Guest post on guns, criminals and licencing
What a week. Three firearms incidents in a week along with an enquiry into how criminal scumbags are getting guns.
All this attention makes me nervous that now law-abiding people like me might (in the future) get a rubber-glove treatment when we buy guns all because some criminal scumbags (who are unlicensed) are managing to acquire guns and, in particular, military-styled guns. It spurred me to write about it.
I’m a licensed firearms owner and a friend of Cam. I’d like to think I’m responsible. I keep my guns locked up in big steel safes with solid steel doors that have combination entry and bank safe-styled multi-locks. They’re bolted to the floor and hidden in a cupboard that’s also locked. The police inspected my safes and were happy with my arrangements.
I’ve got four guns:
– semi-auto .22 rifle;
– Semi-auto shot gun in 12 gauge;
– .300 Winmag rifle (big calibre for big animals);
– An AR15.
I’m about to buy another three new centrefire rifles in an assortment of calibres to deal with various distances of shooting (sub-400m, over 1000m and close-bush hunting). A wider range of calibres gives me more choices and means I can take the right rifle for the location.
In the world of rifles it helps to know that some projectiles are fast and flat but don’t go far, yet others are longer-ranged with curved trajectories and yet others are more suitable for short range, like in the bush where you are literally metres from big wild critters, like wild nasty pigs. You can’t really cross over calibres. For example, a big calibre rifle is just too powerful and dangerous for small varmint shooting and at close range. It could ricochet off the ground or will blow the animal into a pile of mince meat. One selects the appropriate rifle and calibre to suit the conditions. Read more »

As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.
They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet and, as a result, he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist who takes no prisoners.
He is fearless in his pursuit of a story.
Love him or loathe him, you can’t ignore him.
To read Cam’s previous articles click on his name in blue.