Are our Police fit for purpose asks Neville Dodd president of Sporting Shooters. If the purpose is the administration of
the firearms law they themselves wrote then “the answer is clearly a resounding no! Look at their current gross
under-performance” he says. Some obvious examples are:
Grossly excessive delays in processing applications (see table below – a shocking indictment)
Long delays in replying to emails and (in a lot of cases) not replying at all
Dealers left in uncertainty over running their businesses because their annual licence
renewals are not being processed promptly.
Rude and aggressive interviews of licence applicants and their families and referees
Demands for details of home layout – to be stored on the porous police computer
Government must give urgency to the establishment of the previously announced independent Firearms Administration
Authority Dodd says. “confine police to what they are good at – policing the law. Not writing the law and not
administering the law they have written.