OK, now that we have the importance of a license in Australia established (pretty important!) I wonder about the license itself.
In the US, at least for CCW permits we have "shall issue" and "can issue". Must you show cause (i.e. a good reason) why you should be issued a gun permit?
And does it make a difference whether it is a handgun or a long gun?
As mauser9mm said generally the long gun licence application is as follows, and in my opinion quite onorous.
1. Do a govt approved safety course. Get issued a certificate of completion 2. Get a letter of permission from some landowner to shoot on applicable hunting land. Note this is not needed for future shooting or any other place you hunt. its a one off requirement so the cops approving the licence can see you have permission to shoot somewhere at least. Basically its an illogical superfluous requirement just added as a general embiuggerance to people applying and random landowners. 3. Pretty sure you also have to join a local rifle range these days to show proof or have financial membership with SSAA, like a watered down version of the NRA 4. Compile all with a sheaf of paperwork, passport photos and submit to the state police licencing branch 5. Once you have your licence you then have to apply individually for each firearm. This involves an online application, stating a genuine need( another illogical waste of words along the lines of 'target shooting"or "recreational hunting"etc and wait for a permit to be issued. This is then presented to a firearm dealer for processing your sale from them or between you and another gunowner. The permit is sent to state police so they can register the sale to your name.
Handguns Same as all above except more stringent at No.3, you need to be a member of a handgun club and jump through more hoops. You also have to escalate your ownership from rimfire to centrefire by stages, you cant just buy a 45 colt right off. Also you have to attend several registered shoots per year, for each class of handgun!( rimfire, I think below 9mm and above 9mm). This requirement is another load of crap, basically a deterrant to those who want to own several hanguns as you are having to spend a bunch of weekends at so called "registered range shoots" to maintain the licence. This particular embuggerance was actually cooked up by shooters themselves trying to stay in the good books with the government. One thing our gunlaws taught as is there are no shortages of sheeple on both sides of the debate. A lot of the damage was done by our own side.
As to your earlier comment about suprise LEO's dont carry guns at home here. Possibly as Australia has both 5x less homicide per capita and 5x less incarceration rate than the US. In fact all the 30 x 1st world countries have about 5x less than the US in either statistic. For the record the US was actually tracking the same as the rest of us until 1960's/70's. After that for some reason you guys incarceration rate suddenly jumped 300-400%.
