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Originally Posted by Webstral
In Massachusetts, on the other hand, the DA in one case asked a woman defending her life in her own home why, after she fled from room to room (thereby allowing the invader to take whatever material goods he wanted) and was finally cornered in the basement she didn't crawl out of the casement window or allow the intruder to rape her in lieu of taking his life. No kidding.
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I've never heard of that sort of argument actually being enunciated here in Oz but I'm absolutely certain that many authorities here feel that way. Very frustrating for people like me. I'm no gun nut but I believe that as long as a person has no criminal record, secures their firearms properly and is properly traned in the use and maintenance of firearms, they should be allowed to keep firearms in their homes and be allowed to defend themselves (on their own property) with them. Now that it is a non-issue over whether law abiding citizens can defend themselves, with firearms, in their own homes (because the government has taken nearly all the previously legal firearms away from people) the debate has moved to knives. Here in Perth the number of murders and serious assaults using knives has increased significantly in the past few years.
Back to the original question I'm not sure about the punishment here in Australia for owning an M-82 but there was a case here involving ex-Australian Army Captain Shane Della-Vedova who was involved in the theft and sale of nine LAW-66 rocket propelled grenade launchers (the media here still insists on calling them rocket launchers the fools). Only one of the weapons was ever recovered which is a bit scary. He was sentenced to 10 years prison last year.