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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 13 Hansard (5 December) . . Page.. 4445 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

As members will be aware, the Greens argued earlier in the year that we should go further, that we should be moving towards a system where guns are largely out of people's homes. I spoke then about the work of the New South Wales Department of Health on that question and the survey that they undertook. The result of that was that there was a large majority of people who did think it was much more appropriate that weapons were not kept in the home at all. At some time in the future we hope to examine the possibility of pursuing that.

Mr Speaker, we cannot afford to forget the number of deaths in this country associated with guns, how many of those deaths are by someone that is known by the victim, and the high incidence of suicide and also accidental death by firearms. Britain and Canada have also been grappling with the issue of firearms and have been passing legislation to tighten up their gun laws. Canada, fortunately, has chosen to go down a different path from its neighbour, the United States. Britain looks like going a step further in response to pressure on the Government following the tragedy in Dunblane last March, when 16 children and a teacher were killed at school by a man using two semiautomatic pistols.

Some enthusiasts argue that restricting weapon use will not solve the underlying causes of violence in our community. I agree that restricting gun use on its own will not reduce violent behaviour. We had a debate in this place yesterday on these issues when we were discussing the need for some kind of prison in the ACT. I spoke then about the causal factors of violence in our community. It is absolutely imperative that, as a community, we support young children who are victims of any kind of abuse or young children who are in families who are at risk or who are troubled. If we can support those families and support those children, it is less likely that they will grow up knowing about only violence as the method of resolving conflict.

So, I support that argument from gun enthusiasts; but I also believe that restricting gun use, along with having laws that are well enforced, can only reduce the number of deaths by guns that come about because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time or because there is no genuine reason for that person to have a gun. This Bill makes it quite clear that we will not go down the line of the United States and say, "You have the right to own a gun because you want one, you want to protect yourself or whatever", because we have seen the dire consequences of that in the United States.

In this new legislation, an applicant is required to prove genuine reason. Mr Speaker, the Government circulated a number of amendments late last week. As members are aware, the Greens believed that the amendments the Government was proposing were opening up loopholes whereby genuine reason could be proved more easily. It was a fairly lax definition of "genuine reason". That is because the genuine reason for getting a licence for sport target shooting or recreational hunting could simply be being a member of an approved club. This definition of "approved club" included organisations that directly or indirectly were involved in promoting or encouraging the sport of shooting.

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