Serious question. Are the shooting sports ( rifle, shotgun,and pistol) rapidly becoming a thing of the past in the entirety of Australia? If so, amazing when one considers the geography of the entire continent.
The problem with Australia is the same thing plaguing the rest of the West. Shooting sports, self reliance, and freedom are being threatened with a two faceted blow, one from a population that is growing increasingly apathetic, complacent, and ignorant, and the second threat coming from opportunistic politicians who are taking advantage of the apathy of the general public to legislate more and more freedoms away.
Like I've long always said, a society giving up it's civilian owned weapons is merely one symptom of a serious social disease. Most of Australia's population, just like the rest of the West and first world East, are comprised of urbanites who are glued to Tiktok and Instagram. Their obsessions are with Taylor Swift, Bridgerton, fashion, keeping up with their friends' social media presences, and latest consumer goods trends.
If their Internet goes down for more than 2 hours, they will go suicidally insane.
If their "friends", most of them who will never even spend the effort to visit them in a hospital ER if they get sick, posts about a new "viral" kitchen gadget or latest snake-oil health product, they will put the priority of obtaining that item far over other things like rent and food.
However, ask them basic questions about global history and they will have no clue, nor will they be interested. Continue talking to them about history and they will call you a "creep" or tell their friends that you give them "the ick".
If you say to them that your passions are camping, fishing, hiking, and spending time in the great outdoors, love fixing and building vehicles and other things, and are mechanically inclined and good with tools, you will automatically be perceived as a potential or active serial killer, or some Breaking Bad-esque crime lord. However when these folks' plumbing goes to shit or an appliance breaks, they turn to you first begging and pleading, and expecting you to fix their stuff on a whim.
If a deranged assailant is to start hacking away at people in public or plow a vehicle through a crowd, this bunch ONLY knows how to react in one of two ways:
A: Pull out their phones and record while screaming nonsensically,
B: Stand and freeze while screaming nonsensically.
They have absolutely NO sense of self preservation nor do they care to change that. To them, weakness is essential to "being human", and "being yourself", and they consider that a sign of "being healthy". That is literally their belief system, no doubt from hours of binging quack "mental health" content on social media.
Politicians and legislators are purely opportunistic and "take what they can get". When conditions are not matching up to their inner and concealed desires, they will not even squeak or otherwise bring attention to themselves. However, when a wide open road is paved, cleaned, and green-lighted for them, only a special kind of retarded would think that they would not take advantage of it fully or give even the slightest regard about the safety of potential pedestrians on that road.
The banning of civilian owned firearms by a society is merely a sign of a much more deeper and serious problem with that society's population. If a "Battlefield: Los Angeles" style army of near peer hostile alien troops were to land right now and start picking off innocent civilians, and the governments of the world instantly reverse any and all weapons ordinances, and mandate that trailers full of military rifles and pistols and ammunition be deposited on every street for anyone to equip themselves, guess what? 90%-98% of the entire population would not know what to do with the weapons. The trailers will sit completely ignored across cities. Some might try to grab a rifle and load it, but having never had any form of exposure to these weapons before, they will get confused at how the controls work, how the magazines fit, which way do the rounds face inside the mags, etc, and throw them aside in frustration and continue running. They however, can recite every single sports stat and trivia and name every player from 1985 though...