Issue link: http://ssaansw.uberflip.com/i/1023716
20 Sporting Shooters Association of Australia (NSW) Inc. In May St Marys Indoor Shooting Centre (SMISC) hosted a delegation of Liberal Democratic Party members for a Try Shooting event. We're always keen to engage with pro-firearms MPs and one of the most outspoken members of the Federal Senate is Senator David Leyonhjelm, who joined in the fun! David was kind enough to sit down with SSAA NSW for an extensive interview about a range of firearms issues. We've published an extract of the interview – for the full interview visit the SSAA NSW website www.ssaansw.org.au. Thank you to the Liberal Democrats for attending SMISC and thank you to David for giving up his time to engage with SSAA NSW on important issues for firearm owners across our state. 1. What measures can be taken to ensure consistent laws across Australia regarding the appearance of firearms, given each state and territory has a different standard? This is an issue I've been working on lately. In fact, I had a meeting with the Minister (Angus Taylor) just this week to discuss appearance laws. There's two ways of looking at it. One is, it's good when states do their own thing. That's called competitive federalism and you can compare what happens in each state and try and learn from it. Broadly speaking, I favour that approach. However, on appearance laws, what we're seeing now is some fairly erratic stuff emerging, so some states, and NSW is a good example, are prosecuting people for things that have long been legal. The Australian Border Force granting approval, then changing its' mind and then seizing, or blocking entry to, other products means there are no consistent principles involved. That's not good overall, as it puts people in legal jeopardy and, in particular, it puts business on a very uncertain basis. They can't plan, and there are legitimate, legal, law abiding businesses in this space which deserve better. What I'm hoping is that, via the current Minister, is that there will be a meeting of the minds involving the states and the Commonwealth Government. What the Minister is thinking he will do is seek to establish a set of principles for appearance laws and they will then be circulated around the states for their input and, hopefully, those principles will get mashed into a format that they can all agree on and, ideally, they will also be something we can live with. David Leyonhjelm Interview