Welcome. That's what it says. Glad you could make it. There's so much material on the Net, it's a special pleasure that you've come here to have a look around, and extra special you've dug this far.

Earlier today, the  Secretary telephoned me and asked me, for the purposes of his putting an article in the next newsletter, what the aim of the Website was.  For a moment or three, I just didn't know what to tell him.

There's so much material on the internet about Weapons, and Weapons Collecting, it is almost impossible to come up with a fresh formula. I explained to him that I was trying to develop a Community Site, but with a sharp edge.

He bought it!

One of the first things I must disclose is that I am neither an Arms Collector, nor a Gun Nut. I've always had a comfortable relationship with weapons, but I was never fixated by them. My friends collected, and they were a harmless enough lot.  As it often happens, the years drifted us apart and we went on to other lifetimes and pastimes. And through all those years, I can't ever recall a single instance of the misuse of a weapon, except for X, who managed to botch his suicide by shooting himself with a Luger.  Everyone who knows X already knew he was a hard case, even before he laid his eyes on his first weapon. Some who knew X better than I even said that he should have done it with a real gun instead of a Luger, and done us all a favour. All I can say is that at least he didn't connect the hosepipe to the exhaust of his car, which is is how I have lost more of my friends, though somewhat more difficult to hold up a liquor store with.

The last few years have seen me developing some websites, editing a few military history books, and still trying to write one. I became aware of the Guild and its aims, and I felt that it had valid things to say, and the members I'd met were pretty good folk, even though they might have been a bit paranoid.

The problem was that the more I learned of their experiences, the less I began to think of them as paranoid. Gradually, ever so gradually, I too came to believe that there really was someone out there who had put them on an "enemies list", and that someone was....ah, that would be telling.

OK, I'll tell. It was the Government.

At the risk of having you consider me paranoid, let me tell you about "The Government." 

You know "The Government."  They're that bunch we voted for, and who let us down.

They are the bunch who so loved us, and so desired to protect us from the Red Menace, they exploded more atom bombs and hydrogen bombs on our country than the Russians ever did. They so loved us, and so desired to protect us from the evils of racism, they adopted an immigration policy to keep out every race that was not white.

I'm sure I could come up with other examples, if I tried, but my point is that Governments  do some pretty horrific things to us in the name of "peace, order and good government."

This is hardly an Australian thing. It's been going on throughout history.

When I was going through some hard times, I had mulled over writing a 'modern prayer.'  I don't think you'll ever find it in your Book of Common Prayer any time soon, but here's what I came up with:

Lord God, protect us from the excesses of the righteous – For they believe they are entirely right, and justified in everything they do to us under the banner of that right - but the truth of it is, O Lord,  that you have made none of us ever entirely right. Amen

That about sums it up for my trust in human institutions. They're fallible, every arrogant, opinionated, self-justifying, self-perpetuating, power-hungry son-of-a-bitchin' one of them.

Which is partially why you are reading this website.

I have long believed that had the miners won at the Eureka Stockade, we might have had a chance at creating a democracy more in the American model, where the theoretical justification of political power flowed was that it flowed from the people and empowered the government (in comparison with the English model in which political power flowed from the Crown as the source of all power, right and magnificence down upon the unworthy people) and we would not still be wondering about why Australia still isn't a republic.

Perhaps it's because we don't yet understand the 'Liberty' which it takes to become a Republic, because we've never made the effort to examine its nature, so sated are we by bread and circuses.

Not only do we not understand 'Liberty,' we don't even understand that it is 'The Government' which has, by supreme legerdemain, diverted our attention into believing that we have nothing to fear from its righteous governance in lieu of it.

Australian gun owners have to realize that if they bleat "The Coppers are taking our guns",  not only will no one listen, there will be a group of people  who shall applaud them and say "It's about time, too!" The message that responsible gun owners must communicate is "Government employees are conniving to take your liberty, and your freedom, one step at a time," and then it might dawn upon the dim general public that there is some truth in what we have been saying, after all.