I don’t have an exact record, but it is fairly predictable. One expects that after the kind of attack such as yesterday’s in Sydney, it will emerge that one or more of the attackers was known to the security services. In this case it seems particularly inexcusable; we are told that the son was known to ‘agencies’ – clearly the security services. Meanwhile, his father had no less than 6 licensed firearms. Who needs 6 guns for hunting ducks? [1]
I understand that one can’t, perhaps, intern everyone on a intelligence service watch list – but surely in a case like this; proximity of someone of note to intelligence agencies, (so not for growing weed in his back garden), to 6 firearms it might have been appropriate to do something – like remove the firearms?
But – no one will be held to account. That is one certainty. Part of the problem is that the intelligence services are all about surveillance for the state. They pride themselves on knowing everything; the Panopticon. But – protecting the public is not in their brief. I don’t expect this to change anytime soon.
Meanwhile I read that the Australian Prime Minister is already promising tougher gun laws. This is the general pattern of governmental authority in the UK too. The reality, based on the reported facts, is that this was a clear case where some sensible pragmatism would have simply cancelled the man’s gun licenses – all 6 of them, once his son, who lived with him, apparently, had been identified by security agencies as a risk. This – operation of existing systems, (I would assume Australian gun licensing laws allow police to refuse a license if they have concerns – if not; invent some reason), didn’t happen. The government will introduce new gun laws – this a) serves to cover up the failings of the authorities by creating a narrative that the problem lay in the ‘policies and procedures’, not in their failings to act within the existing framework and b) to advance the overall power and scope of the state surveillance-control system. However; because the actual problem is not addressed – failings by individual officers in the system – it will happen again. The same pattern happens a lot in the UK in social services failings; social workers fail to use their existing powers effectively, a child dies – but the ‘inquiry’ blames a lack of powers and lobbies for new laws. (Another example; I am definitely not holding my breath that the UK inquiry into the child of a former militia member from Rwanda granted leave to stay in the UK who massacred children at a dance studio is going to hold the local authority staff who were visiting him to account). [2]
Notes