Every State has agreed to limit ammo purchases and SA already does
Queensland Labor this year signed up to the new, tougher National Firearms Agreement. All the old ‘mays’ and ‘shalls’ of 1996 got replaced with ‘wills’ and ‘musts’. The policymakers have doubled-down on their commitment to red tape like ammo limits.
South Australia already has ammo limits with a $5,000 fine:
(1) A person who acquires or owns or has possession of more ammunition than is required to meet the person’s reasonable needs in making lawful use of a firearm for the immediately following 12 months is guilty of an offence. Maximum penalty: $5 000.
And you have to prove your innocence if charged:
In proceedings for an offence under subsection (1) or (2), the onus is on the defendant to prove that the quantity of ammunition in his or her possession was not more than was required to meet his or her reasonable needs in making lawful use of a firearm or in carrying on the business of a dealer (as the case requires) for the immediately following 12 months.
People have been charged in South Australia
A slim bundle of documents recently released by the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department following a Freedom of Information request point to South Australia’s draconian provisions (reversing the onus of proof against shooters) as one cunning way to implement ammunition controls that will make people self-limit how much they buy for fear of big fines.
South Australia’s ammunition limit provisions have been used to charge people with offences. We know of this from an appeal against sentence (Frazer) although we’ll never know how many people were charged in South Australia’s Magistrates Court because those cases are almost never reported in law reports.
Labor wants to do it to you and it can be done
The 2017 National Firearms Agreement – a policy of all State and Commonwealth governments – says:
54. Jurisdictions will legislate to allow the sale of ammunition only for those firearms for which the purchaser is licenced, and impose limits on the quantity of ammunition that may be purchased in a given period.
The Commonwealth has already committed millions of dollars to the Australian Firearms Information Network. It is only a matter of time before that network gets turned against all law abiding firearm owners. Farmers, target shooters and pest controllers buying the ammo they need to do what they’ve been safely doing for decades will be punished.
There is a rapidly accelerating trend towards government using “big data” to track and punish people. Government agencies have a massive amount of data about you at their disposal, and they generally operate in a pattern of making an allegation and then, just as in South Australia, you’ll need to prove your innocence.
It ultimately is not hard for a firearms licensing branch to ask major dealers to supply customer purchase information, which is already digitised in dealers’ accounting and stock control software.
Queensland Labor are setup to limit ammo if they get a majority
If Labor gets back in at the coming Queensland election with a comfortable majority (instead of the minority they have now), you can say “hello” to ammo limits, big fines, trying to prove your innocence and losing your firearms license. This is the same Queensland Labor that backed Queensland Weapons Licensing taking pistols off hundreds of farmers who are trying to hold back a sea of feral pests.
Queensland Labor is dominated by left-wing crackpots who’d love to do this to all law-abiding firearm owners. For the children. Just ask Jackie.