SEMI-AUTOMATIC PLACEBO-POLICY

I miss my semi-automatic rifles. It could never be said that I ‘needed’ a semi-auto, but there’s comfort in the knowledge that if the hunter's first shot fails to kill cleanly, there’ll be a mercy round waiting right behind it.

Those who pine for the “good ol’ days” may scoff, but I have often thought there are legitimate grounds to lobby for at least a 2-shot semi-automatic capacity, on animal welfare grounds alone.

It could hardly be argued rationally that the capacity to fire 2 shots in two seconds represents a significant additional risk to public safety.

But there I go, assuming, wrongly, that logic plays a role in decision-making processes relating to firearms.

We were not deprived of our semi-autos on rational public safety grounds. Rather, we were emoted out of them by a combination of knee-jerk panic and cynical expediency.

The deed is now done and I personally doubt we’ll ever see a return to the good ol’ days, despite the determined efforts of some very fine lobbyists.

In fact, I sometimes wonder if it serves our cause well to actively pursue the return of semi-autos, given that doing so, perhaps more than anything else, services the antis’ claims that shooters are irresponsible nutcases who will never be satisfied until they’ve wound-back gun control.

The key to understanding why we are unlikely ever to see the return of semi-autos, lies in understanding why we lost them in the first place.

Martin Bryant chose to carry out his slaughter with two semi-automatic rifles, resulting in 35 dead and 23 wounded.

Immediately the cry went up, “Somebody has to do sumfink!” and so somebody – specifically a Prime Minister in need of a quick fix for his appallingly low public approval rating – did the most simplistic 'something' possible. He banned the sorts of arms that, to the novice, appeared most akin to those used by Bryant.

This drew immediate and broad public support, not because it passed as a sound solution to the massacre syndrome, but because the public had absolutely nothing whatsoever to lose by the ban, and a perception of increased personal safety to gain.

In short, the strategy was widely applauded because the things Howard proposed banning belonged to other folks, not ‘me’.

Government can introduce even the most ludicrous policy, by which no-one can possibly benefit, provided the majority believes said policy poses no detriment to them.  And when it comes to firearms policy, few notions can be counted more ludicrous than the belief that banning semi-automatic arms has prevented a repeat of Port Arthur.

I call it the “Proud Tack Theory” (PTT). The belief that when faced with a tack that needs driving home, the handyman who doesn’t own a tack-hammer, will cry, “Drat, foiled again!” and simply leave the tack standing proud rather than taking to it with a handy claw-hammer.

Of course when a person has a job to do, he is likely to use the most efficient tool at his disposal, but the absence of the perfect tool for the job will not prevent a person improvising.

Considered logically and objectively, removing semi-automatic arms from the options available to the budding mass-murderer simply forces him to re-categorise his toolkit, upgrading the humble bolt action to the status of ‘best tool’ in lieu of a preferred option.

To believe the past 20 years of calm is in any way associated with a prohibition on semi-automatic arms requires a huge leap of faith, one which a desperate public, with absolutely no stake in retaining access to such arms, is more than willing to make in absolute desperation as opposed to considered wisdom.

As we are constantly reminded by the likes of the media and the Greens, the big problem with semi-automatic arms is their capacity to fire at the rate of 1 shot per second.

Theoretically, then, provided the aspiring psychopath can find a suitable captive audience – a school or a theatre for example – he can hope to kill 30 people in, say, 45 seconds, allowing generous wriggle-room for magazine changes.

A bolt action rifle, on the other hand, can discharge at a rate of approximately 1 shot every 2 seconds in skilled hands, 3 seconds in the hands of a psychopathic novice shooter. Let’s be generous and call it 30 shots in 70 seconds.

Of course magazine capacities have also been diminished since Port Arthur and as I’m certain our aspiring mass murderer is a law abiding soul, he’ll need to reload more frequently than once was the case.

However, being the boy-scout type who’s always prepared, he’ll have a pocket full of clips to resort to, each one requiring a break of around 3 seconds to replace. Let’s be generous and call it 5 seconds or a total of 30 additional seconds to reload.

That gives us a very generous period of 90 seconds to discharge 30 shots.

Bryant killed or wounded a total of 58 people in the first 300 seconds (5 minutes) of the Port Arthur massacre.  Clearly he could have accomplished the same total with a bolt action firearm, with time to break for a thick-shake.

The fact that he chose a semi-automatic was simply a case of a person selecting his preferred tool from his kit, which he then proceeded to use very-very inefficiently.

The belief that the psychopath can be comprehensively thwarted simply by forcing him to operate a bolt action is nothing short of idiotic and explained in these terms it is surprising just how many people will agree.

However, the logic is rarely explored in these terms and because most Australian’s have no stake whatsoever in gun ownership of any kind, they are content to applaud the introduction of placebo-policy, if only because it affords them the feeling of greater security.

Invariably some will demand to know how gun owners explain the 20 years of grace we’ve enjoyed since the 1996 buyback, if the prohibition on rapid fire arms was without effect.

Senior Research Fellow with Griffith University’s Violence Research and Prevention Program, psychologist Dr Samara McPhedran has answered this question far more eloquently than I can hope to, and I encourage the reader to seek out her work.

In brief, however, Dr McPhedran’s research has found that many factors, including such things as the de-stigmatising of depression, the availability of improved mental health treatments, anti-suicide and domestic violence support initiatives, improved economic and employment conditions and so on, have all combined to support a trend that was already in decline when post-Port Arthur gun reform was introduced.

Of course her findings are disputed by gun control advocates, among them Simon Chapman, Professor of Public Health at the University of Sydney, and the somewhat dubiously elevated ‘Professor’ Philip Alpers.

But while such proponents of gun control may dispute claims that post-96 gun reform had little impact on Australia’s already falling rates of death by firearms, their arguments invariably centre on interpretations of data relating to suicides, and not the effectiveness, or otherwise, of our rapid-fire arms prohibitions.

This begs the question, how has the prohibition on rapid fire arms influenced suicide rates?

Are we to believe those intent on taking their own lives with firearms are deprived of motivation for want of the ability to shoot themselves a lot and quickly?

Anyone who has followed the ‘debate’ cannot help but notice that no one is able to explain how diminishing the rate of fire by approximately one half to 1 shot every 2 seconds, is such a profound inconvenience that it causes the unbalanced mind to reassess.

Still, the public remains convinced that banning rapid-fire arms is responsible for the past 20 massacre-free years and this brings me, finally, to the definition of the term ‘massacre’.

It is generally accepted that in order for multiple murder to qualify as a massacre, 5 lives must be claimed in a single event and the victims should have been selected more or less at random.

Is the public truly so intellectually disadvantaged as to believe the 1996 prohibition on semi-automatic and pump action firearms so thoroughly thwarted the diseased mind that in the past 20 years, not so much as a single deranged individual has felt sufficiently competent with a standard bolt action rifle to take just 5 lives before the police show up to decommission him?

The answer, I'm sad to say, is yes!

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

Follow the blog on Twitter @Hunters_Stand

If you'd like to share this post the link to cut & paste is http://thehunterstand.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/semi-automatic-placebo-policy.html

For those wishing to leave comments either anonymously or under their own names (go-orn, I dares ya!), please select the 'Name/URL' option from the drop down menu beneath the comments section at the bottom of this page. You do not need to enter a URL.

If you would like to receive notifications when new posts are uploaded to the Hunters' Stand, send your name and email address to thehunterstand@gmail.com This service will not include notification of new comments. All information provided will be treated with the utmost confidentiality and discretion.

DIARY OF AN EXPERT BEEKEEPER

As regular readers are aware, my articles usually take the form of rebuttals aimed at exposing the emotive, non-sequitur and often offensive claims of those opposed to the legal activities of ethical hunters. 

Hunting, however, is not the only traditional activity I'm interested in. I engage in many other sustainable harvest activities and this can be said of many, if not the majority of hunters. 

It is not hunting alone, but a combination of pursuits including crafts, natural harvest and traditional husbandry techniques and so-on, that we hunters refer to as our culture.

I have recently been seduced by one such activity commonly practiced among hunters and homesteaders, which the likes of PETA would doubtless refer to as, "the wanton manipulation and unethical exploitation of another sentient species", to wit, beekeeping.

Since first succumbing to the Human Apivirus some six months ago, I have read every conceivable (and otherwise) beekeeping publication and I’ve purchased or cobbled together all the requisite beekeeping gear.  Thus, I am now an expert in the apiarists’ art.

The sound you hear in the background is that of pigs attempting to achieve launch velocity.

It’s relatively easy to become a honeybee expert, due largely to the fact bees evoke such all-pervading and irrational terror in 99.99% of the human population, that few are motivated to study them sufficient even to attain novice status.

Of course I aspire someday to become a guru, but it appears this venerable status is bestowed only upon those boasting more than one hive. This estate is known in the trade as an 'apiary', from the Latin ‘apiarium’ meaning beehive, and to everyone outside the trade as a, “Holy shit! Let’s get outa here!!”  

This is of course a loose translation from the Latin, but it nonetheless conveys a general working theme.

It also appears quite important that a proportion of the aspirational guru’s apiary should comprise hives of imaginative colour-schemes, highly unlikely shapes and questionable efficiencies.

Further, it would appear to be rather important that at least some of one’s hives contain actual bees and while expert owner of a shiny new, three-tier, ten-frame, full depth Langstroth bee hive I may be, it is, as yet, sadly untenanted.

There are two means by which one might seek to address such a fundamental dearth;

1. via purchase of a nucleus colony from a reliable purveyor of healthy, placid stock, or

2. by way of the relocation of ten-thousand or so members of a heavily armed vagrant army (AKA a swarm), which is motivated to protect its sovereign (the Queen) with the sort of implacable resolve of purpose that has been known to down light aircraft.

I chose option 2, which itself offers two possibilities;

a)  One can gather the swarm from a place it has chosen to temporarily take its ease before moving to permanent accommodation, thus relying on the dear little buzzers being too fagged-out after a long flap to mind being dumped unceremoniously into a box in preparation for the long journey home in a car boot, or 

b)  One can attempt to convince said angry bundle to take up residence, voluntarily, in a small temporary hive or ‘trap’ by means of a lure, later re-accommodating them in the hive proper.

It is largely for reasons of abject poverty that I chose option 2 b) – henceforth referred to, for the sake of brevity if not practicality, as the Cunning Lure Methodology or CLM. 

Claims the CLM is named for the Crazed Lunatic Minds likely to employ such a random technique, are spurious and offensive to some.

To accomplish the CLM, one needs an assortment of basic items, including a box of approximately 40-litres capacity, some frames fitted with a little beeswax to act as a foundation and guide, and of course the magical lure itself, commonly known as lemongrass oil.

Apparently, to the humble honeybee, lemongrass oil smells just like a Queen bee...or perhaps a pub...I confess the authoritative tomes are a little vague in that regard. Anyway, having all key components save the wondrous eau de Queen/boozer, I sallied forth in search.

As luck would have it, I discovered a 13mil bottle of this wondrous extract on a shelf in my local health-food store, where, as fate would have it, I was also tasked with my first test of commitment as a beekeeper.

The sole remaining bottle of lemongrass oil sat on a shelf right next to not less than two-dozen tiny bottles of Patchouli oil. Decisions-decisions!

On the one hand the prospect of attracting thousands of bees to my garden, who, in the fullness of time, would provide me with the glorious bounty of their labours, or, on the other hand, the Patchouli oil and the opportunity to attract thousands of people who’d ask me if I wanted to “pull a few cones, ma’an”  and eat all my choky bickies?

Resolve and advancing years prevailed and so I left the store with...well, that would be telling!

Some weeks earlier I’d let a friend in on the news I’d recently become an expert beekeeper and he’d announced, with some excitement, that he had a beehive in his shed I was welcome to have.  Oh joy! 

Next day he dropped by with a single eight-frame box that was so old the carpenter's mark was barely distinguishable as being that of one Jesus of Nazareth. 

Not to worry, battered, horribly split and separating at the dovetails though it was, it would nonetheless serve as a bee trap. 

So I dodgied-up a serviceable lid, bored entry and ventilation ports of the recommended sizes in the requisite locations, popped in some frames and put a small plastic bag in the bottom, into which I had placed a little tissue carrying a few drops of the precious.....yes, I bought the lemongrass oil. 

On August 20, 2015, I set the whole apparatus atop a two-metre(ish) post in my suburban backyard, taking care to face it north-east, while close-by I set an earthenware dish filled with water into which stones had been placed so’s to ensure access would not result in mass drownings and the predictable media frenzy that's apt to follow such tragedies. 

At this point I stood back to survey my efforts and await my quarry. 

My efforts were rewarded within hours...528 of ‘em to be precise, hours that is, not bees.

After just three-weeks of dogged observation, prayer and incantation, interspersed with bouts of despair and heavy drinking during which my cat requested a formal separation, the first signs of action occurred late in the afternoon of September 13th.

This action took the form of three bees, which began to ‘buzz’ the entrance of my cunning trap. After much frenetic attention that resulted in seemingly endless aborted approaches, one of the three entered my trap, while the other two continued to fly about the outside in ever decreasing clockwise circles.

After some time, the second of the three also landed on the entrance, but rather than going inside, she lingered a while just outside, clearly communicating with Bee-1 within.

Now, though I am not yet a guru, I do have a basic understanding of bee language and associated dialects as befits my expert status. Hence I was able to interpret the aforementioned initial communications thus; 

Bee-2: “So what’s it like in there anyway?” 

Bee-1: “Buggered if I know. Looks like the power’s out!” 

Bee-2 then took flight to convey this advice to Bee-3, who responded with the unmistakable contraclockwise concentric aerobatics which, in the patios common to bees, translates as, “Well that’s just typical!”

After some time inside the box, apparently bumping her head and stubbing her toes, to which I ascribe the occasional cries of “Oh bugga” and “Stupid place to put a bloody frame”, which could be heard clearly from outside, Bee-1 emerged from the darkness, with a slight limp, to communicate the results of her recce to Bee-2, before heading inside once more, no-doubt in hope of making some sense of the fuse-box.

Bee-2 then alighted from the entrance and began a heated conversation with Bee-3, which, I’m sorry to report, took place just out of earshot.

However, judging by her frenzied aerobatics and wild gesticulations, it wasn’t hard to tell Bee-3 was not a happy little prospective tenant.  She soon headed due-south (in a beeline as it were), I suspect in search of mobile-phone connectivity so she could call Essential Energy about having the power reconnected. Though it must be said, this much is sheer speculation on my part.

Soon after, Bee-2 joined Bee-1 inside the box, where the two lingered for some time. This fact may be cause to reassess the reason for Bee-3’s frantic gesticulations and huffy departure, but frankly, in this day and age, who am I to judge.

The scenario outlined above was repeated for three days, in more or less exactly the same form. I cannot recall reading in the literature any reference to such behaviour as a standard precursor to colonisation and I admit to feeling a tad resentful that my expert efforts to capture a swarm may have been wrongly interpreted as an invitation to frequent an apicultural bordello.

Nonetheless, I am resolved to leaving things as they are for a few more days at least, during which time, gentle reader, you may rest assured I will seek an opportunity to pull Bee-3 quietly aside for a little chat about the bees and the bees. 

I will do this not only due to my profound personal moral sense, but because it’s bad enough I’m not getting any bloody honey out of these hussies, without having to live with the fact at least two of them appear to be gettin' more action than I am!

Anyway, I'll get outaya way now...

Follow the blog on Twitter @Hunters_Stand

If you'd like to share this post the link to cut & paste is http://thehunterstand.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/diary-of-expert-beekeeper.html

For those wishing to leave comments either anonymously or under their own names (go-orn, I dares ya!), please select the 'Name/URL' option from the drop down menu beneath the comments section at the bottom of this page. You do not need to enter a URL.

If you would like to receive notifications when new posts are uploaded to the Hunters' Stand, send your name and email address to thehunterstand@gmail.com This service will not include notification of new comments. All information provided will be treated with the utmost confidentiality and discretion.