Queensland’s Chief Health Officer Dr Young issued directions last Friday closing all Queensland gun shops for all business without exception. Many other retailers remained open, including JB Hi-Fi, which on its website boasts “JB STORES ARE OPEN”. Some retailers were given exceptions to operate in a safe way with ‘social distancing’.
Senior staff from Queensland’s Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women have confirmed with LAFO that Queensland Health decided to close gun dealers ostensibly to reduce domestic violence. That’s right, Health presumes that licensed shooters, some of the most heavily-vetted individuals in society, are likely to carry out domestic violence because they can go to a gun dealer?
The basic proposition in this thinking is that licensed shooters are murderers-in-waiting.
LAFO is lodging and pursuing Right To Information Requests across relevant departments to shed more light on where responsibility for this nonsense rests.
Direct evidence on Domestic Violence and licensed shooters
Earlier last year (2019), LAFO made a Right To Information application (reference 26581) to Queensland Police to obtain statistics on the relationship, if any, between DV incidents and firearms. Initially, Police said they would refuse to deal with the request. An RTI officer wrote to us:
“Enquiries have been conducted with the Public Safety Business Agency (PSBA) Statistical Services Team who have advised that identifying the statistics you are seeking is not able to be done via a simple search of existing QPS databases. They have advised that the only way we could accurately identify this information would involve a number of steps… [manually reviewing thousands of call outs]“
LAFO negotiated with Police so that a random sample of 50 domestic violence call outs from October 2018 would be reviewed and the outcomes released. Police responded: “searches were conducted on a selection of 50 DV occurrences in October, no incidents involved firearms or threats to police.”
Health doesn’t like the truth: licensed shooters are low-risk
Queensland Police were resistant to compiling any sort of evidence about the frequency of licensed shooters in domestic violence incidents. Queensland Health are totally disinterested in establishing whether there is any evidence at all that licensed shooters perpetrate domestic violence.
It is easier for Queensland Health to simply destroy the livelihoods and businesses of Queensland gun dealers by closing them for months on end. If you are an anti-firearm member of Queensland’s Labor Government, or a left-leaning Queensland Public Servant, it probably feels pretty satisfying to destroy industries and people you don’t agree with, while leaving JB Hi-Fi open to see remote control cars and DVDs.
Don’t just sit there, write an email!
It costs you nothing to write a short email, complaining about this appalling situation. If you can’t be bothered to type, link this post.
Queensland Premier dpc@premiers.qld.gov.au
Queensland Health Minister health@ministerial.qld.gov.au
Queensland Chief Health Officer CHO_CHO@health.qld.gov