Originally Posted by
bowspearer
No offence Trev, but your dogmatic stance on this issue really does show how recently you became active in the Australian fan community, compared to those you accuse of "needless fearmongering". I notice you joined OTCA in 2011 - a good 4 years after all the grief and drama with MP-05 back in 2007.
If you were approaching things from an open minded-perspective - which you clearly haven't been on this issue - you would have asked where all of that concern and anxiety was coming from, from people who had been active in the fan community a lot longer than you had been.
Had you asked that question with an open mind, you would have found that based on what happened with MP-05, that nothing in the concerns people had over MP-36, could even remotely be described as "needless fearmongering".
Had you asked that story, you would have heard stories about how MP-05 became a target for government fearmongering and how it was actively searched for and seized - with only those in WA and QLD having as painless a time as those of us in the ACT currently have.
Had you asked that story, you've have found out that in addition to active searches and seizures, people were being treated like gun owners to actually own one - people were being made to join shooting clubs and store it like it was a working firearm (including having a gun safe and bars on windows - I kid you not). The situation was so insane that one board member here who was a solicitor, actually had to take the step of meeting with the NSW Police Minister on more than one occasion, to go about setting up a club, which the minister approved, for the sole purpose of owning MP-05.
Yes, the situations with MP-36 and MP-05 proved to be like chalk and cheese, but none of us who lived through MP-05 had any reason to believe things would be different with MP-36 and had people not taken these steps, then by Murphy's Law, you can be sure that the same thing that happened with MP-05 would have happened with MP-36.
So you can keep on with the "needless fearmongering" rhetoric all you want. However it isn't a good look in light of what happened back in 2007 with MP-05.