The debate between the gun lobby and the Minister for Police Paul Papalia has recently reignited following the announcement of the state government’s firearms buyback program.

Mind you, it’s a pretty one-sided debate, with the gun lobby launching ads at the Minister and missing badly, while the opposition remains hunkered down in a safe house up on the hill, hoping not to get caught up in the firefight.

The Liberals and Nationals are no doubt keeping their heads down because they have read the mood of the community and don’t want to be on the wrong side of the debate when the inevitable next tragic shooting occurs.

Meanwhile, the Firearms Alliance is running what has to be one of the most ineffective political advertising campaigns since Clive Palmer spent $123 million on his United Australia Party ads, only to win one senate seat at the last election.

I don’t know who’s advising the Alliance; maybe it’s Palmer’s old media team, but their money would be better spent bankrolling the Shooters and Fishers Party back into the State’s Upper House in the hope of holding the balance of power at the next election.

Not that we know what they actually want, as their advertising campaign seems more like a personal attack on the Police Minister, than offering any coherent argument as to why the government has gone too far with its proposed reforms.

Mind you, Papalia won’t be losing too much sleep over the ads, as he has broad community backing for tighter gun laws, plus a good working relationship with the farmers and pastoralists who have managed to secure sensible changes to cover their needs.

The Minister is also well-placed politically to buy off segments of the firearms community with his $64m war chest available to buy back firearms.

This will target those owners who rarely, if ever, open their gun safes and don’t want to go through the hassle of finding a landholder to give them a renewed property access letter or join their local sporting shooting club.

The buyback will also sit well with recreational owners who want to keep their licence and currently own at or below the new maximum of 5 (recreational) or 10 (recreational plus sporting) firearms.

The fund will give them an easy way to trade in their old and unsaleable firearms for an upgrade at taxpayers’ expense.

The unhappy owners will be those forced to give up some of their guns to conform to the new rules, including passionate collectors with lots of valuable weapons or those who lack access to family and friends with large properties and are unwilling to join a sporting shooters club.

Quite rightly, these licence holders will be gunning for the government in the ballot box at the next election over the loss of their historic rights, as the Minister has given no credible justification for why capping the number of firearms an individual can own will make any difference to the number of firearm deaths.

If the Minister were deadly serious about community safety, he would have initiated a debate about adopting rules similar to say Singapore, where individuals can only own a firearm if they belong to a club, and even then, it must be stored at the club.

That would probably have been enough to get the Liberals and Nationals to stick their heads above the trenches and align with the shooters, but so far, the Minister has been politically pragmatic about how far he is prepared to go.

Mind you, without seeing the new regulations, which are still being drafted, we have no idea what all the restrictions are and how many people will be forced to empty their gun cabinets.

But they must be pretty severe, as the government has put enough money on the table to buy back around a third of the 360,000 weapons that are legally in WA.

With 90,000 owners having an average of 4 firearms each, that’s 30,000 voters either voluntarily or being forced to give up all or some of their firearms to comply with the 5 or 10 limit and the new rules.

To add insult to injury many of these owners who are set to lose firearms wont be able to access the buyback scheme as by the time they work out where they sit under the new rules, the money will have run out or the fund closed.

The fact that the fund is finite and has an end date, set for when the new regulations are likely to appear later in the year and the first letters from Firearms Licensing Branch will appear in people’s mailboxes just before the next state election must sooner or later focus the political minds in the Premier’s Office.

We know that Cook does not like fights over legislation, as we have seen with the pulling of the Heritage and Water Acts, so there is a possibility the new Firearms Act could yet become political and part of the election debate.

As for the Shooters and Fishers Party, if they get fired up by the shooting community, there is enough political ammo to get a member back into the Upper House, assuming they have not spent all their money on the current campaign.

But the real question for now, is how the Liberals and Nationals will respond over the coming weeks when the new Act is due to be debated.

Will they ignore community sentiment and position themselves to pick up shooters’ votes by proposing amendments to double the maximum number of firearms per licence holder and make it easier for recreational shooters to access property letters?

Or will they back the government and keep their heads down?

It’s like a game of political Russian roulette, with the government loading the gun and handing it to the opposition.

A brave opposition would support the Minister’s redraft of the Act but move an amendment to lift the unjustified restrictions on the number of firearms per person while leaving in place restrictions on the number of licenses allowed per rural property based on its size.

This is the sort of common-sense amendment the Firearms Alliance should be arguing for in their current campaign, rather than attacking the Minister with ads that miss the mark and will be long forgotten by the next election.

In the meantime, the Farmers and Pastoralists will continue to work with the government and opposition to ensure we retain workable access to what are tools of our trade.