Thread: Very Powerful Firearms

Couple of comments on the above.

I've worked on the other side of the table to local, regional and central government on a bunch of stuff over the years - farming, mining, dog control law, roading, other stuff. There's a real devious side to the bureaucracy that you've got to be very very careful to avoid working up. When there's a bill being considered, and there's an expected public response, in today's Facebook / forum world the very first thing that the underlings do in the name of 'research' is hop onto the sites and copy and paste the choice comments from the antis and store them for future use. Now a lot of these underlings aren't like you and I, they live in townhouses in cities and use public transport and spend more than they earn on frivolous crap, silly coffee and drink strawberry flavoured beer in tiny glasses.

In the case of gun control, you can bet your bottom dollar 90% of the underlings will be on the 'control' side of the argument, and those that aren't quite sure will pretend they are cos they've got a promotion in mind. Seeing as how this issue is a really hot topic liable to generate significant political capital amongst the city dwelling lefties in AKL, WLGN and CHCH, only the best, most dogged underlings are put on the case. And their bosses order them to come up with a 'profile' of the likely opponents.

This profile will be a one pager that is thrust under the nose of the chief bureaucrat, who signs it off for inclusion in the dossier to the Minister. The Minister will take approximately 15 seconds to skim read this profile, see some of the choice comments about government, the police, Australia, etc, and think "Hmm, bogans and fuckwits, that shouldn't be too hard". In that moment, the die is cast. Any organised response to any proposed changes (e.g. SSAA) is then regarded as representing said bogans and fuckwits and these poor buggers are pushing a barrow load uphill all the way, on our behalf.

Don't think I'm joking about this. I've seen these dossiers. They manipulate and bend and misrepresent and pervert the truth to suit an agenda. It totally plays into the hands of the faceless grey bureaucrats, the abusive throw away one-liners, the rants after a few beers. They take what you've written on a public forum and copy and paste to suit their agenda. Once its in black and white, they've got you.

The only way forward is to drop the anger and vitriol and find a way to unite behind a lobby group that can do the job. A mini NRA without quite so much of their crap. But that is a very hard thing to achieve, here, in my experience. We're so parochial and mistrusting of the agenda of others.