Australia's government is increasingly the world's laughing stock. It sucks - years ago I would consider migrating there. These days, not so much.
(My government's ever worse btw)
(My government's ever worse btw)
Resist tyranny while you can people, its a gradual march, it can happen anywhere.
Laws that have negligible compliance rates but can be enforced on a whim to cause problems for people who dare cause problems for the government (or those whom the government serves) are a hallmark of totalitarian states.
Totalitarianism is a proposed concept used in academia and in politics to describe a form of government and political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life.
Are you sure it isn't a police state at this point? Because if that were anywhere else I'm pretty sure we'd call it a police state.
For instance in NSW (the state that Sydney is in) - the NSW Police have a list of Genuine Reasons to own a firearm[1].
There's also other criteria you need to meet.
It means that day to day, as a general rule the only people you might encounter with a firearm are police officers. That is, unless you work in a rural area or in one of those related industries.
[1] https://portal.police.nsw.gov.au/s/article/Firearms-Licensin...
It's no doubt something you would need to do to have a totalitarian government take over the US, but it's not really a step required for most other countries. There' aren't many countries that could raise a militia capable of overthrowing a military backed government just from it's citizens.
I still don't understand this mentality.
The ability to enact change in government is entirely unrelated to the ability to posses firearms.
Even during the pandemic there's been protests. Most of which were pretty peaceful.
> A different approach might have been a used in East Germany if every house the Stasi went into looking for 'undesirables' had the potential for meeting a shotgun.
Not everything has to be compared to Nazi Germany.
I'll note that the lower possession of guns does have a difference in how we interact with the police, ad how the police interact with everyone else.
For instance, Officer-involved shootings are practically non-existent. For that matter, shootings of any kind are practically non-existent.
No-knock / SWAT style raids and use of pyrotechnics/flash-bangs/etc are reserved for where there's a lot more evidence that someone has a large number of weapons.
Nobody is afraid they might get shot by a police officer because they reached into their glove box or into their pocket.
I'm not saying things are all rainbows and unicorns, but still...
I don't see how turning up to talk to your representatives with a whole bunch of weapons is going to make the conversation go any better.
Nazi Germany is used as hyperbole - because it's both that and historically true (demonstrating the hyperbole to be still tangible).
I agree there are some great things about living in a society largely free from gun crime and the risk of being unnecessarily shot by police. But in Australia we have basically no meaningful internal backstop should a tyrannical government sweep over us.
I'm also definitely not advocating using or displaying weapons when talking with your representatives. I think that's a dishonest and uncharitable interpretation of what I've written. I am saying however that any laws may find it difficult for broad enforcement in a society that is armed and displeased with whatever law is attempting to be enforced -- and that that is a deterrent to creating such laws in the first place.
Exactly. And that's why he said East Germany and not Nazi Germany.
If you don't like it you can easily substitute in a plethora of other soviet satellite states that had secret police.
I disagree. That sounds more like a military junta than a government.
> If you have 2 groups of people, one group armed and one unarmed, which one is in charge?
Insufficient information.
The members of government are, by and large, unarmed - and certainly unarmed when in Canberra. Our defence forces have a whole bunch of firearms, yet answers to and obeys the lawful orders of the government.
For example, the ability for Seargeant Jerk to feel justified in sending a SWAT team to your door at 4AM on the (plausibly deniable) suggestion of a government official who is highly peeved by your public criticism of his/her policy is directly proportional to how likely that 4AM raid is to go badly enough to attract media attention and the tough questions that follow. It's a hell of a lot harder to justify abuse when you have to put your people and your credibility as a professional in danger to do it.
Of course, things could still go badly if the populace is not armed but it's orders of magnitude more likely. And of course the government can still harass people without entering their homes but it's much less efficient.
Social media, viral content and dank memes make the people on a more level playing field with the government when it comes to disseminating information and coordinating (yes, this has downsides, so be it). Firearms (or any other tool of violence) perform similar functions but for violence. They serve as a force multiplier for the individual and decrease the size of the biggest group of people the government can marginalize. We don't usually think of information as being something the state has a monopoly over because few states do these days (i.e. basically just north Korea) but if you rewind the clock to back before the printing press all the parallels are there. The state/church held a tight grip on information but not violence. Today things are reversed with the state having near absolute power to enact violence. Holding a tight enough monopoly on either can enable near absolute control.
Their loss.