Television scriptwriters often project their paradigms onto their characters, who then repeat these words for us to hear. The priest is always the pedophile. Political violence is right-wing. And anyone who claims to be a sovereign citizen is a nut job and deserves a Federal 5 am raid before they do significant harm..
In reality, public school teachers and illegal aliens are more likely to groom and rape kids, the average leftist is one wrong word away from going postal, and those nut jobs claiming the government has no right to anything, etc, really just want to be left alone.
The suspect in those killings, 56-year-old Dezi Freeman, remains at large, weeks after he is said to have killed two officers visiting his rural property to serve a search warrant.
In the years before the shooting, Freeman appeared to have embraced so-called sovereign citizen views during court appearances. Members of such movements use debunked legal theories to reject government authority.
The government’s response was to identify anyone who may have expressed similar views, locate them, and disarm them.
“The mission of this operation was simple and that was to validate and verify our intelligence on who may hold sovereign citizen ideologies here in Western Australia,” the state’s Police Commissioner Col Blanch told reporters on Sunday. Social media posts and information from other gun owners was used to identify those targeted.
The end result being,
Police in Western Australia have seized guns and revoked or suspended firearms permits from dozens of owners linked to what investigators describe as sovereign citizen ideologies, or views that reject government authority.
You sound like that guy who is alleged to have killed two police officers, so we’re going to take your guns.
(Western Austrailian) WA Police have identified about 1,000 people who have professed sovereign citizen beliefs across the state, with 70 of those owning guns.
The properties of those gun owners were searched during an extensive operation last week, with 135 firearms seized and 44 gun licences cancelled or suspended.
Officers also inspected 26 firearm storage units, with seven people charged with 18 offences related to incorrect gun storage.
Australia is notorious for its gun-grabbing, but you can still own a rifle if you’ve got a good reason and can convince the government it’s a good reason. However, it must be licensed, and you must be licensed, so the government knows you have it and where you keep it. As with the recent gun grab in Canada, which banned 2500 so-called assault rifles and is about to “buy them back,” you’ve no choice in the matter. Take the deal or don’t, we’re coming for the guns.
Also, as with Canada, the problem began years before when people who should not have trusted the government allowed it to disarm law-abiding citizens again and again. Places where your speech will now get you a visit from the police, who will proceed to deprive you of additional rights until they feel certain you are no longer a threat.
They’ll say it is about “no threat to the public,” but what they mean is no threat to the government.
