Goin' Tactical

If there's one thing no society needs it's "black guns." There is a whole family of these things out there, "tactical" semi-automatic assault rifles that can be yours for just a few hundred dollars.

Those patterned directly on the Colt M-16 require a "restricted" gun licence but there are plenty of others, just as sinister and Rambo-manly, that you can get with an ordinary, non-restricted licence.  Follow the link above, take a look.

I use the word "sinister" deliberately. That's what sells these guns, the idea that you too can join the warrior class. They're short, really easy to conceal. They're black. They've got Picatinny rails, ready to mount your scope, laser sight, red-dot sight or accessory flashlight in case you get a hankering to start blasting away in the darkness. Like the kid in the photo above with his accessorized Bushmaster.

And, if you don't have a couple of grand to plonk down, don't worry. You can get a Chinese SKS, with folding bayonet, on sale right now for $199.

People who buy these black guns often claim they're for hunting. Yeah, right. Take a look at this baby, priced at a modest $599. It's a knock-off of the German, WWII MP-40.

That's a shoot-from-the-hip blaster. You won't be heading out to take a deer with that. It just screams "Wehrmacht" all day long.  It's very inaccuracy makes it more dangerous, not less.

I'm not an anti-gun zealot. I have rifles, real hunting rifles, that I periodically take to the range for an hour of target shooting. They're not for "self-defence." It takes me more than 20 minutes just to get everything unlocked, assuming I can locate the keys and figure out what key works on which lock.

I think there's a place for rifles, some rifles. There's a place for handguns - cops, armoured car crews, competition shooters - but that's about it.

We need to ratchet down access to a lot of these firearms. If you want a tactical rifle, join the army. If you want a handgun, demonstrate that you have a legitimate need for one.

It's time the federal government cracked down on black rifles and automatic pistols - but don't hold your breath.

UPDATE:

New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, vows to reform her country's lax gun laws.

“Our gun laws will change,” she said. “There have been attempts to change our laws in 2005, 2012 and after an inquiry in 2017, now is the time for change.” 

She said five guns were used by the primary perpetrator of the attack, including two semi-automatic weapons and two shotguns. The shooter was in possession of a gun licence obtained in November 2017.

Australia banned semi-automatic rifles. Britain has strict gun control. Now, New Zealand is going to follow. That leaves Canada the last bastion of assault rifle access.

New Zealand Prepares to Receive Climate Change Refugees

Good news from a bad news story.

New Zealand is proposing to issue climate refugee visas for Pacific islanders displaced from their homelands by sea level rise.

In the low-lying and vulnerable Pacific islands, the number of people moving within their own nations to flee worsening storms, sea level rise and other climate-related crises is still relatively small.

But countries like New Zealand are making plans now before climate migration grows into a regional emergency.

“We want to get ahead of this before it turns into a real problem … we want to start a dialogue with the Pacific Island countries about this notion of migrating with dignity, if things get to that point,” said climate minister James Shaw, leader of New Zealand’s Green Party.

“One of the options is a special humanitarian visa to allow people who are forced to migrate because of climate change,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview from the UN climate talks in Bonn, which were hosted by Fiji.

In 2014, a New Zealand judge granted residency to a family from Tuvalu, in part on humanitarian grounds related to climate change.

“The reason why we were throwing around an idea of a visa is because people who have been displaced by environmental conditions like rising seas and climate change aren’t counted under the UN Convention on Refugees,” said Shaw.

Canada should be jumping in with New Zealand on this. We proudly proclaim ourselves a Pacific Rim country and, as a petro-state, we're doing our bit to make these refugees' lives a little more precarious, so it's sort of like we owe them at least that much, a chance to relocate to Canada.

New Zealand - Australia's Climate Change Lifeboat

Australia is somewhat ahead of the global average for climate change temperature rise.  The country just passed the 1C mark.   There's obviously plenty more heat on the way in the future, just as there is everywhere else from existing atmospheric greenhouse gases, not even counting the additional GHGs we'll be adding to the stack over the next decades. 

When you're a country that has always prided itself for its "sunburnt beauty" there's not much percentage in going from unbearably hot to unsurvivably hot. 

The 1C milestone was the focus of  a report released today by Australia's national science agency, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), and its Bureau of Meteorology.

New Zealand climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger, author of the new book Living in a Warmer World, said the report showed Australia continued to be ``the burning, drying continent''.
 
The duration and intensity of heatwaves and days above 40C continued to increase, and temperatures were projected to increase with more hot days and fewer cold days, he said.
 
With continued drying in parts of the southern half of Australia, droughts were projected to increase.
 
"With such trends I would expect to see a reverse in migration across the Tasman, with increasing numbers of Australians coming to New Zealand," he said.
 
"This is as the climate of continental Australia becomes very harsh."

And a tip of the hat to Australian Green party senator, Scott Ludlam, for delivering this slightly scathing assessment of Aussie denialist prime minister, Tony Abbott.

“Just as the reign of the dinosaurs was cut short to their great surprise, it may be that the Abbott government will appear as nothing more than a thin, greasy layer in the core sample of future political scientists drilling back into the early years of the 21st century.”

In other fun climate change news for Australians, the CSIRO reports that warming waters are expected to trigger massive increases in the numbers of lethal jellyfish.

CSIRO research scientist, Dr Lisa-ann Gershwin, says more research is needed into the jellyfish. She warned higher ocean temperatures from global warming may stimulate jellyfish to breed faster, grow faster and live longer.

"What you don't want happening is that all of a sudden it's a huge problem and no one sees that coming," she said.

Symptoms of an irukandji jellyfish sting include severe pain, vomiting, anxiety and in rare cases can cause pulmonary oedema (fluid in the lungs), hypertension or toxic heart failure that can be fatal.
A box jellyfish sting can be fatal in as little as three minutes.

A Court Down Under Deals with Climate Change Migration

A New Zealand court will hear a refugee-status claim from a Kiribati man who contends he had to flee not persecution but climate change.

Kiribati is a low-lying atoll in the South Pacific that will be among the first to be inundated by rising sea levels.   There's simply not enough high ground to support the population.

The 37-year-old and his wife left his remote atoll in the Pacific nation of Kiribati six years ago for higher ground and better prospects in New Zealand, where their three children were born. Immigration authorities have twice rejected his argument that rising sea levels make it too dangerous for him and his family to return to Kiribati.

Legal experts consider the man’s case a long shot, but it will nevertheless be closely watched, and might have implications for tens of millions of residents in low-lying islands around the world. Kiribati, an impoverished string of 33 coral atolls about halfway between Hawaii and Australia, has about 103,000 people and has been identified by scientists as among the nations most vulnerable to climate change.

Yes the case will be watched closely elsewhere, especially in the United States and in Europe, two places facing the very certain prospect of waves of climate change refugees.   Europe already has a problem with human migration out of Africa.   Military planners in the United States foresee a similar migration threat from Central America.   The irony is that the countries that perceive themselves most threatened by climate change refugees tend to have been the major emitters of greenhouse gases that rendered the migrants' homelands uninhabitable.

Christchurch Hit By Damaging Quake

No word yet on casualties but some people are reported to be trapped in collapsed buildings.   Here are a few photos of Christchurch from the Sydney Morning Herald.  It's hard to believe all this damage was caused by a 6.3 magnitude quake.