Zero is the Only Safe Number! The “Logic” Behind Australia’s New Gun Bans (Satire — Mostly)! By John Steele and James Reed

 There is a curious feature of modern gun-control rhetoric that almost never gets stated openly, yet silently does all the work: any number of privately held firearms above zero is too many.

Not too many for criminals.
Not too many for unstable individuals.
Not too many without proper licensing or storage.

Just too many, full stop.

Everything else — buybacks, confiscations, category creep, numerical caps, bans on heirloom .22s and bolt-action farm rifles — is merely furniture arranged around that premise. But because it sounds authoritarian when spoken aloud, it's smuggled in under the language of "safety," "community expectations," and "international best practice." So let's bring it into daylight and see how it fares when treated as an actual argument rather than a vibe.

Governments routinely announce that "the number of guns in civilian hands is too high." But high compared to what? Zero is never defended explicitly — because it would sound like what it is: civilian disarmament as a moral ideal. Instead, we're offered a vague statistical anxiety: too many guns, too much access, excessive availability. Yet no one can explain what the correct number of firearms per capita is supposed to be, why that number is morally superior, or what empirical evidence shows that three guns is safe but five guns is dangerous. Why does a licensed farmer with four rifles become socially hazardous the moment he buys a fifth?

The answer, of course, is that there is no threshold. The real model isn't risk management — it's asymptotic prohibition. You move the number steadily downward, year by year, category by category, until eventually the only socially acceptable number of civilian firearms is zero. That isn't public safety policy. It's disarmament ideology wearing a lab coat.

Once you see that, the structure becomes impossible to unsee. Gun control isn't operating on a cost–benefit framework where trade-offs are weighed and stopping points exist. It's operating on a purity model: fewer guns are always better, regardless of context, behaviour, or evidence. Every reduction is good, and no reduction is ever enough. Compliance never closes the loop, because the loop only closes at zero.

Now watch what happens when we apply the same logic elsewhere.

Carbon emissions, for instance. We're told — not unreasonably — that per-capita carbon emissions are too high. So governments begin with modest restrictions: efficiency standards, offsets, nudges. But if the underlying structure is that any non-zero emission contributes to harm, then the morally defensible number isn't lower — it's zero. At that point, rationing everything becomes not authoritarian but virtuous: kilometres driven, meat consumed, air travel taken, household power usage, recreational consumption. Once the zero-risk ideal is accepted, rationing stops looking like oppression and starts looking like responsibility.

Alcohol works the same way. Alcohol causes harm. Therefore, the number of alcohol-related deaths is too high. Therefore, access must be reduced. Therefore, numerical caps, bans on spirits, purchase justifications, buybacks. Why stop there? If harm potential justifies restriction, and restriction scales with risk, then zero alcohol consumption becomes the only defensible endpoint.

Knives. Speech. Tools. Opinions. The logic engine is always the same:

Risk + moral anxiety + zero-risk ideal → prohibition cascade.

Gun control is simply the most advanced deployment of this pattern.

Which brings us to the truly surreal part: the grandfather's .22.

We are told — with a straight face — that banning a rural pensioner's rabbit rifle improves public safety by reducing the risk of mass casualty terrorism. This is policy as magical thinking. Consider the actual characteristics of modern terror attacks: illegal firearms, black-market weapons, explosives, vehicles, knives, arson, homemade devices, radicalisation networks, organised cells, psychological warfare tactics. Now consider what Australia's buybacks target: registered firearms, licensed owners, bolt-action rifles, heirloom shotguns, rural pest-control weapons, sporting arms, collectors.

These are not even the same universe.

Europe provides the controlled experiment. After decades of strict civilian gun bans, Europe experienced Paris, Nice, Brussels, London, Madrid, Manchester, Berlin — attacks conducted with illegal weapons, vehicles, knives, bombs, often in countries where civilian gun ownership was already close to zero. If gun bans worked as advertised, Europe should be the safest place on Earth. Instead, it simply shifted attack modalities.

Disarming compliant citizens does not disarm terrorists. It merely disarms citizens.

This brings us to the circular core of the argument governments are actually making:

Guns cause harm.
Therefore, the number of guns should be reduced.
Therefore, the current number of guns is too high.
Therefore, reduce guns further.

The conclusion is embedded in the premise. No independent principle defines how many guns are acceptable — only the presumption that fewer is always better. Which means no amount of compliance will ever be sufficient, no safety record will ever be good enough, and no statistical improvement will ever be final. Because the end state is zero, even if no one admits it.

This isn't evidence-based policy. It's numerology with enforcement powers.

And it reveals something deeper about modern governance. Human life involves irreducible risk. The question is not whether risk exists — it's which risks free adults are permitted to manage themselves. Increasingly, governments answer: none. Citizens are treated as incapable of risk assessment, incapable of responsibility, incapable of moral agency, incapable of self-restraint. Therefore, everything must be pre-emptively restricted.

This is the philosophy of padded-cell politics: eliminate all danger by eliminating all autonomy.

The paradox is that the safer society becomes, the more intolerable even tiny risks appear — and the more authoritarian the regulatory response becomes. Gun bans aren't about crime reduction. They're about aesthetic discomfort with civilian capability. An armed citizenry — even one that never fires a shot — offends the managerial imagination.

Governments claim they are protecting society from rare, extreme acts of violence. But their policy logic would — if applied consistently — justify banning cars (used in terror attacks), knives (used in murders), fertiliser (used in bombs), pressure cookers, chemicals, crowds, buildings, speech, dissent, movement, privacy — because in every case, some people misuse X, therefore no one should have X. This isn't safety policy. It's pre-crime metaphysics.

And notice who is actually being regulated. Not criminals. Not terrorists. Not gangs. Not traffickers. Not organised crime. But farmers. Hunters. Target shooters. Collectors. Rural families. Elderly men with heirloom rifles. Licensed owners with spotless records.

Criminals do not register firearms. Terrorists do not obey buybacks. Gangs do not surrender weapons. Psychopaths do not fill out forms. So what exactly is being achieved?

Not safety — symbolism.

The ritual purification of society through the public destruction of inoffensive objects owned by compliant people. Political theatre disguised as public policy.

Governments want to be seen to be "doing something" about violent extremism. But because they cannot effectively eliminate radicalisation, illegal markets, foreign ideology, criminal networks, mental illness, or social breakdown, they instead target the one group that reliably obeys the law. This creates a perverse regulatory dynamic: the more compliant you are, the more you will be regulated. Law-abiding gun owners are not a risk problem — they are a control opportunity.

Once you universalise the logic, the stopping point disappears. If risk justifies prohibition, harm potential justifies bans, statistical correlation justifies confiscation, and public fear justifies coercion, then there is no principled stopping point short of banning tools, technology, movement, speech, assembly, privacy, autonomy, ownership itself — because everything carries risk.

The gun debate is merely the testing ground for a broader political doctrine: citizens should not be trusted with dangerous things. But what is a citizen if not someone entrusted with dangerous things — speech, movement, responsibility, agency, moral choice? Strip those away and you don't get safety. You get subjects.

The claim that "there are too many guns" is not an empirical finding. It is a moral axiom: civilian weapon ownership is inherently illegitimate, regardless of behaviour, context, history, or consequence. Everything else follows automatically.

Once you expose that premise — once you universalise it — its authoritarian structure becomes obvious. If it applies to guns, it applies to carbon. If it applies to carbon, it applies to food. If it applies to food, it applies to travel. If it applies to travel, it applies to speech. If it applies to speech, it applies to thought.

That's not safety policy. That's total administrative custody of adult life.

And banning Grandpa's rabbit gun will not stop terrorists — but it will tell you exactly what kind of society you're being invited to live in.

Part 2: Zero Means Zero

Why Even the Police Must Be Disarmed (For Safety)
(Satire — Obviously)

Now that we've clarified the "logic" of the gun banners — that guns are inherently dangerous objects, that their mere presence increases risk, and that therefore fewer guns is always better — we can finally confront the part nobody wants to say aloud: if this reasoning is sound, it does not stop with civilian firearms. It detonates the entire concept of armed authority itself.

Let's walk it through slowly, calmly, and with the solemn disrespect this "logic" deserves.

We are told that guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens are dangerous. Not criminals. Not terrorists. Not the mentally unstable. Law-abiding citizens. The argument runs: guns are inherently dangerous objects; even responsible people sometimes make mistakes; therefore their presence increases risk; therefore there are too many guns; therefore fewer guns is always better.

This is now treated as self-evident truth, like gravity or compound interest.

But once accepted, this reasoning does not merely disarm Grandpa's rabbit gun — it obliterates every armed institution in society.

Start with police.

Police are civilians with uniforms, not angels with force fields. They get tired. They get stressed. They misjudge situations. They fire under pressure. They occasionally hit the wrong people. This is not slander — it's arithmetic. Humans plus weapons plus stress never equals zero risk.

Indeed, Australia already has real-world examples where police gunfire intended for attackers struck innocent bystanders — including the Sydney shopping centre stabbing incident, where multiple civilians were hit during police response. These tragedies were not malice. They were human error under pressure.

Now if licensed farmers cannot be trusted with rifles because of the theoretical risk of misuse, then by the same logic police definitely cannot be trusted with guns either — because unlike farmers, police actually use them in public, under stress, in crowds. From a public safety perspective, police firearms are statistically far more likely to be discharged in populated areas than Grandpa's .22 has been since Whitlam was Prime Minister.

Conclusion: police must be disarmed immediately. For safety.

But of course, police aren't the only civilians with guns. What about private security?

Security guards are civilians. They carry guns. They work long hours. They're often underpaid. They operate in crowded environments. And worst of all, they could go rogue — because according to the new metaphysics of gun control, guns exert a corrupting influence on their owners. The moment a firearm touches human flesh, the user becomes a latent mass shooter.

Therefore armoured car guards, airport security, courthouse officers, event security — all must be disarmed. Because if law-abiding farmers can't be trusted, neither can blokes in polyester uniforms guarding cash machines. Consistency demands it.

But now we reach the truly troubling category: the military.

These people are trained to kill. They carry weapons of war. They operate tanks, missiles, bombs, drones. They have access to automatic weapons. They are capable of mass destruction. And worst of all — they are human.

Under the current doctrine, this is already unacceptable. Because if civilian firearms ownership is dangerous due to hypothetical misuse, then military weapons ownership is catastrophic due to actual intended use. Soldiers are literally trained in the controlled application of violence. This places them — under the new safety theology — somewhere between "risk" and "planetary extinction event."

Therefore, for public safety, the Australian Defence Force must be abolished. We shall replace it with conflict resolution workshops, diversity awareness training, strongly worded UN letters, interpretive dance, a cappella renditions of "Imagine," and in emergencies, stern looks. Foreign aggressors will be encouraged to reflect deeply on their behaviour.

But we're not done.

Border Force officers carry guns. They interact with stressed people. They operate in chaotic environments. They face potential violence. This is intolerable risk. Under the same logic used against recreational shooters, Border Force must be disarmed and instead issued hi-vis vests, conflict de-escalation pamphlets, emotional intelligence workbooks, and a laminated copy of the UN Charter. Nothing deters organised crime like a calm voice and strong feelings.

Prison guards work around criminals. They face violent offenders. They carry weapons. This is clearly reckless. The safest prison is one where no guard carries anything capable of causing harm, inmates are trusted to self-regulate, violence is discouraged through mindfulness circles, and escape attempts are met with restorative justice dialogues. Anything else is just gun culture.

But we're still not done.

Because if guns are dangerous because they enable harm, then so are knives, vehicles, fertiliser, chemicals, power tools, hammers, ropes, pressure cookers, alcohol, electricity, and language. And ultimately — humans. We may need to regulate those too.

Which brings us to the real problem: humans exist. The problem is not guns. The problem is people — unpredictable, emotional, stressed, tired, flawed people — interacting with reality. And since we cannot ban people (yet), we are left with the next best thing: ban everything people might misuse.

This is the logical endpoint of modern safety culture. Not risk reduction. Not harm minimisation. Not evidence-based policy. But object purification rituals — the public destruction of dangerous things to reassure ourselves that danger itself has been abolished.

Now return to where this began: Grandpa's .22 rabbit rifle.

We are told that it contributes to "too many guns," increases social risk, undermines public safety, and must therefore be surrendered. Meanwhile terrorists use illegal guns, bombs, trucks, knives. Criminals ignore buybacks. Gangs don't register weapons. Extremists don't obey licensing regimes. Yet somehow the real threat is a bolt-action rifle owned by a farmer who hasn't harmed anyone since Menzies.

This is not crime control. This is ritual disarmament of the compliant.

Modern gun policy rests on an unspoken belief: guns exert a corrupting influence on their owners, like cursed artefacts from a Tolkien novel. Put a firearm in someone's hands and — sooner or later — they will become violent. It's not psychology. It's demonic possession. This explains why farmers with spotless records must surrender property, collectors must destroy historic artefacts, sport shooters must dismantle hobbies, rural communities must adapt to urban anxieties, and criminals remain unaffected.

Because the problem isn't behaviour. It's objects emitting bad vibes.

So let's summarise the only logically coherent gun policy under the new doctrine:

Ban all civilian firearms.
Disarm police.
Disarm security.
Abolish the military.
Disarm border control.
Replace prisons with trust circles.
Replace defence policy with acoustic guitar.
Replace intelligence agencies with interpretive dance.
Replace firearms training with breathing exercises.
Replace war with vibes, and by singing John Lennon's Imagine.

Foreign invasion will be addressed through strongly worded emails, land acknowledgements, a cappella peace chanting, emergency community drumming sessions, and — if necessary — a very disappointed tone of voice.

The claim that "guns in law-abiding hands are dangerous" sounds modest. Responsible. Sensible. Evidence-based. But when universalised — as logic requires — it produces a society where no one may possess anything dangerous, no one may be trusted with force, no one may be entrusted with risk, authority itself becomes illegitimate, defence becomes immoral, capability becomes suspicious, and strength becomes a pathology.

The safest society becomes the weakest.

The real dream of modern gun policy is not safety. It is perfect vulnerability — enforced equally. A nation where no one has weapons, including those tasked with protecting it. And if, along the way, we must sacrifice Grandpa's rabbit rifle, the police sidearm, the soldier's rifle, border security, national defence, and the concept of armed authority itself — well, that's a small price to pay for the soothing knowledge that nothing dangerous remains.

Except criminals.
And terrorists.
And foreign armies.