It is absolutely disgusting to me that politicians and the media are already lining up opportunistically taking advantage of the actions of Dezi Freeman

And the slaying of Victoria Police Officers Detective Leading Senior Constable Neil Thompson and Senior Constable Vadim de Waart, weaponizing the actions of an unlicensed shooter with a homemade gun to push more restrictions, more registrations, more monitoring onto law-abiding, licensed, registered firearms owners. It takes a special kind of cynicism to emotionally blackmail the public, using the deaths of police officers killed by a man with no gun license using a homemade gun as emotional leverage against licensed and law-abiding gun owners. But sadly, such cynicism, such opportunism is far too common in our politics and in our media.

It’s happened before with guns and it happens all the time with other topics as well where a tragedy or a shocking crime is weaponized against the people who didn’t do it. And if someone like me dares to call it out like I am in this video, then we get accused of being heartless, uncaring, or my favorite one, I’ll be accused of politicizing these police killings and disrespecting the fallen. When in actual fact I’m the one calling out our media and politicians for doing both of those things. You don’t honor the dead by misrepresenting their deaths. And anyone who weaponizes what happened at Porepunkah and uses that against law-abiding firearms owners needs to be called out. And I’ll start by doing that right here in this video.

But before we get to that, my name is Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and I help busy people like you to cut through the crap that we’re fed by the misinformation industrial complex, otherwise known as the mainstream media. And I help people to make sense of the nonsense that surrounds us. I take no pleasure in making videos like this one today. In fact, I wish that there were no need, no room for me to ever make videos to do what I do at all. Because if the media actually did their jobs, well, then no one would care what I had to say. And that would be a good thing.

But sadly, the misinformation industrial complex don’t do their job very well at all, which is why I became an independent commentator 16 years ago.

Sadly, since then, the need for independent, fearless voices has only increased. And today’s video is just one example among many. So, if you appreciate the fact that I am willing to say what’s not popular and I’m willing to say it when it matters right in the heat of the moment, then please consider supporting my work by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you don’t yet have a copy of my bestselling books about the role of civil disobedience in the modern age, then head over to goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com where you’ll find my books, DVDs, and more.

Now, before people get mad at me for asking for support when talking about such a sensitive topic, let me remind you that the Guardian have no problem asking for your financial support, as they also beg for more gun control. So, I’m not going to feel guilty for asking for support as I defend lawful firearms owners. And let me say both because people will accuse me of being heartless, but also because it’s the truth that I condemn absolutely the killing of police officers just as I condemn the killing of anyone except in direct extreme self-defense situations. That’s the only exception.

The facts of exactly what happened and how it happened in Porepunkah, well, it’s yet to come out and there is still a lot of unsubstantiated claims going around which I’m not going to buy into in this video. I believe in letting the truth come out over time and the chips falling where they may. But what I will do is read to you what I said soon after the news broke because it literally only took a few hours before opportunistic politicians and media jumped on these killings and tried to politicize them.

Problem, reaction, solution, or as Zelinsky put it, “their reaction is our action.” Be very aware of how the public reaction is being shaped by media and politicians. I condemn absolutely the shooting of these police officers in Victoria, just as I’ve condemned violence from criminals, from protesters, and from the police themselves, consistently for many years. When you resort to violence, you instantly lose. You lose any moral high ground. You lose public support, and you lose whatever future you may have had, as this shooter is likely to discover the hard way.

With that said, we must beware the media and government reaction and the way that they’re already working overtime to shape the public reaction and to define the villain in the public mind in order to support their chosen solution. Their reaction is our action. The public reaction to this shooting will provide political momentum in the same way that the public reaction to the Port Arthur shooting did. And it’s likely to be met with the same opportunistic solution as what John Howard had back then too, with further demonizing of law-abiding people as well as further militarizing of the police.

I hope this manhunt resolves without any further bloodshed. And I certainly hope that he does not seek to hurt more officers and also that he does not seek to commit suicide by cop. You and I have no influence over any of that. But we can and we must seek to influence the ways in which this tragic shooting will be weaponized by our politicians. And before anyone gets upset at me for trying to politicize the shootings, that’s already happened and that’s exactly what I am cautioning against.

I posted that a few days or so ago. My position is clear and public and the cynical exploitation of these killings for political purposes has ramped up in the days since I posted that with headlines like this one becoming more and more common: “We need to make sure we know where our firearms are in this country.” This article is about how Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie and Labour MP Dan Rapakoli have used the killings at Paul Punka where an unlicensed shooter used a homemade shotgun to ram through and accelerate a national firearms register on licensed, registered gun owners.

Now, for those of you who aren’t gun owners and neither am I, by the way. I don’t have a dog in this fight. This isn’t about me. But for those who don’t know, in Australia, if you are a gun owner, you are required to be licensed by the state that you live in. And that includes having to pass a police check and you have to show that you have a reason for needing a gun license. Now, it could be sports or hunting, pest control, those sorts of things. And you have to register every individual gun that you own with the state as well. And you have to comply with strict rules around the storage and transport of your firearms while you’re at it. And the police can show up at any time to inspect your firearms and your storage of those firearms whenever they want.

And all of the shootings that we see on the news, including this one at Porepunkah, but also the ones we see as part of the tobacco wars and the guns that we’re seeing being increasingly used by young violent home invaders in Victoria especially, but also elsewhere. These guns, those gun crimes, they’re not being done by the licensed firearms owners who have registered guns. They’re being done by criminals who are unlicensed and are using any one of the estimated 1 million illegal, often homemade or 3D printed, but also often just imported through our very loose borders or lost or stolen from police any one of the 1 million illegal guns that we have in this country right now.

For Senator McKenzie or for Dan Repacholi MP to go on the Today Show and to brazenly misuse the slaying of officers Thompson and De Waart to score cheap political points arguing for an additional national register on top of the existing state registries a national register which would have made absolutely no difference whatsoever to the deaths of those officers that level of cynicism is shocking to me. And after 16 years of commentating on politics, I am no longer easily shocked. But this is ghoulish. Standing on their graves before they’ve even been buried, using their deaths as emotional blackmail to push for policies that would not have saved their lives. But they do it because the media cheers them on and because if anyone pushes back, they can accuse us of disrespecting the fallen. In a classic case of accusing others of what they themselves are doing. It’s disgusting.

And the Nationals and the Labour Party respectively should be publicly reprimanding their members for disrespecting these fallen officers like this.

But of course, that won’t happen because the politicizing of death and tragedy is actually normal in our politics and in our media. Nine News are running print and video stories asking the question, should Australia have a national gun registry? SBS, our taxes at work, are asking, “Gun ownership is rising in Australia. Who owns them and why?” Sky News are reporting on these calls to fast-track the National Gun Registry and reporting on fresh concerns around the loosening of gun reforms across Australia. The Guardian are reporting that gun control is off-target as Australia now has more than 4 million registered guns in this country, more than double what we had in the late ’90s when registration started. And experts are saying that Australia is losing control on guns with the Guardian invoking the ghost of Port Arthur, the shooting that triggered a nationwide ban on many popular firearms, plus licensing and registration in every state.

And all of those articles are just a small sample of the flood of gun-related fear-mongering articles that have come out in the last few days since this shooting at Porepunkah. So, in reply, here are some cold hard facts for you. There are over 4 million registered guns in Australia with every state having tens or hundreds of thousands of gun license holders. Plus, there are over 1 million illegal guns in this country as well, with more arriving or being made every day. 1 million. That’s one illegal gun for roughly every 20 or so adults in this country.

And sure, many gun owners do own multiple guns. According to a report that came out earlier this year, the average is more than four legally owned guns per legal gun license holder. And if we assume that that ratio also holds true for illegal gun owners, an average of about four illegal guns per illegal gun owner, then that would mean that approximately one out of every 80 Australian adults is the proud owner of an illegal gun.

Which would mean that every time you walk into a shopping center, just do a quick head count and ask yourself how many of the people that you are shopping alongside are statistically likely to be one of these illegal gun owners and to have one or more of these illegal unregistered guns at home or perhaps in their car or perhaps even on their person. In an average supermarket, there’d probably be one or two or maybe three multiple people at any one time who own an unlicensed and unregistered gun. And in a big busy shopping center, there would be dozens of owners of illegal guns walking around all of the time. And you don’t think about it because you don’t have to think about it because they’re not a danger to you.

When you begin to wrap your head around just how many guns there already are out there in Australia, you realize it really is true that guns don’t kill people. People kill people. And every now and again, they use a gun to do it. There’s 4 million legal guns plus another million illegal guns. And yet in any given year, a few dozen guns at most are used as murder weapons. Now, that is not to diminish in any way the tragedy of those who are murdered or killed using guns, including the tragedy of these two police officers that were killed earlier this week, but it is to point out the absurdity of thinking that this is a problem that has to be solved by getting guns onto registries.

Now, some people begin to freak out when they realize just how many guns are already here in Australia. They suddenly feel threatened and afraid of something that they’ve been peacefully surrounded by all their lives and not been bothered by. But legal gun owners, well, they’re not a threat. There is nothing to worry about. The violent crime rate among legal licensed gun owners is incredibly low. Consider that if there’s 4 million legal guns at an average of four or so per licensed holder, that would be about a million legal licensed gun owners in this country on top of the maybe quarter of a million 250,000 illegal unlicensed gun owners in this country. Again, that’s the million illegal guns at an average of four per illegal gun owner.

So for reference, the Australian Army has approximately 12,000 active infantry soldiers in its ranks, which means that in Australia, our infantry is already outnumbered by gun owners 100 to one.

If legal gun owners in Australia were a threat to your safety or to the safety of this country, we would know about it. And to use this tragedy, this shooting at Porepunkah where an unlicensed owner of a homemade shotgun took the lives of two police officers to use that as some sort of proof that we should fear licensed gun owners or their guns and make legal gun ownership even more difficult to do that is beneath contempt.

The media and our politicians should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. Although I should point out before I finish that it’s not all bad news out there. Channel 9, to their credit, gave some airtime to Griffith University violence prevention specialist Dr. Samara McPHedran who showed remarkable restraint and clarity in the heat of an interview saying: “So we have this tendency in Australia where we say, oh look there’s been a shooting, okay we need to do something about guns, there’s been a stabbing, we need to do something about knives. And what we don’t do is we don’t seem to have the capacity to step back and actually look at the factors that underly contribute to the violence in the first place. Politicians typically implement very superficial measures that don’t address underlying problems. And then down the track, sadly, there’s always another incident.” I agree.

Now, you can get mad at me for this video if you want, but you’d also be getting mad at the Griffith University violence prevention specialist as well. The fact is that a lack of a national firearms register had no bearing whatsoever on what happened at Porepunkah. So, using what happened to ram through a national firearms register is dishonest. It is disrespectful and it will solve nothing.

Now, in the case of Dezi Freeman I believe we need to have an honest conversation about the events that went before the shooting, not only in the seconds and minutes before, but in the years before. As I said earlier in this video, there are a lot more facts yet to come out. And I have no doubt that some of those facts are going to be very uncomfortable for people who just want this to be a nice, easy, clear-cut case of guns are bad. Okay.

But while we allow that truth to come out and give it some time, let’s make sure that we push back ruthlessly, harshly where necessary on these grandstanding opportunists like Senator Bridget McKenzie and Dan Repacholi, MP, and their fellow travelers who insult the dead by weaponizing their deaths against people who didn’t do anything to them.

My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and this is what I do. I bring clarity and I call out the crap and I help my viewers like you to make sense of the nonsense that surrounds us. If this video has been valuable for you, then please help me to keep the Topher project going by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And if you like my videos, then you will love my books, Good People Break Bad Laws. Now, this is all about civil disobedience in the modern age, including a mix of my own journey and experiences as a dissident against the lockdowns in Victoria, plus political philosophy and lots of history to reveal why civil disobedience is as important today as what it’s ever been but also and more importantly, how to employ civil disobedience in a way that will actually win people over to your cause and how to avoid resorting to violence, which is the fastest way to lose support for your cause.

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