Australia Begins Another Gun Confiscation Program, Because It Didn’t Work the First Time

When the topic of gun control comes up, the left loves to cite Australia and their much touted gun buyback program. They view that nation’s gun control measures as the perfect way to peacefully remove firearms from society. But did Australia’s gun buyback program really work? Sure it reduced gun crime (though whether or not it reduced all violent crime is up for debate), but did it truly disarm Australia’s criminal class?

Clearly not, because the Australian government is about to engage in another gun confiscation scheme. The government is planning a new amnesty program in July that will last three months, which the NRA is calling “a tacit admission that criminals and scofflaws have had little trouble circumventing Australia’s National Firearms Agreement (NFA) and the government’s confiscation effort.”

Somehow the government thinks that they’ll manage to convince people to give up between 260,000 and 600,000 illegal firearms. But obviously, these are mostly people who didn’t give up their firearms the first time, or they are criminals who again, aren’t going to give up their firearms just because the government asks nicely.

More importantly, the Australian government isn’t planning to pay their citizens for these firearms like they did in 1996. It’s one thing to ask criminals to hand over their weapons, but it’s quite laughable to ask them to give up their weapons for free. Of course, it seems that the government is at least somewhat aware that this program is mainly going to remove guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens. According to Australian Justice Minister Michael Keenan, who announced the amnesty program earlier this week, “This is as much about giving a family a chance to get rid of an old heirloom as it is about getting rid of guns off our streets.”

This is the first gun amnesty program that applies to all of Australia since the 1996 gun buyback program. The violent crime rate in Australia appears to have no relationship with Australia’s first attempt at gun confiscation. Somehow how I doubt that this amnesty program will do anything except take guns away from law-abiding, and easily duped citizens. It certainly isn’t going to disarm criminals, which is obvious if you have a shred of common sense.