Culture

The NRA’s Yelling About How Evil Australia’s Gun Laws Are Again, And Aussies Are Getting Pissed

Thanks for your opinion, NRA! *huge middle finger*

by Alex McKinnon  22 January 2016

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With the US Presidential races heating up, gun lobby group and purveyors of human misery the NRA are beginning to flex their considerable muscle against any prospective candidates seeking to make gun control an election issue. Besides President Barack Obama’s constant but largely fruitless efforts to impose some kind of regulation on the massive loopholes in the American gun market, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has sought to make gun control a prominent part of her campaign.

Of particular concern to the NRA is the prospect of a new President enacting the kind of gun-buyback scheme that Prime Minister John Howard introduced after the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996. Clinton has previously expressed support for a similar scheme, saying the idea “would be worth considering doing it on the national level if that could be arranged” during a Democratic debate in October.

Hence why the NRA have come out swinging, releasing a new ad campaign overnight that highlights the supposedly terrifying consequences of Australia’s gun-buyback scheme. Drawing on old newspaper ads that warned of penalties for not surrendering illegal firearms during a gun amnesty period, and featuring a soundtrack seemingly inspired by a Michael Bay movie, their new TV ad somehow manages to be both completely infuriating and extremely boring all at once.

The NRA are also going in hard on social media, making Clinton’s expressed support for an Australian-style gun-buyback scheme the centrepiece of their scare campaign against her. They even feature a little outline of a kangaroo, just in case the NRA’s target market don’t know where or what Australia is.

As is always the case when they bash Australia’s gun laws for its own purposes, the NRA don’t show a great deal of understanding of how Australia actually does things when it comes to guns. Contrary to what they’d have Americans believe, Australians can own multiple guns of various kinds — they just have appropriate safeguards in place, such as licences, background checks and cool-off periods. And, as the NRA always seems to so conveniently forget, those restrictions work — there hasn’t been a single mass shooting in Australia since 1996, an unimaginable prospect in a country where mass shootings are beginning to outnumber days of the year.

All of which is well-known to Australians, who — as a rule — don’t take kindly to being lectured on matters of public policy by a cashed-up lobby group from overseas that peddles in the commercialisation of death. As is usually the case when the NRA takes aim at Australia, Australians have taken aim right back, only with middle fingers instead of semi-automatic weapons.

Given the Iowa caucuses are less than two weeks away, we can expect to see a whole lot more of these ads over the next few months. So long as the NRA uses Australia as a tool to press its political agenda, Australians are going to be unapologetic in telling them to go fuck themselves.