in getting a fraction of what they were
actually worth and from what i have seen a good many of the guns that
were handed in actually ended up on the black market and not melted down
as they were supposed to be.

try telling that to the anti gun lobby.

the gun lobby here is basically just rolling over to the anti gun lobby
and giving up.

i guess the only thing left to say is "when guns are
outlawed......................................................................................."

Toni