WFSA Current News - August, 2004

August 30, 2004

Successful challenge to Irish legal process
            On July 31, 1972, in the Republic of Ireland, the Minister for Justice issued a 30-day temporary custody order on firearms in private hands, a move allowed under the legislation of the day. Universal gun registration was already in place, so the authorities at the time were able to move in by door-knocking all lawful gun owners and carry out what amounted to a mass confiscation of firearms held by lawful civilian owners. People who failed to surrender guns they were known to hold simply had them seized by police action.
            These arms were then subsequently refused certificates of registration, and have been held by the police ever since, with their lawful owners being denied access.
            In Ireland, as elsewhere, there are good reasons for private firearm ownership, and the civilian population there has been severely handicapped in its potential for ownership. For instance, despite hunting and target requirements, rifles above .270 calibre have been banned, and no pistol ownership at all is possible, even including air arms.
            In a ground-breaking move, both of these points have now been challenged, through gun owners taking the police to the High Court. The State defended initially and then conceded each case immediately before the hearings came to the court.
            Consequently, the first licence and registration certificate for 32 years has now been issued to the holder of a Free-style Olympic competition handgun in the Republic of Ireland .

August 20, 2004

Gun surrender ordered
            The residents of Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific are being forced to surrender their guns. Under New Zealand jurisdiction, the island has only 47 permanent residents.
            The cause of the order is a pending paedophilia trial. The authorities fear that some residents may take vigilante action over charges relating to events which were alleged to have occurred up to forty years ago. Seven men are to face a total of 96 charges.
            The islanders use firearms for hunting and for bringing down breadfruit and coconuts from tall trees. They are now under threat that if they do not bring in their arms, the authorities will suspend all licences and remove the guns:  http://www.modoracle.com/?page=http://www.modoracle.com/news/detail.h2f?id=6049

August 12, 2004  

Australia involved in Papua New Guinea gun review
            Papua New Guinea’s Internal Security Minister Bire Kimisopa has released a statement about the Government’s position on illegal home-made guns in the country. There is to be a gun summit later this year, bringing together a number of key agencies including the Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary (RPNGC), the Law and Justice Sector Group, the Justice Department, and, interestingly, the Australian governmental group AusAID.
            It will examine the relevance of the 1958 Firearm Act, jurisdictional issues, and the judiciary's response to sentencing, monitoring and policing of the Firearm Act by the RPNGC. Armoury control within the RPNGC will be considered, and a community response to the firearm issue is to be sought.
            The statement quoted the Minister as “advocating a complete ban on firearms in this country”, and he deplored the “high prevalence of homemade firearms in tribal conflicts and payback killings.”
            Cross-border smuggling is recognized as continuing, and there is demand for commercial firearms which have been used in tribal fighting areas. It is not clear how the Minister expects legislation to change any of this, and presumably the summit is expected to cast light on it. The task will not be easy: “The police are powerless when the community is silent on reporting persons who are holding onto illegal firearms, making home-made guns and even trafficking (in) illegal firearms.”
            As in many countries, the impetus for examination appears to revolve around a belief that legislation will change murder rates. The Minister’s statement said: “The question that needs to be answered is this: If firearms were not used what would be the casualty figures in the areas where deaths have been recorded?” He is also quoted as saying, “Without firearms it is conceivable that crime rates would be much less than what has been reported so far.”
            The assumption is the usual one, namely that after legal and known firearms are removed, those which are used in the commission of crime will somehow have been removed and the crime rates will fall.

August 5, 2004

Belarus supports UN Protocol

            On August 4, it was announced that the President of the Republic of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has signed into being a new firearms law. It officially links the nation with the UN Firearms Protocol (to use its full name: the Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Their Parts and Components and Ammunition, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime).
            The aim of this protocol is to strengthen cooperation between signatories and provide more formal controls over firearms. Belarus says it is hoping to use it as a “legal aid in corresponding criminal cases in relations with those states Belarus has concluded no bilateral agreements with”.

August 1, 2004

Brazilian gun “buyback”
            Associated Press has released a report saying the police in Brazil are claiming success for the recently-implemented so-called ‘buyback’ of guns, which has now been running for over two weeks. Some 25,000 guns have been handed in.
            It is a Sao Paulo-based lobby group, called Sou da Paz, meaning ‘I am for Sao Paulo and in addition another 1.5 million unregistered. Brazil’s murder rate, which is high at 27 per hundred thousand of population. Firearms are said to be used in 68 per cent of these murders. Similar plans in other countries have continually failed to bring down murder rates. Sometimes the number of firearms employed as weapons in murder may drop, but the murder rate itself remains the same, bringing no benefit overall. Some evidence suggests the murder rate may actually increase.
            The report quotes an anonymous police spokeswoman as saying, "The way things are going we should be able to get at least 150,000 handguns off the streets by the end of the year”. It is customary for police to speak in favour of such programs, especially early in the process, when it is assumed that the guns being handed in are going to be the ones used in the commission of crime. And, as may be expected, while the number of guns surrendered may seem impressive, they come from the very citizens who are not contributing to the problem in the first place.