The Gun Issue: a Modest Proposal

Friday, 25 October 2002

Since the shootings at Monash on Monday, there has been a predictable outcry from gun-control advocates for tighter gun control and an equally predictable response from the right-to-shoot-things-or-at-least-own-a-gun-on-the-off-chance-that-I might-need-to lobby. I have tried, unsuccessfully, to stay out of the debate, such as that raging in the comment threads of John Quiggin's web-log.

The latest proposal from the Howard Government for tighter hand-gun controls and a hand-gun buy back looks reasonably certain to get up. Personally I am opposed to this scheme as a waste of public money and propose the following alternative.

Instead of a hand-gun buy back, we offer hand-gun owners an exchange - in return for their hand-guns they receive a penis gourd. The more guns they hand back, the larger the gourd, which they could wear proudly in public at any time, without the threat of criminal penalty. Personally, I lean towards making the wearing of penis gourds compulsory. The shooting clubs could continue on as penis-gourd clubs, where the members (no pun intended) could get together for a weekly spot of "mine's bigger than yours", and swap tips on penis-gourd care and maintenance.

I also liked the suggestion I heard on talk-back radio* this morning, that we should try to have pistol shooting removed from the Olympic and the Australia & Commonwealth Games to be replaced with another sport. That way we can avoid the long-term loss of Gold Medals that stricter hand-gun controls might entail. I think that if we start some serious lobbying of the IOC now, we might get Penis Gourd Fencing accepted as an Olympic Event in time for the Beijing games. Originally I had a couple of other new sports in mind, but I had to give them up when I realised that they wouldn't work too well as women's events.

* - Actually, it was ABC talk-back which probably doesn't count as the real thing.