Did my posting on guns go too far? Does the NSW Shooters Party monitor the net for anything on the subject? Whatever the reason, the criticisms I received were aimed at my veracity, my political affiliations and my view of the invasion of Iraq. And that’s as it should be. However I’d like to respond to a few points and then drop it – it’s our differences that make life interesting and we all have our own world view.
Without wishing to denigrate “Pottering’s” views or politics I would like to make a couple of points. First, I don’t belong to an “in crowd” and never have. Unless of course you want to classify my aquaintances in the world of pigeon keeping as one. They may or may not be flattered. They’re the only people with whom I have any sort of ‘official’ connection and here in the USA, and to a very slightly lesser extent in Australia, they see my views on life, the Universe and everything in almost the same light as the rest of the world sees our fondness for pigeons – at best incomprehensible and at worst as a threat to civilization.
As regards to ‘Bonsai’ Howard, I can assure Pottering and ‘Cy’ that the sobriquet was in fairly common use in both Tasmania and Western Australia. Perhaps not so much in The Media but it certainly cropped up fairly often in conversation. Perhaps I should have written “among Howard’s less-flattering nicknames” or “among some Australians”.
As I remember, it started out as one of those jokes* that in Australia seem to be in circulation only hours after momentous events such as the announcement that we’d joined the “Coalition of the Willing” for the invasion of Iraq. You know the sort of thing: “Didja hear Howard’s changing his middle name to Bonsai?” Perhaps it’s a hangover from the convict days; dark humor can help take the sting out of things. My love of idiom and dialect might have colored my perception and so I apologize. But it’s a good moniker, hey? And I reckon it suited him – oops, there I go again.
To Cy again, I’ve heard some proponents of unfettered gun ownership claim in public forums that Australia’s Bill of Rights guarantees our right to do so. Do you class that as drivel? Tv has convinced a lot of our countrymen that we have rights that in fact don’t exist under our very sketchy Constitution. If you’d like to get a handle on me, telephone a couple of Conservative politicians in Tassie. We disagreed like mad on just about everything but enjoyed each other’s arguments and one in particular was sorry to see me leave and telephoned me to say so.
To ‘ChrisPer’, I agree that the Wikipedia article you mention is worth reading and pretty much balanced. However, I am neither a Labor voter (I gave up on Labor in the 90s and their gutless reaction to the ‘children overboard’ and other scandalous acts by the Howard-led Coalition reinforced that decision) nor a shooter – though I was in my youth. If I am PC – which I’d dispute – I’d find it preferable to being aligned with some of the residents of the town in WA, my home State, where I lived until the end of last year – people who used “coon” and “boong” and “chink” in open conversation. And a sanctimonious world view of anything is something I do not have.
To ‘Aus shooter’ I urge you to look at the statistics yourself, not rely on what others tell you. In Australia’s early days only the establishment had guns. Some convicts were sanctioned to hunt game to augment supplies, true, but what harm could they do? Until the time of the goldrushes I’d argue that the biggest gun-owning group outside the military was the squattocracy. As an aside, arguably the greatest mass murderer Australia has known was a member of that mob.† Western Australia a police State? True, though they were one of the last police forces – oops, sorry, services, to carry guns. But let’s be fair, Australia was a police state from its inception. Things have greatly improved but I believe that until Australia modifies its Constitution and gets something like a bill of rights, then its citizens are at risk of abuse of power from many quarters. As to the US right to bear arms, that's what I said. Americans see it as a right because it is in their Constitution, though there are differing interpretations of that section.
Nice talking to you all. It’s been nearly as much fun as the time I got telephone threats of heavy violence after criticising the then Anglican Archbishop of Wollongong for his bigotry – not from His Grace I hasten to add. Though because you disagree so strongly with my views I’m probably talking to thin air, hey.
*They abound. As tasteless as many may be, even their harshest critics must concede that they’re pretty funny – to an Australian anyway (sorry fellers, to some Australians). I heard a classic example circulating at my youngest son’s primary school – student population 28 – during the infamously bungled ‘Chamberlain trial’ and its aftermath: “Two dingoes sittin’ near Uluru. One says: ‘You goin’ to the trial?’ The other one says: ‘Nah, I’ve had a gutsful of them Chamberlains.”
†William Frazer of Hornet Bank station. Nearly all his family were killed by local Aborigines in response to continued abuse. The revenge killings by both officials and the citizenry were widespread and for years afterwards Frazer would shoot Aboriginals on sight. He once shot dead a woman in the streets of Rockhampton with the excuse that she was wearing his mother’s dress. The fact that this was some 20 years after her death makes it very unlikely.
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