Your signature statement says it all, Matt.

Most people are anti-guns and, were we to make guns a voting issue, we would probably lose.

The problem you see here, though, may have something to do with law by regulation, where the Public Service is allowed to make up details pertaining to laws, without them ever being voted on by the legislature.

One of these regulations may be that police firearms officers are vested with the prerogative to refuse applications for any reason they see fit.

Tasmania has just had an election that ended more-or-less in a hung parliament. I'm not certain which party will form government but the Greens will have the whip hand, either way. For all that, the police are being overzealous in anticipating laws that may still not happen.

Tasmanian shooters should be asked to write to their local members and tell them that if their party connives with the Greens on such legislation it can forget about the gunowner's vote next time. As Americans know, that has a way of concentrating the representative's mind on his own political survival.

Despite John Howard scoring on gun control after the Port Arthur massacre, Barry Unsworth, once premier of NSW, apparently blamed shooters for his losing office.

- Paul