Culture

Australia Has “No Freedom” Because Of Our Anti-Gun And Hate Speech Laws, According To FOX News

Thanks for the input, FOX! *huge middle finger*

by Alex McKinnon  6 October 2015

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The mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon last week has sparked off a chain reaction that’s entirely predictable by now, given how many times this has happened before. Like he does every time there’s a mass killing, President Barack Obama called on lawmakers to enact stricter regulations on gun ownership and sales, and like clockwork the USA’s resident gun nuts, conservative hot air balloons and general fuckery practitioners began shrieking blue murder about the government taking away people’s “freedom” to buy a military-grade assault rifle off the rack with no background checks.

It was in that vein that professional old-people scarers FOX News weighed in, trying to dismantle the crazy idea that fewer guns equals less gun violence with all the calm, reasoned thinking of a pack of dogs running after an ice-cream truck. Specifically, they attacked the increasingly-invoked example of Australia, a country that responded to a massacre of its citizens in a grown-up way, by claiming that we somehow have less freedom than a country where protest is restricted to designated Free Speech Zones.

“The other side of the that argument, of course, is — and what people always throw out there — is look at Australia,” co-host Clayton Morris said. “They have no gun violence, they don’t have guns, citizens aren’t allowed to have guns.”

“They also have no freedom!” Tucker Carlson responded. “You can go to prison for expressing unpopular views and people do. And in Western Europe by the way. And in Canada. No one ever says that.”

Firstly, I refuse to take advice from a grown man named “Tucker” who wears bow ties like that’s a thing. His full name, I kid you not, is Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson, which is the most nose-bleedingly obnoxious collection of letters you will encounter in all your days.

carlson

World’s Most Punchable Face Championships reigning champion, 1969-present

Secondly, what? Who has gone to jail for expressing an unpopular opinion? Carlson’s most likely referring to Andrew Bolt, who was found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act by a court in 2011, and the unsuccessful attempts by Attorney-General George “people do have the right to be bigots” Brandis to repeal those laws after Bolt had a tantrum about it.

But a widely-read columnist like Bolt complaining about losing his precious freedom of speech is like a billionaire complaining about having to pay tax; it’s less a matter of fundamental freedoms and more about entitled manbabies having a dummy-spit when the world has the temerity not to conform to their expectations. (In fairness, we do lock up people who’ve committed no crime in offshore detention camps where journalists aren’t allowed to go, but somehow I don’t think that’s what Carlson was referring to.)

It’s also a bit difficult to swallow the whole “freedom” angle given that our freedom took a bit of a hit overnight thanks to the US-centric Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement. As we’ve noted before, the TPP will allow foreign corporations to sue Australian governments over laws that infringe on their profiteering. So if Halliburton and Smith & Wesson now have the “freedom” to sue Australia into repealing our own gun laws so they can make some money, it’s not super clear how the average Aussie benefits by gaining the “freedom” to get shot.

This isn’t the first time the US gun lobby has taken aim at Australia’s gun laws. Back in July the NRA published a screed claiming our gun restrictions “robbed Australians of their right to self-defense and empowered criminals,” and that “there is now a growing consensus among impartial researchers that disarming Australia’s citizens did not make them safer”. Unsurprisingly, everything in that article turned out to be hateful bullshit, and Australians weren’t shy in telling the NRA to go fuck themselves.

That appears to be the reaction this time round, too.