When Weapons Are Called 'Tradition' and Animals 'Population'.
A debate that has accompanied Australia for decades is flaring up again in Tasmania: How many weapons does a society truly need, and for what purposes may they be used? The trigger is the terrorist attack on Sunday evening at Bondi Beach in Sydney, in which 15 people died, including a 10-year-old child.
What follows now is politically predictable and yet morally understandable.
For as soon as stricter regulations are discussed, recreational hunting in Tasmania immediately moves to the centre of attention. Not hunting as an emergency measure, not damage prevention in individual cases, but hunting as a leisure activity. It is precisely this 'leisure logic' that is now beginning to waver.
Roland Browne, Vice President of Gun Control Australia and based in Hobart, makes two demands in reporting by Pulse Tasmania: an immediate halt to firearms access for those under 18, and the abolition of licences for 'recreational hunting' — hunting purely for pleasure. Browne also argues that the justification for hunting is 'ambiguous', that is, vague. He becomes particularly pointed when citing the example of duck hunting: it is banned in other states, and Tasmania should follow suit.
This is the journally and hunt-critically central point: hunting is regularly 'normalised' as a legitimate purpose in such debates, even though in large parts it is neither necessary food security nor mandatory animal or nature conservation, but frequently ritual, hobby and identity politics. Those who kill animals 'for recreation' turn lives into targets and violence into a weekend appointment. That this is increasingly difficult to justify in society is demonstrated by the very fact that Browne is publicly calling for hunting licences for recreational hunting to be abolished.
Children and weapons: The blind spot of 'gun culture'
Browne points out that children in Australia can shoot from as young as ten or twelve years of age. He contrasts this with other age limits and demands: civilian use and possession only from the age of 18.
The reaction from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party in Tasmania is swift. Its MP Carlo Di Falco counters: under-18s cannot legally own firearms and may only handle them under the direct supervision of licensed adults.
Both can simultaneously 'be true' and still miss the point. Even if ownership is formally excluded, access remains real — and the cultural learning effect all the more so: firearms are instilled early as a normal tool of leisure and 'tradition'. Teaching children that a trigger is a component of sport, fun or 'heritage' lowers the psychological threshold. Not everyone who shoots from an early age will become violent. But every society that tolerates early weapons socialisation is making a conscious choice to accept an additional risk.
'It's just enforcement': The most convenient counter-argument
Di Falco further claims that the Bondi crime revealed a 'failure to administer' existing laws rather than gaps in the law itself. This line of argument is popular because it is convenient: nothing fundamental needs to change, only 'better implementation'. Yet the national picture contradicts this complacency.
Australia's National Cabinet, following the attack, agreed to examine stricter regulations, including limits on the number of firearms, fewer open-ended, indefinite licences, faster development of a national firearms register, and even the idea of linking licences to Australian citizenship. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also emphasised that licences must not apply 'in perpetuity', because circumstances change and people can become radicalised.
This is more than administrative optimisation. It is a political admission that existing safeguards under 'normal operation' are insufficient when someone can legally hold firearms while their risk profile changes.
This is precisely the issue that Wild beim Wild has been pointing to for decades:
In the view of IG Wild beim Wild, hobby hunters require annual medical-psychological fitness assessments modelled on the Dutch system, as well as a binding upper age limit. The largest age group among recreational hunters today is 65+. Within this group, age-related impairments such as declining visual acuity, slowed reaction times, reduced concentration, and cognitive deficits increase significantly on a statistical basis. At the same time, accident analyses show that the number of serious hunting accidents involving injuries and fatalities rises significantly from middle age onwards.
The regular reports of hunting accidents, fatal errors of judgement, and the misuse of hunting firearms illustrate a structural problem. The private possession and use of lethal firearms for recreational purposes largely evades continuous oversight. From the perspective of IG Wild beim Wild, this is no longer defensible. A practice founded on voluntary killing that simultaneously generates considerable risks for humans and animals forfeits its social legitimacy.
Recreational hunting is furthermore rooted in speciesism. Speciesism describes the systematic devaluation of non-human animals solely on the basis of their species membership. It is comparable to racism or sexism and can be justified neither culturally nor ethically. Tradition does not replace moral scrutiny.
Critical scrutiny is indispensable, particularly in the realm of recreational hunting. Few other fields are so thoroughly shaped by euphemistic narratives, half-truths, and deliberate disinformation. Where violence is normalised, narratives frequently serve the purpose of justification. Transparency, verifiable facts, and an open public debate are therefore essential.
Hunting and firearms law: two debates, one core
Tasmania is an Australian stronghold for certain forms of hunting, particularly duck hunting, while also contending with introduced or expanding wildlife populations such as deer. Browne proposes leaving the culling of wild animals, where necessary at all, to professional personnel rather than organising it as a hobby.
This is consistent from a hunt-critical perspective: if 'population management' is genuinely the argument, then measurable targets, transparency, oversight, animal welfare standards, and independent evaluation are required. Recreational hunting frequently delivers too little of that, and instead produces a great deal of emotion, status, and exceptions. It generates a lobby that frames every tightening of regulations as an attack on 'decent people', when in reality the issue concerns the minimisation of risk and violence.
The question nobody wants to ask aloud
The firearms lobby says: 'We are not responsible for perpetrators.' That is formally correct and morally insufficient. Responsibility also lies with the system that makes weapons available as an everyday option, and with a culture that defends the killing of animals as leisure activity, thereby socially legitimising the handling of firearms.
The Tasmanian debate demonstrates that the issue extends beyond registers, limits, and licence periods. It concerns a fundamental decision. Does a modern society wish to treat firearms primarily as a strictly limited tool for clearly defined exceptional cases, or as a broadly accepted accessory for hobby, tradition, and 'sport'?
In the wake of Bondi, the second answer appears not merely outdated, but dangerous.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier The Role and Criticism of Recreational Hunters we shed light on the training, power and self-image of recreational hunters. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
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