Griffith criticises firearms licence policy

For­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith has crit­i­cised the cur­rent ap­proach to grant­i­ng Firearm User Li­cences, say­ing it con­flicts with Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on cit­i­zens de­fend­ing them­selves.

In a me­dia re­lease, Grif­fith ar­gued that the ex­ist­ing pol­i­cy of deny­ing firearms to most ap­pli­cants runs counter to the na­tion­al stance en­cour­ag­ing in­di­vid­u­als to stand their ground. He ex­pressed hope that his com­ments would be tak­en as con­struc­tive crit­i­cism.

Grif­fith said suc­ces­sive Po­lice Com­mis­sion­ers have op­er­at­ed un­der what he de­scribed as an out­dat­ed mind­set, lim­it­ing firearm ac­cess pri­mar­i­ly to law en­force­ment and in­di­vid­u­als deemed to be un­der di­rect threat. He ar­gued that this ap­proach has led to wide­spread de­nial or de­lays for or­di­nary cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing busi­ness­peo­ple, farm­ers and house­hold­ers seek­ing le­gal pro­tec­tion.

He took is­sue with the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of­ten giv­en for re­ject­ing ap­pli­ca­tions, name­ly that an ap­pli­cant’s life is “not un­der threat” or that there is no con­firmed plot against them. Grif­fith de­scribed this rea­son­ing as dan­ger­ous, ques­tion­ing where the law re­quires a per­son to face a di­rect threat be­fore qual­i­fy­ing for a firearm.

He main­tained that such cri­te­ria un­der­mine the in­tent of poli­cies sup­port­ing self-de­fence, not­ing that cit­i­zens can­not ef­fec­tive­ly stand their ground if they are un­armed. Grif­fith said the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion re­flects a con­tra­dic­tion be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion on self-de­fence and the au­thor­i­ty re­spon­si­ble for grant­i­ng firearm li­cences.

The for­mer com­mis­sion­er stressed that his po­si­tion does not sup­port in­dis­crim­i­nate dis­tri­b­u­tion of firearms but rather fair and law­ful ac­cess for re­spon­si­ble cit­i­zens who meet es­tab­lished re­quire­ments. He said in­di­vid­u­als such as farm­ers, busi­ness own­ers and fam­i­lies fac­ing crime threats should re­ceive time­ly con­sid­er­a­tion.

Grif­fith al­so point­ed to his tenure, dur­ing which he ap­proved over 1,000 firearm li­cences an­nu­al­ly, stat­ing that in­ci­dents in­volv­ing mis­use were low­er com­pared to oth­er pe­ri­ods. He ar­gued that prop­er back­ground checks, rather than lim­it­ing num­bers, are key to re­spon­si­ble firearm own­er­ship.

He fur­ther claimed that ac­cess to firearm li­cences has his­tor­i­cal­ly favoured well-con­nect­ed in­di­vid­u­als, adding that his ad­min­is­tra­tion sought to change that pat­tern.

Grif­fith called for align­ment be­tween Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and im­ple­men­ta­tion, urg­ing that the au­thor­i­ty to grant li­cences should not be used to im­pose stan­dards be­yond the law. He said if the na­tion­al po­si­tion sup­ports cit­i­zens’ right to de­fend them­selves, the process must re­flect that prin­ci­ple in prac­tice.

He al­so sug­gest­ed that con­sid­er­a­tion be giv­en to re­mov­ing sole de­ci­sion-mak­ing au­thor­i­ty from the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and in­stead as­sign­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to a com­mit­tee, which he said could bet­ter en­sure that qual­i­fied ap­pli­cants are treat­ed fair­ly and in keep­ing with Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.