Thank heavens that senior primary school students see that the presence of guns constitutes one of the great problems facing Australian society.

A group of upper primary students from Queensland recently took part in an OptiMinds program and chose the MAKING AMENDS challenge.

In his President message for October 2007, the SSAA National President, Bob Green, complained about Gun Control Australia saying that "Teaching a child to shoot is teaching a child to kill".

Guns are designed to fire or propel high-speed projectiles. These so-called bullets are, in the vast majority of cases, designed to kill something or to be used to practice for the killing process. Shooters may have noticed that you don't need to take a safety training course when you buy a tennis racquet, and the racquet does not have to be registered with the police. The reason is that, unlike guns, tennis racquets are not designed to kill. Gun laws are based on this fundamental fact.

The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (SSAA) is like other highly politically active pro-gun groups - they must show that gun laws don't work and are counter-productive or their entire political stance becomes fragile.

Two researchers, formerly associated with the SSAA and SSAA(SA),Drs Jeanine Baker and Samara McPhedran appear to have devoted considerable time to this pursuit. An example of their pro-gun bias was shown at an AIC conference in 2004 when they attempted to prove that New Zealand people got it right when they allowed pro-gun groups to advise on what gun laws were correct for a community (eg, no restrictions on semi-automatic long guns, or gun registration). Australians, they argued, were unwise for they wanted (and got) gun registration and restrictions on semi-automatic rifles and shotguns.

We would argue that on that occasion Baker and McPhedran did not use strong scientific methods in their attempts to ridicule Australian gun laws and by implication, the Australian people.

As we see it, their efforts to show that it was not wise to introduce stricter gun laws after the two major gun massacre years of 1987 and 1996 are also cloaked in doubt. We could, for example, argue that the Baker and McPhedran claim that gun deaths per 100,000 population in Australia was reliably on the way down before the post-1987 gun law improvements is quite dubious.

We also object to Baker and McPhedran's attempt to make it appear that Gun Control Australia accepted the SSAA argumentation on gun laws - nothing could be further from the truth. (See ic-wish media release 16.1.07)

Below, we present what we believe to be a useful academic paper authored by Assistant Professor Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University Toronto and Professor Andrew Leigh of ANU. This appraises the societal value of the 1996 National Agreement on Gun Laws - it also looks at the likely validity of views expressed in other papers which examined the same topic.

In an article by journalist Nigel Hunt in Adelaide's Sunday Mail on 15 September 2007 we are told that:

"A TWO YEAR police operation targeting gun owners has resulted in more than 1000 weapons being seized or surrendered."

In the 05-06 financial year the operation looked at about 1900 gun owners and found:

"This resulted in 422 guns being seized, 366 being surrendered by owners and 30 unregistered firearms and four silencers being found. There were also 134 people reported for various breaches of the Firearms Act that included being unlicensed, holding unregistered guns and storing guns and ammunition incorrectly."

In the financial year 06-07 about 1500 gun owners were checked:

"..which resulted in 60 being reported and six arrests for breaches. Police also seized 264 guns and located another 42 unregistered"

On behalf of the great majority of Australians; that is, those who think we should have strong gun laws, we record our great disappointment that the AIC is being drawn into fundraising for an organisation which continually tries to show that our gun laws are useless, and that Australia's gun laws should more closely resemble those in the United States.

It is also disappointing that the inappropriate actions of the Australian Institute of Criminology will benefit a major international gun manufacturer.

By way of clarification, we simply note that this month one of the senior research analysts of the Australian Institute of Criminology has agreed to be a guest speaker at a fundraising dinner dance for the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (Vic). The advertising for this says that,"...a HUGE diversity of Beretta merchandise, including accessories, knives, firearms etc", will be auctioned".

We have made it clear to the Australian Institute of Criminology that we think its behaviour is enormously disheartening for all people who want Australia to have a regime of strict gun laws. As we see it, the Institute's actions are far from helping that process.