Amitabh Bachchan slept with a gun. On Nov. 26, as 10 terrorists orchestrated mayhem at Mumbai's landmark hotels and train station, Bollywood's most enduring superstar pulled out his revolver. The following day, he wrote on his blog: "As an Indian, I need to live in my own land, on my own soil with dignity and without fear. And I need an assurance on that. I am ashamed to say this and not afraid to share this now with the rest of the cyber world, that last night as the events of the terror attack unfolded in front of me, I did something for the first time and one that I had hoped never ever to be in a situation to do. Before retiring for the night, I pulled out my licensed .32 revolver and put it under my pillow. For a very disturbed sleep." A few days after the attack, Shah Rukh Khan, who is known to Hindi film viewers as King Khan and routinely described as more famous than Tom Cruise, told a leading television channel, "I have read the Holy Koran. It states that if you heal one man, you heal the whole of mankind and if you hurt one man, you hurt the whole of mankind. . . . There is an Islam from Allah and very unfortunately, there is an Islam from the mullahs."
Read Story

Two men have been arrested and $800,000 in cash has been seized by police in a two-month long police operation targeting the drugs underworld. Police raided houses in Auckland and Whangarei on Monday in an operation aimed at methamphetamine manufacturers and suppliers. As well as the cash, police also found a loaded .22 calibre firearm and 140g of methamphetamine. A 33-year-old Whangarei man charged with possessing methamphetamine for supply has appeared in court and was remanded to reappear in Whangarei District Court on January 12. A 61-year-old Mangonui man was charged with manufacturing methamphetamine, possession of methamphetamine for supply, supplying methamphetamine and unlawful possession of a pistol.

A 22-year-old man and a 17-year-old youth have been arrested and charged with aggravated assault over an incident at Morphett Vale in Adelaide's southern suburbs early yesterday morning. Police say the fight was sparked by gatecrashers at a party at Lomond Crescent at about 1:00am on Boxing Day.

Fox hunters have claimed more than 300,000 turned up at their traditional Boxing Day hunts - saying it is evidence of growing public support. And the turnout, it is claimed, shows a groundswell of backing for their campaign to repeal the act banning hunting with hounds - passed by Labour four years ago in England and Wales. The Bill made hunting with dogs a criminal offence, although exercising hounds, chasing a scent trail and flushing out foxes to be shot are all still legal. Tim Bonner, spokesman for the Countryside Alliance, leading the campaign to change the law, said: "From the hunts I have talked to, there seems to be a very large turnout at all the meets ... Obviously the good weather has helped that, but also a feeling that people are coming out just to support their local hunt and the campaign for the repeal of the act. It is a very positive feeling across the country." Mr Bonner said the Hunting Act was a "bad piece of legislation, apart from being passed for bad reasons", and said if the Conservatives won the next General Election the law would be changed. "It will take a change of government to change it. David Cameron has consistently said he will allow a free vote," Mr Bonner added. "At the very least next year will be the penultimate Boxing Day under the Hunting Act."....

The ratings used for films could be applied to websites in a bid to better police the internet and protect children from harmful and offensive material, Britain's minister for culture has said. Andy Burnham told Britain's The Daily Telegraph newspaper the government was planning to negotiate with the administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to draw up new international rules for English language websites. "The more we seek international solutions to this stuff - the UK and the U.S. working together - the more that an international norm will set an industry norm," the newspaper reports the Culture Secretary as saying. Giving websites film-style ratings would be one possibilty. "This is an area that is really now coming into full focus," Mr Burnham said. Internet service providers could also be forced to offer services where the only sites accessible are those deemed suitable for children, the paper said. Any moves to censor the internet would go to the heart of a debate about freedom of speech on the World Wide Web....

National Geographic Channel ran a show last night entitled, "Gun In America." According to the program, there are millions of misguided gun owners across the nation. Why? Because your guns are supposedly more likely to harm you than to help you in an emergency. "As a society, we're totally out of control with weapons," said one Philadelphia cop who was interviewed during the show. "You need to limit access that people have to these type of firearms." That was the basic thrust of the program. National Geographic recited the usual worn-out factoids that are peddled by the Brady Campaign. It only cited anti-gun cops. And for every person who was filmed stating he or she believed in a right to own firearms for self-defense, the program would cite "facts" to prove that such a hope was misplaced. Gun owners should let the President and CEO of National Geographic know that the channel should stick to showing pictures of kangaroos and foliage -- images that we normally attribute to National Geographic's magazine -- and keep his personal, anti-gun views to his private conversations around the Christmas dinner table....

The Two-Shot Sight In Technique
If you don't have a lot of ammo to waste attempting to sight in your gun, here is a technique that'll save you time and expense. For the technique to be successful, two assumptions are in play: 1) Your first shot must be a good shot - not good as in the center of the target, but good as in trigger pull and not moving the gun in any way as you squeeze the trigger. 2) The ammo must be accurate in your gun. Obviously, if you've never tried it before this sight-in session, you will have no way of knowing if it is an accurate load. But, if you have used it before and it performed to your liking, you are ready for the two-shot sight in technique. ...

A 20-year-old man was shot dead as he returned from a Christmas shopping trip, police have said. Craig Brown died after he was shot on Loftus Road in Hammersmith, west London, at 4.50pm on Christmas Eve. The shooting is being investigated by Operation Trident - a police team dedicated to tackling gun crime within the black community. "At this early stage we believe the deceased had returned from a shopping trip and had just parked his car in Loftus Road," a Metropolitan Police spokesman said....

A democracy needs a Bill of Rights to protect essential individual rights. These rights cannot and are not protected by democratically elected parliaments. Opposition to a Bill of Rights on the grounds that unelected judges will be reviewing acts of Parliament is misplaced and reflects a misunderstanding of the democratic process itself. Parliament is a democratic institution and reflects the will of the majority. In a Westminster system of government, such as Australia's, the majority political party prevails the main concern is the will of the people and not the interests of a sometimes unpopular minority or individual. Frequently the desires and wishes of the majority are contrary to minority interests. Parliament does an excellent job of representing the people, but is simply ill-equipped to represent the interests of an individual who may be very unpopular. Only the judges who do not face constant re-election are equipped to protect the rights of an unpopular or even despised minority. Judges are independent because they do not need to cater to the whim of the majority. Popularly elected governments are vulnerable to the spirit of the time; they reflect the whims of the majority....

A 34-year-old woman said she had been in the Stirling Highway pharmacy at Mosman Park, Perth, for a couple of minutes when two offenders came in and demanded cash and drugs. Today, she relived the horrific ordeal, describing how the offenders had yelled "hurry up, hurry up'' to staff to meet their demands, before threatening to shoot the three workers and customers, including her two children. The gun, believed to be a sawn-off shotgun or rifle, was concealed under a bag.The woman said she was angry the robbers had not considered the effects their actions would have on her young children. "They basically yelled at us to put our hands on our heads,'' she told a press conference this morning. "They appeared to be drug addicts who needed quick cash and drugs. They obviously were fairly desperate and hadn't really thought about what they were doing."

The offenders are described as Caucasian. One is aged 20-30 years, is 180cm tall with a slim build and has dark hair tied back in a pony tail. He was wearing a red checked shirt, white baseball cap and dark grey jeans. The second offender is described as slightly older than the first, 180cm tall with a slim build and dark, collar-length hair. He was wearing a black baseball cap, sunglasses and black shirt with long white sleeves....

Every dollar counts in a state starved for cash. Now, gun-toters in Philadelphia, where the deficit is projected to top $1 billion by 2013, are being asked to contribute more to strapped state coffers, too. The effort certainly won't generate a windfall - more like small change from the city's sofa cushions. But according to state records, it is long overdue. It also provides a glimpse at tight-fisted city-state relations in hard times. In 2005, when the legislature amended the law governing licenses to carry firearms, the fee for a five-year license was increased from $19 to $25. The increase, channeled into accounts for license "modernization" and "validation," is supposed to make it possible for even small municipalities to get state grants to buy cameras for making gun-permit photo IDs. But Philadelphia has not been collecting the $6 increase, a fact brought home to permit-holders with a bracing letter this month from Lt. Lisa King, commander of the Police Department gun permits unit....

Two armed youths have been caught by a police dog after breaking into a northern suburbs school. Patrols were called to the Swallowcliffe Primary School, Davoren Park, about 2.30am today. They found several classrooms broken into and saw two youths running from the scene....

All 4000 operational South Australian police will be armed with semi-automatic pistols within two years, as the force decides to fight fire with firepower. Deputy Police Commissioner Gary Burns said the Smith & Wesson M&P (military and police) semi-automatic pistol had been approved as the new operational firearm after a successful trial this year. The new pistols will replace the ageing .357 Smith & Wesson revolvers, which have been standard issue for about 20 years. The trial involved more than 500 officers across the state. The roll out of the new firearms will begin early next year and should be complete within two years. The new pistol is considered to have superior safety features, including a mechanism which prevents it firing if dropped. It is made from a combination of polymer and stainless steel, weighs about one kilogram and has a service life of about 20,000 rounds....

The NSW government has announced a three-month amnesty targeting unregistered and unlicensed firearms, in a crackdown on gun crime across the state. Police Minister Tony Kelly said the amnesty would begin on March 1 next year to give those with an unregistered gun an opportunity to hand them in to police. Under the amnesty those without a gun licence will be able to surrender their firearms without a penalty to any police station. And those with a licence, but an unregistered weapon, will be able to register them. "This amnesty will help us keep better track of guns or get those guns off the street," Mr Kelly said in a statement. "We're sick and tired of gun crime and criminals using guns illegally. "We will continue to do everything we can to stop criminals from getting hold of guns...."

In countries that have relatively liberal gun laws ─ like Finland ─ most guns are legally held, as in the U.S. In countries with restrictive laws, like Germany, most guns are held illegally. Either way, people who want to own guns seem to go ahead and do so, no matter what the authorities want. The result, in countries with tough laws, like the UK, is that you might have more than twice as many firearms owned in the shadows as out in the open. In France, more than five times as many guns are held illegally as legally. So, Europeans are not so disarmed. Why does this matter? Well, if your population turns to supporting black markets, the logic of those illicit markets prevails. Once the mechanisms for satisfying demand move beyond the reach of the law, they acknowledge few limits....

A jealous lover who tried to shoot his ex-partner and her new boyfriend in front of his toddler son has been jailed for 14 years by a Supreme Court judge. Kire Ackoski was foiled in his murderous plan only by a misfiring handgun, Justice Trish Kelly said. Ackoski, 26, stalked the couple as they sat talking inside the woman's car on War Memorial Drive in the city on November 30 last year. Ackoski approached the car, pointed the gun at the man's chest and pulled the trigger, only for the weapon to misfire. He fired shots at the man as he fled into the darkness towards Adelaide Oval and at his ex-partner's car as she drove off with their two-year old son in the back seat. Justice Kelly said there was no doubt Ackoski had tried to carry out a calculated plan to murder the man and woman. "You very nearly succeeded, the bullet penetrated the windscreen and missed (the woman) by a small margin," she said....

Three people will vie to replace Sandra Kanck as the last Australian Democrat in any parliament in Australia. Ms Kanck will retire from the SA upper house in January with her casual vacancy to be filled by the party after a ballot of all members. The party's state vice president Max Baumann said on Monday three candidates would contest the ballot including David Winderlich, the current media adviser to Ms Kanck. Also on the ballot will be church minister Craig Bossie and the party's current SA president Richard Way....

A junior police officer who shot a knife-wielding woman in western Sydney was not qualified to use a Taser stun gun, despite the weapon being available at her police station. Police said they were called to an address on Iron St in North Parramatta at about 1.30am (AEDT) today, with reports a 48-year-old woman was threatening a man with a knife. When they arrived, officers were allegedly threatened by the woman. Police failed to subdue the woman with capsicum spray, and when she allegedly attacked them again, a female officer fired a number of gunshots, police said. The 48-year-old woman was seriously injured and was taken to Westmead Hospital where she remains in a serious but stable condition. The 23-year-old man was taken to the same hospital and treated for a neck laceration, sustained in the initial confrontation. It is not known whether the pair knew each other but both were local residents....

Guns resembling military weapons and designed to appeal to young men will be banned from being imported into Australia. The Federal Government will change import regulations to tighten controls on firearms that have a "military-style appearance". Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said handguns and paintball markers resembling guns with fully automatic firing capabilities were already subject to higher import controls. "Manufacturers have now begun developing firearms that look more like machine guns in an attempt to appeal to a younger market," he said. "These firearms could cause unnecessary fear and apprehension in the community, which is why the regulation has been extended to cover these new types of weapons." There will also be stricter import controls on magazines for fully automatic firearms. Mr Debus said that there was "absolutely no reason" for anyone to own a shotgun that looked like a semi-automatic rifle.

IANSA article: Progress in preventing gun violence through the United Nations

Campaigners against armed violence had high expectations for the 2008 First Committee, which met during October in New York. All UN Member States participate in this Committee, which addresses peace and international security. This includes all aspects of disarmament (nuclear, biological, cluster bombs, conventional weapons etc.) Resolutions adopted at the First Committee are usually rapidly endorsed by the plenary of the General Assembly and become General Assembly Resolutions....

The late management guru Peter Drucker once said: "There is nothing as useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all." Never had the chance to meet the bloke myself but, in terms of outlining the perils of unnecessary meddling; of fixing the unbroken and justifying the unjustifiable, his point seems as applicable now as it was 30 years previous. In other words, give a man a job that doesn't need to be done and you can be sure he'll have a crack at it anyway, or at least to the best of his ability. Carry On Regardless. That the results may range from a complete waste of time and money to an Orwellian abuse of power is neither here nor there. A chap has to do something, after all. There's an entire industry made up of people who dream up solutions for non-existent problems, and then set about trying to implement them. We were reminded of this only last week when the Sunday Star-Times exposed the dangers faced by members of the New Zealand Police Special Investigations Group, who have recently been risking life and limb spying on lethal dissidents such as battery chicken farm protesters, anti-vivisectionists, Iraq war protesters and climate change activists. One can only imagine these SIG officers' anxious WAGs as they farewell their brave men each morning, uncertain if they'll ever see them again....

A 41-year-old man has been charged over a disturbance during which shots were fired outside a house in Adelaide. Port Adelaide police were called to the Renown Park house following reports several people were trying to force their way into the property about 11.30pm (CDT) last night. It is believed the people involved are known to each other.

South Australia and Victoria have deferred announcing their 2009 duck and quail seasons after the receipt of data considered in the setting of the dates was unavailable for a pre-Christmas release. The earliest date for the announcement is now mid-January. However, Tasmania has released the dates of its' 2009 open season. Tasmania's season runs from March 7th. to June 8th., 2009. The King Island open season ends a week earlier on May 31.

NSW Premier Nathan Rees has blamed bikie gangs for a spate of drive-by shootings in Sydney's west, the latest injuring a sleeping toddler. The three-year-old boy was grazed, apparently by a ricocheting bullet. It was one of a number of bullets fired at a Blacktown home. The boy, who was asleep in his bed, received a minor abrasion and was treated by ambulance staff at the scene, police said. An eight-year-old boy, a man and a woman were also home at the time but were not injured. Mr Rees said he was disgusted by the attack, saying outlaw motorcycle gangs were responsible for a string of recent drive-by shootings. ``I'm absolutely sick to death of this,'' he told reporters.

Residents of western Sydney are growing accustomed to sounds of gunshots and reports of drive-bys. There have been 14 drive-by shootings in as many days. Houses, cars and humans have been the targets. The concern is that the drive-bys are linked to a feud between bikie gangs and that the tension may escalate. Samantha Lee from the National Coalition for Gun Control says the state's laws are responsible for the rise in gun-related incidents." Certainly guns are the problem. We've seen now 680,000 firearms in New South Wales and thanks to the government and the Shooters Party New South Wales now has the weakest gun laws in Australia. The Government has created a legal landscape that will allow guns to flourish in New South Wales." But others argue illegal guns are the problem. Roy Smith is a Shooters Party MP in the NSW Upper House, he says he has no solutions to tackle unregistered firearms. "I don't have that answer. If we had that simple answer we wouldn't have this problem we've got today. But it's the same as other problems that we've got across society too and we're talking about illicit drug use. You know 20, 30 years ago the aim of the government was to close the borders and stop this stuff coming in and it's terrible but it's obviously that we've failed in doing that and we have to deal with every possible strategy...."

Firearms resembling military weapons and designed to appeal to young men will be banned from being imported into Australia. The Federal Government will change import regulations to tighten controls on firearms that have a "military-style appearance". Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus said handguns and paintball markers resembling guns with fully automatic firing capabilities were already subject to higher import controls. "Manufacturers have now begun developing firearms that look more like machine guns in an attempt to appeal to a younger market," he said. "These firearms could cause unnecessary fear and apprehension in the community, which is why the regulation has been extended to cover these new types of weapons."

A prominent criminologist has warned of a violent backlash against police because of the shooting death of teenager Tyler Cassidy in Melbourne last week. Dr Julian Bondy from RMIT University says he is alarmed at the outpouring of distress and anger, particularly on internet social networking sites. Dr Bondy says Tyler Cassidy has been described as a "soldier" in the "war" against authorities....

Police want to put tight-lipped shooting victims in front of special hearings to force them to name their assailants. Coercive hearings, which have been used successfully against Victorian organised crime cells in recent years, place those who do not answer questions at risk of criminal charges. The extraordinary step of quizzing the victims could be used on some or all of the 20 shooting victims in gang warfare in Melbourne's northern suburbs in the past two years. Most of the victims were dumped at the emergency section of the Northern Hospital, Epping. In almost all cases, police have found out about the shootings only through hospital reports or from ambulance officers called to the scene to treat the injured. In some cases, investigators do not even know where the shots were fired. None of the victims has made a complaint to police. Detectives from the Santiago taskforce, which is investigating the shootings and the crime gangs behind them, plan to put the victims before coercive hearings at which they will be compelled to answer questions....

Winchester Ammunition has added a new shotgun cartridge to its Super-target family. The new shotshell is designed for clay target shooters and has a 1 oz. (28 gram) load and a velocity 1,180 fps. It is available in 7.5, 8 ang 9 shot sizes. Winchester has recognised a customer shift to the lighter 1 oz. loads. "Our new product offering is a light load with consistent patterns and very little recoil," said Winchester Ammunition's Shotshell Product Manager....

A motorist has been robbed at gunpoint at a set of northern suburbs traffic lights, after thugs smashed their way into his vehicle with an iron bar. As the man waited at the intersection of Kings Rd and Fairbanks Drive, Paralowie about 4.30am, two men approached him. One of them smashed the windscreen with the bar. Police said the other man was armed with a dark-coloured handgun and threatened the driver and demanded money....

SA Police Commissioner Mal Hyde has applied for the Finks Motorcycle Gang to be subjected to new anti-gang laws that would ban members from seeing each other. Mr Hyde today asked Attorney-General Michael Atkinson to "declare" the club under the Serious and Organised Crime (Control) Act, an action that would effectively prevent members with serious criminal convictions from "congregating, mixing or communicating" with other gang members. If Attorney-General Michael Atkinson upholds Mr Hyde's application, gang members will be prevented from associating with each other. A similar tactic is used against known terrorist organisations. Deputy Premier Kevin Foley said the move was aimed squarely at preventing criminal activity. "Motorcycle gangs engage in criminal activity, are peddling drugs to our kids (and) are causing great unrest and stress in society," he said....

Fraudsters have until 5pm to take advantage of the security flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser. The U.S. software giant has revealed it will release an emergency 'patch' to stop criminals from using Explorer to hijack people's computers and stealing personal and bank details. The company has issued a maximum severity rating of 'critical' for all versions of the browser and encourages all users to deploy the update - which is a piece of specially written computer code - as soon as it becomes available. The Explorer web browser is used by 70 per cent of all computers. Around two million computer users are believed to have fallen victim already after visiting apparently safe websites. Due to the flaw, 'Trojan horse' viruses can be injected into the software of millions of computers, allowing criminals to remotely access and operate them. Hackers in China are at the centre of the cyber attack, which is the most serious in the history of Microsoft's operating system. As many as 10,000 websites have already been compromised, according to anti-virus software producer Trend Micro....

A teenage gang member has been jailed for life for murdering a schoolboy caught in the crossfire of a dispute between gangs. Sean Mercer, 18, will serve a minimum of 22 years for firing three bullets across a pub car park, one of which hit 11-year-old Rhys Jones in the neck on August 22, 2007 as he cycled home from football training in Liverpool, northwest England. The boy died hours later in his mother's arms, in an incident that prompted widespread media soul-searching about the pervasiveness of gang culture and guns. "It is wrong to let anyone glorify or romanticise this kind of gang conflict," Judge Stephen Irwin told Mercer while sentencing him. "You are not soldiers. You have no discipline, no training, no honour. You do not command respect".

A December 11 article in the Minnesota Star-Tribune took NRA to task, along with the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, for reporting we’ve done recently over lead in venison. The article states, “The primary constituency of the NRA and the other groups—hunters and shooters—would be better served by these organizations if accurate, complete information were offered to them on this important subject, so they could decide for themselves whether game meat killed with lead ammunition presents a threat.” The article does not specify on what point any of the groups has been inaccurate.

For the record, most of our recent reporting has focused on results of a study by the Centers for Disease Control, which tested blood lead levels in 738 residents of North Dakota. More than 80 percent of these citizens ate venison. Yet not one single individual tested had a blood level considered elevated. Two specific quotes from the study make this crystal clear: “None of the participants had PbB above the CDC recommended threshold of = 10 micrograms per deciliter—the level at which CDC recommends case management.” And: “…the geometric mean PbB among this study population (1.17 micrograms per deciliter) was lower than the overall population geometric mean PbB in the United States (1.60 micrograms per deciliter).” Those are direct quotes; there is nothing inaccurate about them. The typical person in the study--who ate venison--had lower lead levels than the average person in the overall population.
Read Story

The terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month claimed some 500 casualties, dead and injured. Among the many questions raised by the outrage, there was a purely practical one: Why was the attack so successful? How could so few terrorists claim so many victims? One obvious answer is firepower. Guns were illegal in the hands of both the terrorists and the victims. The victims obeyed the laws, the terrorists didn't. The police had guns, of course, but instead of protecting people, they stayed away until the massacre was practically over. Gun laws -- surprise, surprise! -- weren't strong enough to defend victims, only strong enough to keep victims from defending themselves.

India's gun control, one of the strictest in the world, goes back to the 19th century when Britain introduced it to forestall a repetition of the Indian Mutiny. "The guns used in last week's Bombay massacre were all 'prohibited weapons' under Indian law," wrote Richard Munday in the Times Online, "just as they are in Britain." The terrorists were successful because they didn't obey the gun control law rooted in the Raj, while their victims did. India isn't alone. Many countries, including Canada (and Australia), have gone out of their way to make criminals as invincible and victims as vulnerable as possible. This isn't the aim, of course, only the result.

One of the three police officers who shot and killed a teenage boy reportedly tried to shoot his legs as he advanced on them. Tyler Cassidy, 15, was shot and killed by three of four officers he confronted in a skate park in the Melbourne suburb of Northcote on Thursday night. Cassidy had allegedly threatened to kill them with the knives. Tyler lured police to the scene with two hoax calls reporting an emergency near the scene where he died. Un-named police sources told the newspaper one of the officers who shot at the boy tried to shoot his legs in a bid to incapacitate him. Officers failed to subdue him with two blasts of capsicum spray and warning shots as he advanced. When Tyler continued to advance, three of the four police involved in the shooting fired at his body until he fell. Tyler died at the scene. The report said Tyler was hit twice in the legs and twice in the chest and several other shots missed him.

The State Government has commissioned a report into gun crime six months after backing Shooters' Party amendments that watered down gun ownership laws. The Premier, Nathan Rees, sought to temper the Government's stance on the issue yesterday, saying he would review the amendments this week when the report was handed down by the Attorney-General's department. Gun owners must undergo a mandatory 28-day waiting period to register all firearms. But under the amendments passed in June, the waiting period now applies only to the first weapon registered. The police also lost powers to revoke the licence of a gun club that fails to account for its members' licences.

It came as figures obtained by the National Coalition for Gun Control showed that there were now 687,690 firearms registered in NSW, a 33 per cent increase since 2002 when 516,468 firearms were on the street. Mr Rees said the number of firearms in circulation did not mean it had become easier for criminals to obtain weapons. "You could make the same argument about tanks out at Holsworthy (Army Barracks)," he said. "Most people that own guns are responsible - they're club shooters or game shooters, that sort of thing - but if we have to adjust laws to prevent criminal behaviour we will do it. "I've sought a report on the nature of how criminals are getting guns and at what rate and where the guns are coming from. Now if it's demonstrated to me that arising from that data, that we need to change the laws … then that is what we'll do." Mr Rees said he would meet the National Coalition for Gun Control chairwoman, Samantha Lee, this week to discuss the laws.

NSW laws that remove a waiting period to buy guns and allow people subject to apprehended violence orders to gain gun licences are being defended by both sides of government. The laws, introduced by the Shooters Party and supported by the government and opposition in the last sitting week of parliament, remove a 28-day waiting period for people trying to buy their second gun. The law was also changed to allow people previously subject to apprehended violence orders (AVOs) that have expired to have the orders revoked so they can regain gun licences.

Premier Nathan Rees said the changes to the laws came about because some people were being unfairly treated in some cases. "There's been an injection of fairness in what were anomalies in the process and that's fair and reasonable," he said. "The changes that were just made I see as fundamentally separate to changes we may make to reduce the number of criminals getting guns." Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said the coalition had supported the changes because victims' groups supported them. "The most recent legislation was supported because we were told victims' groups supported it," he said. Mr O'Farrell said people who had been subject to AVOs would have to go to court to get their gun licences.

It is only 12 years since the horrific shooting spree in Tasmania that forever reshaped Australians' attitudes to gun ownership and control. In the wake of that tragedy, the NSW Government fell in behind then-Prime Minister John Howard's gun control measures, which included bans on semi-automatic weapons, strict licensing laws and a buyback of weapons. The gun lobby objected loudly, but the laws were passed in NSW and every other state and territory, with the support of the vast majority of voters. As revealed in The Sunday Telegraph today, these changes include ending the compulsory cooling-off periods for people who wanted to buy second or third guns, and the relaxation of a ban on gun licences for men subject to apprehended violence orders. What is more, the commissioner has lost his power to revoke a club's licence if any member has a firearms conviction....

Gun ownership is booming again in NSW, with 40,000 new firearms registered in the past four years. The rise coincides with a deal cut by the State Government and the Shooters Party to water down tough gun laws introduced in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre. Figures from the NSW Firearm Registry obtained by the National Coalition of Gun Control show gun ownership has risen at the rate of 10,000 a year since 2004 to 687,138 in October this year. Multiple gun ownership has also soared. The number of people receiving permits to obtain a second or subsequent firearm in 2006 was 32,616.

Victoria Police's "safety first" philosophy holds that an operation's success is primarily judged on the extent to which the use of force is avoided and minimised. But the shooting of 15-year-old Tyler Cassidy in Northcote's All Nations Park on Thursday night has again sparked debate about how strongly police adhere to the philosophy. Tyler's family and friends said they were "appalled at the actions by the Victoria Police". "Their heavy-handedness and lack of negotiating skills at the scene of the shooting contributed to the untimely death of our beautiful 15-year-old," they said in a statement on Friday. Similar concerns were raised in November 2005 by the director of the Office of Police Integrity, George Brouwer, in a report on fatal police shootings. It was his view that since 1994, "a gradual shift in attention … could allow the re-emergence of a culture among police which is overly reliant on firearms....

Sixty years ago this week, the United Nations did something right. It adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in response to the atrocities of the Second World War. The proclamation (first drafted by Canadian John Humphrey) enshrined core principles that should be common to all of humanity, such as the equality and dignity of all, as well as basic rights (of assembly, speech, religion, etc.) and freedoms (from slavery, etc.). Canadians have long taken such rights for granted, but many around the world have yet to experience them--and that won't change as long as the UN is responsible for the global policing of human rights. The declaration marks man-kind's most noble intentions, but after 60 years it has become a feckless piece of paper that is openly violated because the UN refuses to defend the very rights and freedoms it promotes. The UN lost all credibility in the realm of human rights when it allowed its Human Rights Council to be governed by corrupt nations more interested in making backroom deals to protect abusers than upholding the Declaration. The HRC is dominated by an alliance of repressive regimes (such as China, Russia, Cuba and Saudi Arabia) that deliberately undermine the human rights protections that exist and support impunity for the systemic abusers of those rights. Votes that determine whether a nation's actions are right or wrong are determined by backroom deals where abusers gain support against critical resolutions by offering weaker nations economic or political support for their votes.

The Scotland Yard anti-terrorist operation that led to the death of Jean Charles de Menezes was subjected to withering condemnation yesterday by an inquest jury. In one of the most important public examinations of police conduct, the jurors found the testimony of the officers who shot the young Brazilian to be unreliable and concluded that Metropolitan Police commanders failed their frontline colleagues. Mr de Menezes, 27, an electrician, was shot seven times in the head by specialist firearms officers who mistook him for a suicide bomber about to blow up a London Tube train. The jury rejected the Met’s contention that his killing was lawful and that he was the unfortunate victim of an unprecedented situation created by the July 2005 terrorist emergency. Sir Michael Wright, QC, the coroner, had sparked controversy and cries of “whitewash” when he denied the jury the option of returning an unlawful killing verdict. However, the jurors, sitting in the unusual surroundings of the Oval cricket ground, yesterday delivered an open verdict and used their answers to a series of questions set by the coroner to set out their views. They did not believe the claims of firearms officers that a warning of “armed police” had been shouted or that Mr de Menezes had advanced threateningly towards the policemen....

Critique of Victorian government plan to facilitate hunting on farm properties

The Victorian Government is inviting expressions of interest from landholders to participate in a scheme to facilitate recreational hunting of duck, quail and deer on private properties. Landholders would receive direct or in-kind payments from hunters and access to government incentives and subsidies to improve haunting habitat and hunting conditions....

WA police have revealed guns, cash and drugs were seized during yesterday's raid on the Bayswater headquarters of the Coffin Cheaters bikie gang. Heavily armed police, supported by officers from Australian Customs Service and Australian Federal Police, stormed the club house yesterday morning and spent most of the day searching the Raleigh Road property. Officers were yesterday tight-lipped about the reason for the raid, saying only that it was part of an investigation into organised crime. Today they confirmed a cache of weapons had been seized, including five loaded semi-automatic handguns, two sawn-off shotguns, ammunition, three swords and various weapons with blades attached to them.

The 15-year-old boy shot dead by police officers at a inner north Melbourne skate park last night has been named. Police have confirmed the victim was Tyler Cassidy, from Northcote, the Herald Sun reports. Police said Tyler yelled: "Kill me, I'm going to kill you," as officers warned him to put down his weapons and capsicum spray twice failed to subdue him. Police today rejected family claims they were "trigger happy" after the teenager's death. The youth died after being shot in the chest by three police officers in a skatepark at the All Nations park near the Northcote Plaza Shopping Centre....

Teachers reported gang culture had become "more overt" over the last two or three years as street tensions spilled over into school. Researchers said more children came to lessons with neighbourhood postcodes displayed on clothing - marking them out as members of local groups. The study, by the NASUWT teachers' union, said many young people were attracted to gangs because of a lack of positive role models and father figures in the home - combined with too much freedom. Others were being effectively "born into" gangs as membership was common among older brothers and even parents in some areas. It said it was resulting in the creation of "groups of young people with no respect for their elders"....

Three police officers missing in South Australia's outbacks have been found. The officers, who were travelling from Umuwa in the APY lands, were expected to arrive at Marla at about 7.30pm after they were stranded by flash flooding caused by torrential downpours in the area. They were located on Mail Rd between the Stuart Hwy and Kenmore Park. Police headquarters lost contact with them at 7.30am, when they left Umuwa for Marla. The officers were expected to take three hours to complete the trip, but police said wild weather held them up. "There has been a huge amount of rain in the area for the past two days so they may be bogged or stranded," a police spokeswoman said. Radio contact in the area is limited and there is no mobile phone coverage....

Police have shot dead a man at Northcote in Melbourne's inner north-east. The man, aged in his 20s, was shot at a park on Separation Street, about 9.30pm. Police have blocked off the area near Northcote Plaza Shopping Centre....

West coast communities in South Australia have reported flash flooding and damaging winds. There is a severe thunderstorm warning for the West Coast, Eastern Eyre Peninsula and Northwest Pastoral districts and a flood watch for the Pastoral and Flinders Districts. The State Emergency Service is dealing with flooded business premises at Ceduna and other minor flood concerns. The manager of the Ceduna foreshore caravan park, Nanette Smith, says the rain has not been the only problem. "Prior to the rain there was a huge dust storm came through the park and then the rain came down in buckets," she said. "There's still a lot of black cloud around and it looks like there could be some more...."

Illinois governor charged with corruption, ordered to surrender firearms ID card.

His career in shreds, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich clung defiantly to power Wednesday, ignoring a call to step down from President-elect Barack Obama and a warning that Senate Democrats will not let him appoint a new senator from the state. "Everyone is calling for his head," said Barbara Flynn Currie, a leader in the Illinois Senate and, like the governor, a Democrat. One day after Blagojevich's arrest, fellow Illinois politicians sought to avoid the taint of scandal-by-association. Ensconced in his downtown office, Blagojevich gave no sign he was contemplating resigning, and dispatched his spokeswoman, Kelley Quinn, to say it was "business as usual" in his 16th-floor suite, situated a few blocks from Obama's transition headquarters. "At the end of the day, the top priority for our office is to serve the people, and we have not lost sight of that, nor will we lose sight of that," Quinn said.

Other news reports say the governor has also been ordered to surrender his firearms owner I.D. card.

Australia has moved a step closer to its own bill of rights as the world marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Attorney-General Robert McClelland will announce today that a national human rights consultation committee will examine which options for the bill are available to the Government. The committee will be led by lawyer, author and Jesuit priest Professor Frank Brennan, whom Paul Keating once described as a ''meddling priest''.

The committee will have four members, whom Mr McClelland will name today. The Attorney-General addressed the annual Evatt Foundation lecture last night, saying former High Court judge and federal Labor parliamentarian Herbert Vere ''Doc'' Everett was instrumental in helping the United Nations establish the human rights declaration when he was president of the UN General Assembly....

The Northern Territory Cattlemen's Association says it welcomes a proposal to cull feral camels in Australia. Scientists from the Desert Knowledge Co-operative Research Centre today in Canberra presented a report into managing feral camels. The researchers say more than one million camels are running wild in arid regions and immediate action is needed to curb the beasts' population, which is predicted to reach two million in less than a decade. The president of the Cattlemen's Association, Roy Chisolm, says the feral animals are causing major damage to outback infrastructure and it is time to act....

The Federal Government's first foray into internet blogging has elicited some angry responses from people opposed to internet filtering. The blog is hosted on a Government website overseen by the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and invites people to give feedback on aspects of internet use. Since the site went live yesterday morning, more than 400 people have responded. The majority are protesting against the Government's plans to filter the internet....

Gun groups say they are “prepared to fight” the incoming administration on the issues dear to them despite President-elect Obama’s insistence that lawful gun owners “have nothing to fear” from him. Obama, appearing on at a Sunday press conference, said he believes “in common-sense gun safety laws, and I believe in the Second Amendment.” But Chris W. Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) political arm, said membership in his organization is growing at record levels, and a number of reports show that gun sales are up by as much as 50 percent nationally since Obama won the presidency on Nov. 4. “He says gun owners shouldn’t be worried, but clearly gun owners are worried,” Cox told The Hill. Cox said Obama’s record, particularly from his time in the Illinois state Senate, paints a picture of an incoming president that is an enemy to gun owners, and he said the president-elect’s early actions bring that picture into focus....

Abstract ─ Evidence-based Policy: Principles and Practice from a Case Study of Australian Firearms Legislation

As the value of evidence-based policy is increasingly recognised in Australia and internationally, it is incumbent upon researchers to ensure their work is robust, appropriate in its selection of statistical methods, and based upon testable hypotheses. This caution is particularly apt for contentious areas within justice policy. This review examined strengths and weaknesses in the application of research methodology, using the often controversial example of Australian firearms legislation. Particular emphasis was given to comparing and contrasting different analysis methods. The key conclusions of each paper are examined, and contextualised against the statistical methods used. The application of basic principles such as assessing congruence between results and conclusions, as well as treating evidence as a cumulative rather than definitive process, has the ability to enhance the quality of research and policy.

For three bloody days, just 10 determined killers held a city of 18 million hostage. The sheer ignominy of this fact has jolted Mumbaikars -- and Indians -- out of their fabled chalta hai (anything goes) attitude, and into a burst of citizen activism. Even Mumbai's business community has shed its habitual political timidity and filed an extraordinary public-interest lawsuit demanding that the government fulfill its constitutional obligation to protect its citizens. But Indians shouldn't just stop there. They should also demand reform of the country's draconian gun laws -- a holdover from British times -- that prevent them from defending themselves. That would surely deliver far quicker results than waiting for India's slow-moving political classes to plug the vast lacunae in the country's security apparatus....

Banning guns is in the news. India practically bans guns, but that didn’t stop the horrific Muslim terrorist attacks this last week. In India, victims watched as armed police cowered and didn’t fire back at the terrorists. A photographer at the scene described his frustration: “There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything. At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, ‘Shoot them, they’re sitting ducks!’ but they just didn’t shoot back.” Meanwhile, according to the hotel company’s chairman, P.R.S. Oberoi, security at “the hotel had metal detectors, but none of its security personnel carried weapons because of the difficulties in obtaining gun permits from the Indian government.” India has extremely strict gun control laws, but who did it succeed in disarming? The terrorist attack showed how difficult it is to disarm serious terrorists. Strict licensing rules meant that it was the victims who obeyed the regulations, not the terrorists.....

Police have upgraded security at all northern suburbs police station after another arson attack on a Perth station overnight. Two cars were destroyed in a fenced enclosure at the rear of the Warwick Police Station about 2.30am, just a day after the nearby Joondalup Police Station was hit in a similar attack. Police have confirmed that several officers from the temporarily-closed Joondalup facility were working out of the Warwick station, but said it was too early to tell if the attacks were related. Police spokesman Rex Haw would not say if the cars were owned by Joondalup-based officers....

The father of a boy charged with the murder of his best friend has been arrested over a number of alleged firearms offences. The 40-year-old Orangeville man, who cannot be named, was arrested after the shooting death of Josef Cruickshank, 14, about 2pm when he presented himself at Camden police station. He was charged with four firearms matters including possessing loaded firearm, possessing unregistered firearm, possessing unauthorised firearm and not keeping firearms safe....

Far from the stereotype of Adelaide being the "murder capital of Australia", new figures show South Australia actually has the nation's lowest murder rate. The National Homicide Monitoring Program report, released today, found that every person murdered in SA in 2006/7 knew their killers. The report says SA has Australia's lowest murder rate of 0.8 people per 100,000 – significantly below the national average of 1.3 per 100,000....

More than a million camels, the largest wild herd on Earth, are ravaging a vast region of 3.3 million square kilometres in the heart of Australia. The camel plague is inflicting major damage on fragile desert ecosystems, scarce water supplies, rare plants and animals, Aboriginal cultural resources, remote communities and pastoral enterprises across the inland, according to a report to the Federal and State Governments to be launched in Canberra tomorrow. “The damage camels inflict has gone largely unnoticed by the bulk of Australia’s population,” warns Glenn Edwards of the Northern Territory Department of Natural Resources, Environment, The Arts and Sport, the lead author of the study by researchers at the Desert Knowledge CRC (DKCRC). The current camel herd – conservatively put at a million but possibly much larger – is doubling every nine years and has the capacity to wreak havoc across the deserts, he adds. “The longer we take to act, the more it will cost to manage and repair the negative impacts of feral camels.” The world’s largest camel ‘kingdom’ is spread across three States and the Northern Territory, with major hotspots where the WA/SA/NT borders come together, and in the Simpson Desert....

NSW Premier Nathan Rees says he's prepared to make changes to gun laws but only if it is proven that stricter measures are required. A 14-year-old died from gunshot wounds to the face and neck during a sleepover at a rural property in Sydney's south-west on Saturday night. His 14-year-old friend, who cannot be identified, has been charged with murder after he allegedly accidentally shot him and made a frantic triple-0 call to save his life. Meanwhile, a Sydney man is in a stable condition in hospital after being injured in a drive-by shooting in the city's north-west. It was the first of three drive-by shootings reported by police within four hours early on Sunday morning. Mr Rees said on Monday he had sought a report on the incidents, but did not believe there "are too many weapons available for criminals". However, he said he was prepared to make changes if necessary....

The gruesome images of gunmen roaming the streets of Mumbai with submachine guns and spraying bullets on innocent people have evoked the most basic instinct in the people of our cities — that of primal fear. Perhaps no wonder then that the doyen of Bollywood Amitabh Bachchan is now sleeping with a gun under his pillow and created quite a stir at Mumbai airport yesterday when he tried to board a domestic flight with a gun in his hand baggage. And like Big B, many other urban dwellers in India, too, are either cleaning their guns and keeping them ready for use or trying to buy licensed revolvers after the terror trauma in Mumbai. Private arms retailers, who are allowed to sell small arms, including revolvers and pistols to valid licence holders, have received many more enquiries from common citizens in the last few days. Indian citizens, of course, do not have the freedom to just go out and buy their dream guns such as the latest custom engraved Smith & Wesson Model 22 that is selling in the US for $7,500 or other popular models such as Alaska Backpacker C2-75 or RugerSR9. In fact, there is no fresh supply of guns in the market because of the restrictive policy and ban on imports and private dealers mostly trade in second hand weapons....

The firearms massacres that have periodically caused shock and horror around the world have been dwarfed by the Mumbai shootings, in which a handful of gunmen left some 500 people killed or wounded. For anybody who still believed in it, the Mumbai shootings exposed the myth of “gun control”. India had some of the strictest firearms laws in the world, going back to the Indian Arms Act of 1878, by which Britain had sought to prevent a recurrence of the Indian Mutiny.

The guns used in last week’s Bombay massacre were all “prohibited weapons” under Indian law, just as they are in Britain. In this country we have seen the irrelevance of such bans (handgun crime, for instance, doubled here within five years of the prohibition of legal pistol ownership), but the largely drug-related nature of most extreme violence here has left most of us with a sheltered awareness of the threat. We have not yet faced a determined and broad-based attack.

The Mumbai massacre also exposed the myth that arming the police force guarantees security. Sebastian D’Souza, a picture editor on the Mumbai Mirror who took some of the dramatic pictures of the assault on the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station, was angered to find India’s armed police taking cover and apparently failing to engage the gunmen....

It was a sleepover involving childhood friends, both 14, that went horribly wrong. By morning, one would be dead, with a gunshot wound to the face and neck. The other would be charged with his murder. A frantic phone call to the ambulance service, believed to be from the second boy, was made soon after the shooting at his spacious, two-storey home at Orangeville, in the foothills of the Southern Highlands of NSW. "Neither of the boys was known to police — they both came from good families," said Detective Superintendent Ian Foscholo.

"The young person, under legal advice, did not want to speak and did not want to provide a statement to the police, which is his right. And so, consequently, the police have got to go down a particular line of inquiry, which they did, and that resulted in the murder charge."

NSW Premier Nathan Rees agreed yesterday to meet representatives of the National Coalition for Gun Control to discuss their concerns over the shooting.

Up to four shooting incidents rocked western Sydney overnight - some of them just minutes and suburbs apart. Late last night a man was injured when he was shot at the roadside from a car in Carlingford. Police said the victim, in his 40s, was standing on the corner of Coleman Ave and Pennant Hills Rd when a white Holden Commodore slowed down and several shots were fired at him about 10pm....

Authorities in Mexico say they have found the bodies of 13 people, the majority of them teenagers, in the north-western state of Sinaloa, which is home to one of the country's most violent drugs cartels. Each victim had been shot several times. The news comes a day after a leading newspaper reported that at least 5,000 people had been killed in drug-related violence in Mexico so far this year....

A 14-year-old-boy was shot dead in Sydney's outer-west overnight and another 14-year-old boy is being questioned by police. Paramedics were called to an address in Orangeville just after 10:00pm AEDT to treat one boy for a gunshot wound, but he later died at the scene....

Last weekend, New York Giants wide receiver and Super Bowl hero Plaxico Burress inadvertently shot himself in the leg at a New York City nightclub and—adding incarceration to injury—now faces a three and a half years mandatory minimum sentence on each of two felony weapons charges. Burress' possession of a loaded firearm outside of his home without a permit, which is a Class C violent felony under New York state law, is more than enough to strip considerable judicial discretion when it comes time for sentencing. (According to Burress' lawyer, the handgun—a .40 calibre Glock pistol—is registered in the receiver's home state of Florida.) The judge will, however, be able to determine whether Burress gets the minimum or anywhere up to the maximum of 15 years per count.

New York's would-be mayor-for-life Michael Bloomberg, no stranger to the gun rights debate, persuaded the state legislature to toughen the already stringent restrictions on firearms in 2006. From 1998 until that time, mitigating circumstances and judicial discretion could be used to determine appropriate punishment for an offender. The tougher new rules are just one prong in the mayor's many-faceted approach to gun control in the Big Apple, and the nation as a whole. With Burress' surrender to authorities this week, Bloomberg now has a high-profile defendant to help showcase his tough-on-gun-crime legislation....

World-first laws targeting gun-related violence have been passed in South Australia in a bid to reduce the number of unlawful firearms in the community. Premier Mike Rann said under new prohibition orders people could be stopped and searched anywhere, any time, in their vehicle, vessel, aircraft or residence for evidence of firearms, ammunition or gun parts. “These new laws are a world-first and have been designed to target unlawful use of firearms to commit violent and criminal acts,” Mr Rann said. “Those found guilty of any breach will face a maximum prison sentence of 15 years.” He said the laws aimed to disarm dangerous criminals, including outlaw motorcycle gang members. Police Minister, Michael Wright said the message being sent to criminals carrying firearms was simple – “their time was up! ”Assistant Commissioner Stevens said the amnesty was a final warning for people with illegal weapons to surrender them to police now to avoid trouble, or face the new penalties later. “There’s no doubt the criminal element will largely find this amnesty irrelevant,” he said.

Victoria Police has confirmed the discovery of an inoperable gun in the roof of a ceiling at the St Kilda Rd crime squad building. Building contractors came across the gun about noon today. It is believed the weapon was found in the ceiling on the 13th floor....

A Brisbane school that banned the national anthem at assemblies says it will review the policy and that it loves the values embodied in the song. The review comes after The Courier-Mail revealed the school had banned the national anthem at assemblies and sacked the teacher who asked for it to be played. Today, school trustee Keysar Trad - who yesterday said he was unaware of the anthem ban - said news the anthem was not played regularly at school assemblies came as a shock. Mr Trad said the anthem was performed at every major school function but was removed from daily assemblies by the principal without the endorsement of the school board....

From when the National Homicide Monitoring Program began, in 1989-90, to the last reporting period, of 2006-07, there have been 752 homicide victims aged 17 or younger. The proportion of child victims has increased from 12 percent of all homicides in 1989-90 to just under 15 percent in 2006-07. This is principally an increase, as a proportion of all homicide victims, in under-10-year-olds. This has come about because, of children aged less than 10, the proportion killed each year has remained steady as the proportion of the general population falling victim to homicide has fallen. Of victims aged less than ten, 91 percent were killed by a parent or step-parent.

A Muslim school in Brisbane has banned the national anthem, and sacked a teacher who requested it be played to students. According to News Limited, the Australian International Islamic College ruled a proposal to sing 'Advance Australia Fair' was against the 'Islamic view and ethos'....

Murder suspect, about to be arrested, died following Salisbury home invasion

The man suspected of murdering teenager Emilio Demosthenous died while fleeing another crime just days before he was to be arrested. The unnamed man collapsed and died while fleeing the scene of a violent home invasion at Austral St, Salisbury East, on November 27. It is believed Major Crime detectives had planned to arrest him over the murder of Mr Demosthenous, 19, of Salisbury East, whose body was found in the back seat of his car in the car park at the Homemaker centre at Mile End at 7.30am on November 15. Wearing balaclavas, the murder suspect and two other men had entered a Salisbury East house at 3am and assaulted a man, 43, and woman, 33, with a firearm and baseball bats. His accomplices left the dead man on the footpath on Cheltenham Cres where he was found by police about 30 minutes later. A report into his death is being prepared for the Coroner....

Celebrations to mark the 154th anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion will be held in Ballarat today. The miners' uprising in 1854 was a protest against police corruption and unfair Miners Right fees. Ron Egeberg, from Ballarat's Eureka Centre, says it is important to continue to mark the anniversary so many years on. "Since the Eureka Rebellion 154 years ago, each year the third of December has been marked with a range of activities that celebrate, commemorate and ensure that we remember the lasting legacy of Eureka," he said....

The South Australia Police STAR Division has detained a man under the Mental Health Act following a siege that began around midnight in Adelaide's southern suburbs. The man was taken into custody from a house in Moorong Road, O'Sullivan Beach. No one was reported injured during the incident.

You are now far more likely to be murdered with a knife than a gun, new Australian crime statistic reveal. And if you are murdered, it will probably happen in your own home at night. Some 44 per cent of homicide victims were killed with a knife or other sharp instrument in 2006-07, the highest proportion of knife deaths since the national homicide monitoring program began 18 years ago. Only 11 per cent of murder victims were killed with a firearm, the lowest proportion on record and down four per cent on 2005-06. Shooting deaths peaked in 1993, when 29 per cent of victims were killed by a gun. "The data reflects the general trend toward a lower proportion of homicides using firearms and a higher proportion using knives," the Australian Institute Of Criminology's (AIC) Judy Putt said....

Farmers should upgrade their firearms licences so they can attend to animal welfare, says the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association. TFGA game management standing committee chairman Kem Perkins said that unless a firearms licence was endorsed for purposes of "animal welfare", farmers could not put down an animal that had been injured on a public road. Several other recent amendments to the State Firearms Act were relevant to farmers, he said....

(Victoria) Police have confirmed the identity of a double murder suspect who had sensitive police data when he was arrested earlier this year. A surveillance target profile was found with Rodney Charles Collins when he was arrested by members of the Petra taskforce in June. Collins is on remand charged with the murders of Ray and Dorothy Abbey at West Heidelberg in 1987. He has been interviewed over the the 2004 murders of gangland informer Terrence Hodson and his wife Christine at their Kew home and was publicly nominated as a suspect in the killing of standover man and drug dealer Mario Condello two years ago. The revelations come on an embarassing day of explosive revelations for Victoria Police, with Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland saying the force is being frustrated in their efforts to sack rogue cops who engage in criminal activity. 168 serving members of Victoria Police have criminal convictions.....

Firearms unit deployed after youths seen with imitation 'guns'

Armed repsonse (sic) units were deployed to surround a house in Plymouth after youths were seen entering the property carrying firearms. Two armed response vehicles and firearms officers surrounded the house in Stoke at 4pm yesterday. Officers contained the house whilst they contacted the youths relatives who supplied them with mobile phone numbers. Police spoke to the youths whilst they were inside the house and at 5.30pm three males exited the address and were detained by police. Officers searched the premises and seized four replica guns, one resembling an M16 assault rifle. Members of the public, including an ex-serviceman, had reported seeing the youths in the area with a firearm. The youths, two 17-year-olds from Torpoint and a 19-year-old from Ivybridge, were interviewed and stated they had been filming themselves in situations with a firearm for a project. It is believed the weapons involved include a replica Browning 9mm pistol and a replica M-16 assault rifle....

Support for the Government's plan to censor the internet has hit rock bottom, with even some children's welfare groups now saying that that the mandatory filters, aimed squarely at protecting kids, are ineffective and a waste of money. Live trials of the filters, which will block "illegal" content for all Australian internet users and "inappropriate" adult content on an opt-in basis, are slated to begin by Christmas, despite harsh opposition from the Greens, Opposition, the internet industry, consumers and online rights groups. Holly Doel-Mackaway, adviser with Save the Children, the largest independent children's rights agency in the world, said educating kids and parents was the way to empower young people to be safe internet users. She said the filter scheme was "fundamentally flawed" because it failed to tackle the problem at the source and would inadvertently block legitimate resources. Furthermore there was no evidence to suggest that children were stumbling across child pornography when browsing the web. Doel-Mackaway believes the millions of dollars earmarked to implement the filters would be far better spent on teaching children how to use the internet safely and on law enforcement....

A man who wrestled with a teenager suspected of burgling his home, leaving him seriously injured, has been released without charge. The 19-year-old man accused of trying to rob the Sydney house is critically ill after being left unconscious and without a pulse in the struggle last night. He was revived by police and ambulance officers in the front yard of the Marrickville home. A 26-year-old Marrickville man was questioned by police but was released without charge. Police said the older man had returned to the house last night to find an intruder inside. A struggle between the two men ended in the front yard. Other residents of the share house said the younger man began the scuffle....

Mumbai photographer: "I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera"

It is the photograph that has dominated the world's front pages, casting an astonishing light on the fresh-faced killers who brought terror to the heart of India's most vibrant city. Now it can be revealed how the astonishing picture came to be taken by a newspaper photographer who hid inside a train carriage as gunfire erupted all around him. Sebastian D'Souza, a picture editor at the Mumbai Mirror, whose offices are just opposite the city's Chhatrapati Shivaji station, heard the gunfire erupt and ran towards the terminus. "I ran into the first carriage of one of the trains on the platform to try and get a shot but couldn't get a good angle, so I moved to the second carriage and waited for the gunmen to walk by," he said. "They were shooting from waist height and fired at anything that moved. I briefly had time to take a couple of frames using a telephoto lens. I think they saw me taking photographs but theydidn't seem to care."

Mr D'Souza added: "I told some policemen the gunmen had moved towards the rear of the station but they refused to follow them. What is the point if having policemen with guns if they refuse to use them? I only wish I had a gun rather than a camera...."

Town mayor fires 400-year-old gun firing tradition because it might scare children

Wimborne council in Dorset has told the town's Militia, which re-enacts traditions dating back to the 17th century, that it can no longer fire muskets over the Christmas tree. The council said the noise of the blank shots would be too loud for children and would keep families away from the annual event to mark the switching on of the lights. The town crier, Chris Brown, a member of the Militia, which performs in 17th century dress, said the ritual of scaring spirits from the town's Christmas tree "added a bit of pomp, colour and history to the ceremony and makes us special and almost unique from any other town in the country". He added: "Being told we cannot do it because it might scare children is very sad and almost a bit daft. "We understand the loud shots can make children jump but we give plenty of notice. "Mollycoddling children will not help them cope with the unexpected, which might not necessarily be in their best interest in the long-run."

Neutering the net is about repression, not protection

RELATED:

Activists target Australian Government's net censorship plans...

The Federal Government's great broadband gift is floundering in the waves of the financial crisis and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is pushing ahead with an internet filter that will dramatically slow Australian internet speeds. The Australian Communications and Media Authority conducted tests earlier this year on six filters that could be imposed on internet service providers. Five slowed internet speeds by at least 20 per cent. And two of them crippled speeds by more than 75 per cent. And this is before we look at their habit of falsely blocking legal sites. A 1999 trial of internet filtering (censoring the internet has long been a bipartisan goal) even accidentally blocked some government websites. Filters have improved since then but, as ACMA's test revealed, it is a certainty that some sites will be incorrectly blocked — let's be honest, the technology to efficiently and effectively censor the internet isn't quite ready yet. Last year, Mr Conroy said that: "If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd Labor Government is going to disagree." Fair enough. But to claim the filter is designed to eliminate child pornography is too tricksy by half. After all, child pornography is already illegal. And imposing an elaborate filter on every Australian internet connection is unlikely to have a significant impact on the child pornography trade — as everyone who has sent an email or tried to download a song is aware....