I’m not a member of the firearms-owning cohort, but having just read this document:
I certainly sympathise with their concerns about law enforcement’s rapidly escalating demonisation of their community. New, or renewed, firearms-license applicant’s now have a compulsory requirement to name their ‘health practitioner.’ Their practitioners are now legally required from Dec 24th to notify police if a patient presents with any one of the twenty stated conditions in the document. They are also encouraged to add any of their own. Extract below (bold mine):
“This is not intended to be an exhaustive or prescriptive list of conditions that might give rise to a clinician’s concern about ongoing access to firearms by one of their patients. Rather this is a list designed to emphasise the wide spectrum of medical conditions and health states that may impact significantly on the ongoing propriety of an individual having a firearms licence.“
Including: “11. Any physical condition that would make handling firearms unsafe.” Like what? A sprained wrist?
Worse, it seems, ‘facts’ are not necessarily going to matter, (again: bold mine):
“The term “reason to believe” is not defined in the Arms Act 1983. However, it can be interpreted to mean that the health practitioner must form their belief based on facts – the belief need not be proven correct at a later time.
Ahm, excuse me: Mr Plod, if it’s not “proven correct at a later time” it was never a fact.
This all seems completely over the top, an unreasonable breach of privacy and patient/clinician confidentiality which will lead inevitably to breakdown of vital trust, replaced by suspicion, between practitioner and patient. This consequence alone may well end up costing many, many, more lives than these measures are supposedly designed to save.
Do people not think these things through?
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