This happened in Wieambilla Queensland in 2022. This story made international news. The policemen and women were executed. Similar story, police perform a welfare check, are shot on sight.
The assumed suspects from todays shooting are well known to the local community, for all the wrong reasons. Notorious 'sovereign citizens'. More information in the Reddit post below.
It's most unfortunate and sad when shootings happen esp where fatalities are involved.
However it all depends on how situations are handled. Sending unsuspecting police to do a welfare check - for instance when another state's police had already sensitised / inflamed someone who wanted to be left alone ... nutters need to be handled with care and / or special tactics used to subdue.
anenefan · 2h ago
This article does not reflect the situation accurately.
Australia's over the top knee jerk action in the 90s is not a gold standard for gun control.
Almost immediately a black market in gun trade started up via importation (or worse theft) - thus since modern hand guns were not very common amongst the criminal elements up my was (North Qld - Australia) - they soon were - also since not a great proportion of the population sought to get a gun licence, there was a shift to where the criminal element though having an illegal gun (pistol) would give them an upper hand - this IMO soon changed though after a few years, since having such when they were finally busted by the police was probably going to be jumped on harder than any other petty crime they might have endeavoured in.
What mattered most was giving the police the power to remove guns from and prosecute repeat mishandling tools. Scarring the wannabe crime lord / drug king / big time tough guy for what happened in the courts to the few unfortunate examples who mishandled a gun in public. Locking up any loose guns (this is somewhat painful if one needs quick access to a gun but ... it means to stop angry drunks and malignant narcissists having a temper tantrum doing something impulsive.) Controlling the sale of ammunition so that the criminal element has difficulty using any guns they do happen to have.
I miss the weekend gun culture that used to exist in my locale - but it's a different world now - short on common sense.
Only just today two policemen were killed, and a third injured in the rural Victorian high country.
There's been a huge spike in cookers/sovereign citizens using violence through firearms.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-26/victoria-police-incid...
This happened in Wieambilla Queensland in 2022. This story made international news. The policemen and women were executed. Similar story, police perform a welfare check, are shot on sight.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieambilla_shootings
The assumed suspects from todays shooting are well known to the local community, for all the wrong reasons. Notorious 'sovereign citizens'. More information in the Reddit post below.
https://www.reddit.com/r/melbourne/comments/1n09tef/victoria...
However it all depends on how situations are handled. Sending unsuspecting police to do a welfare check - for instance when another state's police had already sensitised / inflamed someone who wanted to be left alone ... nutters need to be handled with care and / or special tactics used to subdue.
Australia's over the top knee jerk action in the 90s is not a gold standard for gun control.
Almost immediately a black market in gun trade started up via importation (or worse theft) - thus since modern hand guns were not very common amongst the criminal elements up my was (North Qld - Australia) - they soon were - also since not a great proportion of the population sought to get a gun licence, there was a shift to where the criminal element though having an illegal gun (pistol) would give them an upper hand - this IMO soon changed though after a few years, since having such when they were finally busted by the police was probably going to be jumped on harder than any other petty crime they might have endeavoured in.
What mattered most was giving the police the power to remove guns from and prosecute repeat mishandling tools. Scarring the wannabe crime lord / drug king / big time tough guy for what happened in the courts to the few unfortunate examples who mishandled a gun in public. Locking up any loose guns (this is somewhat painful if one needs quick access to a gun but ... it means to stop angry drunks and malignant narcissists having a temper tantrum doing something impulsive.) Controlling the sale of ammunition so that the criminal element has difficulty using any guns they do happen to have.
I miss the weekend gun culture that used to exist in my locale - but it's a different world now - short on common sense.