Is There a Right to Self-Defence in Australia? By John Steele

     On paper there is a right to self-defence, but there is no right to have a weapon, such as a firearm to make that right real. Thus, if there is no effective means of producing the right, the right does not really exist. Consider then the case of the Dunstan’s:
  https://nationalshooting.org.au/blog/f/dunstans-slam-dud-response-from-nsw-mp

“Many of you know the story about David Dunstan – the farmer from NSW who lost is guns and firearms licence for stopping a bad guy trying to do him harm. The story got national coverage resulting in the NSW Deputy Premier, John Barilaro … visited his property and called for an inquiry into the matter. That was BEFORE the 2019 NSW state election. Then, AFTER the election, the NSW Government dumped the inquiry and didn't even bother to tell the Dunstans.  The government has since done everything it could to avoid revisiting the matter. Government wheels out amateur MPs

Last year, this council received a letter from the NSW police minister, David Elliott who was asked to advise a parliamentary committee on whether it should look at the rights of homeowners to protect themselves against home invasion in more detail. Our interest was that this matter centred around a defect in the NSW Firearms Act which caused the problem for the Dunstans and needed to be fixed. Elliott’s response exhibited a serious and seemingly deliberate misunderstanding of the issue and NSW’s gun laws, which led to this Council running a campaign encouraging readers to write to the NSW Deputy Premier, John Barilaro, to short circuit the problem (given he initiated he call for the parliamentary inquiry). Instead of addressing the problem, Elliott’s parliamentary secretary, Mark Taylor MP, responded to everyone who wrote in saying that the NSW government had no intention to change the ‘genuine reason’ requirements for firearm licences – which is not what the matter was about. Taylor’s letter also failed to acknowledge the incident or the victims, the Dunstans. In fact no-one from government has bothered to contact the Dunstans to explain its position to them. We think that is appalling given the photo opportunity that the government got from the matter at the time.

The Dunstans speak up
The Dunstans have seen Taylor’s response and fired back their own response. With their permission, here is what the Dunstan’s said:

Mr Taylor
Ordinarily, I would start my correspondence by thanking the writer for theirs. I don’t feel that is appropriate or necessary in this circumstance considering the brevity and narrow focus of your letter. I wonder if you have ever considered what you would do if you opened the door of your home, at 3.15AM in the morning, to be confronted by an Aboriginal man, wielding both a 7 foot lump of wood in one hand and a hidden knife in the other and clearly under the influence of drugs? This was our reality two years ago and my husband protected his three children, his wife and himself without harming the drug-affected intruder. We are not asking for Australia’s firearms laws to be loosened. We are asking that in situations like ours, that there be some consideration given to the victims. Please have a think about how you would react if you were in the same circumstance and I pray, for your sake and your family’s, that you never are. Regards, Andrea and David Dunstan. Their letter remains unanswered, and unacknowledged. This matter is far from over. The Police Minister will obviously hope this matter will go away.   However, we’ve already written to the NSW State Director of the Liberal Party making it clear that he needs to consider intervening as this Council will factor this into its thinking for its approach to the NSW state election if it is forced to.

Background
In September 2017, David Dunstan, was confronted at his rural home at 3am one morning by a drug addict wielding a knife. David’s wife, Andrea, called police. Being in a very remote area and without the immediate presence of police to stop the threat, David grabbed his unloaded 22 to confront the guy but did not point it at, or threaten, him. The outcome was that David took the offender to police when they did turn up. The bad guy was taken into custody and no-one got hurt. However, the NSW Police returned to David’s property later that day to seize his firearms and suspended his licence for 6 weeks. The story got national and international coverage as the consensus was that David was only trying to protect his family and had no other means to do so. Following the media attention, the Deputy Premier, John Barilaro, visited the Dunstans property and later announced a referral to the Law and Safety Committee to inquire into the rights of homeowners taking reasonable actions to protect themselves. Late last year, the Committee advised this council (which had been supporting David through this event) that it was not going to conduct the inquiry based on advice from the Police Minister, the Hon David Elliott. This Council has since had extensive correspondence with other government MPs which has been a flat refusal to reconsider the matter. No-one from the government has bothered to contact the Dunstans to explain its decision.”

     This is clearly a political and legal issue, but I will make some reflections as a practical survivalist. First, on the facts, the home invader did not have a “7 foot lump of wood,” along with the hidden knife, but only the knife. Such a piece of wood would be clumsy in the close confines of a home invasion, and could be disarmed.  In the present political climate, which is strongly anti-gun, going for the gun to defend the family is a problem. Perhaps one could use an improvised weapon of Marxist/feminist/gay books duct taped together to make a weapon of mass politically correct destruction? Ban that! But, you get my point, use of guns should be a last resort. In effect, the ordinary people are back in the stone age. It would be wise to get as a fit as a caveman to defend one’s family with one’s bare hands.