Since the outset of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Australia has instituted some of the strictest lockdown measures in the western world. Once viewed as a free, prosperous society, the nation has slowly devolved into a full-fledged police state. with the federal government even going as far as to prohibit citizens from leaving the country.
At the state level, the situation is seemingly worse, with the severity of COVID restrictions varying among localities. In the Greater Sydney region of New South Wales, local authorities have restricted most interstate travel, forcibly shuttered places of worship, and limited the reasons individuals are allowed to leave their homes. Likewise in Victoria, where citizens remain in indefinite lockdown, state officials have instituted a curfew from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. in metropolitan Melbourne
Most recently, the government of South Australia decided to expand their police powers even further, with officials announcing plans for a new app that uses facial recognition software to track the movements and location of its citizens to ensure universal compliance with state COVID regulations.
“People in South Australia will be forced to download an app that combines facial recognition and geolocation,” The Atlantic reported. “The state will text them at random times, and thereafter they will have 15 minutes to take a picture of their face in the location where they are supposed to be. Should they fail, the local police department will be sent to follow up in person.”
Coupled with egregious reports of a father getting arrested in front of his infant child for going maskless at a local park and police detaining hundreds of lockdown protestors, the country bears all the hallmarks of a dying, once-free society.
Aussies Gave Up Their Liberty With Their Arms
While they may not realize it, Australian citizens relinquished any guarantees to individual liberty the moment they allowed their government to ban private gun ownership decades prior. Following a horrific mass shooting in 1996, Australia took up a series of extreme gun control measures that effectively made it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to own a firearm.
In addition to banning “semi-automatic rifles” and “certain categories of shotgun,” the nation’s government also issued a compulsory gun “buyback” program that resulted in the confiscation of up to 1 million guns from Australian citizens. Moreover, the law also proclaims that “personal protection” and “protection of property” are not genuine reasons for an individual to acquire a firearm permit.
Once signed into law, the legislation efficaciously removed any form of control Aussies had over their individual rights. Rather than entrusting themselves to safeguard society’s civil liberties, Australians instead rendered all responsibility to the government.
In the American context, the Founding Fathers understood that the right of the people to “keep and bear arms” was a absolute necessity. Having learned from the fallen nations of the past, the Framers understood that the citizenry must be armed in order to prevent the state from encroaching upon their God-given rights.
This of course hasn’t stopped U.S. Democrats from attempting to implement a version of Australian-style gun control, with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both signaling their support for a nationwide confiscation of firearms.
“Biden will also institute a program to buy back weapons of war currently on our streets,” the Biden-Harris campaign site reads. “This will give individuals who now possess assault weapons or high-capacity magazines two options: sell the weapons to the government, or register them under the National Firearms Act.”
Biden also made a similar pledge during a 2019 interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, saying that he would “institute a national buyback program” and that he “would move it in the direction of making sure that that in fact is what we try to do, get [assault weapons] off the street.”
While Americans are fortunate enough to have a Constitution that protects against such tyrannical overreach so long as judges and lawmakers are willing to apply it faithfully, Australians are not as lucky. Not only does the Constitution of Australia lack any right to bear arms, but the document is also absent of a bill of rights for the Australian people. Unlike similar liberal democracies around the world, Australia has largely provided its federal and state parliaments with the power to dictate what constitutes as an individual right.
By surrendering their arms to the state all those years ago, the Australian people mistakenly placed the defense of a free society in the hands of infallible politicians, who are beyond capable of sin and have demonstrated a clear willingness to violate the very ideals that have made Western civilization unique. The COVID totalitarianism Aussies find themselves in today serves as a stark reminder to forever safeguard the right to self-defense, for it will offer more security than any government could ever guarantee.