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22  December 2025

To the attention of Mr Roland Browne and to all politicians, lobbyists and journalists who crack their pants over the issue of civilian gun ownership :

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Paris 13 November 2015: 
A stream of attacks from the concert hall "Bataclan" to the "Stade de France" and many café terraces in Paris by a commando of Islamist terrorists ended with 132 dead and 413 wounded. The whole ordeal lasted several hours, involved many killers and was perpetrated with semi-auto and automatic rifles (AK47 from the black market)

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Nice 14 July 2016:
Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian islamist drives a large truck into a dense crowd watching the firework at full speed on the famous "Promenade des Anglais". The result: 86 dead and 458 wounded some of them with horrific injuries and crippled for life. All that in less than 5 minutes by a single killer and a truck. 

Draw your own conclusion

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Dear Sir/ Madam

I am a sporting shooter and I am in possession of 9 firearms. Among them 3 nineteen century muzzle loader replicas, 2 rimfire 22's, 1 22 Hornet, 1 single shot shotgun and 2 high powered centrefires. All were opportunistic purchases along the 43  years I have been in Australia. One of the "high powered" rifle is a 6.5mm I bought in 1982 for 100$ at a legendary outdoors yellow shop in the centre of Cairns. This gun has been (along with a 22) a very survival tool for me during 4 years while working in the outstations of the Aurukun community and while prospecting for gold on the Palmer and the Wenlock rivers. My targets were all wild pigs.  In those days my residence was still at Yorkey's Knob near Cairns. This means that by the standards that your Gun Control lobby proposes, I would be classified as "suburban resident", my licence deemed "recreational", irrelevant and abolished. 
Today I live on an acreage 39 km from Mareeba. My property is 60 hectares and for the time being allows me to hold a shooters license and shoot legally and safely on my land. 
I shoot at targets (paper and silhouettes) and my bullets end against a natural back stop and I never shoot anywhere outside this setup. All my neighbours are 1 km away in all directions and are friendly (one of them never hears me shooting) Sometimes I do not have a shooting session for 6 month, being busy with many other things. 2 weeks ago the police came checking my safe storage and were satisfied and quite friendly. 
I do not "worship" my firearms in an unhealthy manner, they are instrument of leisure and science, like my telescope and my fishing rods, nothing more. I am not interested in violence and I was appalled, not to say disturbed by the latest killing at Bondi Beach.  I just cannot comprehend religious fanaticism and the act of murdering innocent people in cold blood, including a survivor of the Holocaust and a little girl. 
And I own 9 guns! 
At the Ravenshoe range all my mates are of good condition and morality. At the range over 20 years I made friends, there is a social aspect to shooting as well especially for people living alone in remote country. In ordinary life, I tell people foreign to firearms not to point a gun at me or at others, including children with their toys. It's rude, it's silly and dangerous. 
At this point it is obvious that I am (if nothing more) a reasonably decent, mentally stable, sensible bloke  who will never be a threat to society. I am the perfect example of 900 thousands other law abiding shooters in Australia even though perhaps, not all of them are choir boys.. Therefore I am not against a back check before licensing someone, it is common sense and there is an obvious need to cream out some scoundrels and weirdos not to mention violent religious fanatics but the new restrictions proposed are in my humble opinion brutal, unjust, blindly punitive, useless and completely outside the problem. In the process you are using a twisted language saying "taking guns off OUR STREETS". Sorry but guns are not in our streets, we don't "carry" in Australia, guns are in heavy home safes bolted to the wall, regularly checked by the police. All this rage against guns is in my opinion a smoke screen to conceal the failures of the different sovereign services that led to this recent catastrophe. 

Have I been looking after these rifles with care , cleaning them, oiling them with fondness to see them finally crushed in a shredder? How wasteful, how gross! How many bridges or hospitals will be missing out on that money?

I am not happy to be the scape goat, I don't want to share the guilt, to pay for a crime I haven't committed. I don't want my guns to be confiscated like a naughty child by an authoritarian nanny state. I don't want the sport to be obliterated and my range friends scattered. 
I am 73 years old, I have accomplished a military service in the paratroopers and i have been a sporting shooter for most of my life. I am experienced and I am telling you, the Gun Control Lobby and the Governments: You are focusing on the finger who shows you the Moon. You will be targeting the wrong persons and wasting my fellow Australians tax payer's money. 

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MD (from North Queensland lost paradise)