Laura Newell: No sympathy for firearm owners whinging about buybacks

It’s time to pull out a big box of tissues, folks because I have a tale of woe for you.

After spending up big on shiny bangy things, some of WA’s gun gang is upset they will “only” get up to $1000 of taxpayer cash for their toys under a State buyback plan.

Yes, you read that right. We taxpayers will be paying owners to give up tens of thousands of “unnecessary” firearms as part of Labor’s long-awaited gun reforms. Under the buyback, owners will receive a payment — in line with retail baseline valuations, developed with industry — based on the type of weapon and its age, ranging from $1000 for a newer revolver handgun to $233 for an older rifle.

The scheme will cost us $64.3 million. I mean, with that kind of money, you could buy an entire trolley of goods at Woolworths.

OK, more seriously, to give you proper context, construction began on the new Eglinton South West Primary School in late November, and the total cost for that has been put at $41m. So, the moral here is that we could build a primary school and a half for the amount we’re going to spend on second-hand guns.

But apparently, that’s simply not good enough for some local gun fans. They claim their weapons are worth far more. And — as you read a precis of their argument, I need you to imagine this said in the kind of voice a five-year-old uses when their friend has pinched the toy they want to play with — “It’s not faaaiirrrr”.

My response? Same as I’d give a kid: toughen up. In fact, there are those of us horrified that we’ll pay anything in return for horrid death machines that we believe many should never have had in the first place.

And I’m not talking here about people who might legitimately need weapons for their line of work (think farmers) or those who legitimately use them for sport and recreation (although, I personally think guns for that should only ever be stored at a gun club licensed premises), but those who, frankly, have no real reason to own a firearm other than liking the idea of it.

It was really brought home to me just how insane it is that the gun lobby feels any of us will feel sympathetic to their “plight” when I received an email from my 6-year-old’s school telling me the termly “lockdown drill” would be occurring this week. The school reassured us it was all about preparing for emergencies like bushfires, electricity outages, or if an animal escaped from the circus.

Yes, seriously, they actually did use a circus-animal escape as an example of an emergency that would spark a lockdown. I don’t blame the school here; they are trying to keep panicky parents calm amid the real elephant in the room — the knowledge there are 360,000 “legal” guns on our streets.

But I think we can all acknowledge the truth — the drills wouldn’t be anywhere near so important if there wasn’t a fairly hefty dose of concern over a madman coming into the school with a stolen firearm or, perhaps worse, a student with a parent’s “legal” gun.

Growing up in the UK, I never once had to take part in a “lockdown drill”. Plenty of fire drills, yes, but nothing that had me locking myself in the supply cupboard and practising keeping very quiet. And why is that? Oh yes, proper laws that keep firearms off the streets.

Police Minister Paul Papalia said when announcing the buyback: “Unfortunately, a number of high-profile firearm incidents have compromised the safety of regular, law-abiding Western Australians in recent years. If there are fewer firearms in the community, there will fewer opportunities for them to be used inappropriately.”

He’s spot on. And so, begrudgingly, I accept that paying out six times what it cost the State Government to give us all free travel on trains and buses this summer ($10.4 million) for a firearms amnesty is vital.

But, for those complaining that the recompense isn’t enough, there isn’t a violin small enough.