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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 5 (Hansard) 16 May) . . Page.. 1403 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

approach that has been taken by the combined governments in agreeing that it is necessary to compensate owners of these weapons for handing them in. That not only provides an incentive to hand them in, but also recognises that an imposition has been made on these people, and I think that is an appropriate course of action.

I would hope that, reciprocating that recognition, the owners of these guns will recognise their obligations under the law as law-abiding citizens and will be handing in their weapons. That is the spirit in which this has been approached, and I think it is a spirit that should be reciprocated. I get very alarmed when I hear some of the more extreme elements of the gun lobby encouraging gun owners not to hand in prohibited weapons. That is an approach we should all deplore, and I think we would all welcome more responsible voices in the gun lobby encouraging a more responsible and law-abiding approach to this matter.

The issue of violence, as other speakers today have said, will not be addressed just by this action. There is a lot more to do. Various issues surrounding this have been mentioned by Mr Moore and others, both in this debate and in the debate earlier today. Indeed, it is our concern with the culture of violence that led the Labor Party to oppose the introduction of yet another violent game into the ACT community. We have to learn alternative modes of dispute resolution. We have to teach our children alternative modes of dispute resolution. We cannot pretend that one act such as the one we are addressing today will solve these problems. We have to look beyond that and, in doing that, adopt a realistic and commonsense approach.

Mr Stefaniak addressed one of the furphies about gun ownership and the defence of Australia. Another furphy that has recently been aired in the local papers is the issue of self-defence - that, somehow or other, owning guns is a good idea because you would be able to shoot a potential attacker. This is a widely perpetrated myth in the United States, and it is concerning to see the myth starting to be perpetrated in the ACT. It is simply not true. American figures when you look at gun-related deaths show that, for every attacker who is killed by a person using a firearm in self-defence, 130 people are killed by firearms for other reasons. So, for every person killed in self-defence while in the process of committing a felony, 130 people are killed by guns for other reasons, including 60-odd suicides, 60-odd murders of family and friends, and six by accident; that is, six people are killed by accident with firearms for every person who is shot in self-defence. It does not make much of the self-defence argument.

While I am at it, another statistic from America, where this self-defence argument rages so widely, is that, if you have a gun in your home for self-defence, it is three times more likely that a member of your family or a close acquaintance will be killed. So, on this argument about grabbing the knife out of the knife block and all these other things, the reality is that, if you have a gun in your home in America, it is three times more likely that a member of your family or a close personal friend will be killed. That is not a very reassuring statistic for the people who argue that there are good reasons for owning guns for self-defence and similar reasons.

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