OVER the past few months, we have been bombarded by alarmist claims that if we allow importation of the seven-shot Adler shotgun, civilisation as we know it will collapse.

Too often these claims are not fact checked and are reported without question. That is disappointing since the allegations are fantasy.

The Adler is not new technology. The lever-action shotgun has been around since 1887 when John Moses Browning (1855-1926) patented it. He designed the firearm on behalf of Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The Winchester 1887 holds an important place in the evolution of sporting firearms. It was the first commercially successful repeating shotgun. For those who are unaware, almost all of the stock of Australia’s legally held firearms are manually operated repeating firearms. This firearm is no different than anything we already have, except it is a shotgun.

There were previous attempts that were commercially unsuccessful, such as the 1866 four-shot Roper repeater. These shotguns are now highly prized collector’s pieces.

Winchester sold 64,855 units of their seven-shot repeating shotguns by 1900.

In 1901 Winchester dropped the 12-gauge model 1887s from their lineup and introduced the more powerful 10-gauge versions.

Yes, that is right folks, the original lever-actions were more powerful than current Adlers. The method of measuring shotgun bores involves determining how many round lead balls fit in the bore that add up to one pound. In the case of the 12-gauge, this means 12 lead balls are the same size as the bore.

So how powerful is the 12-gauge? Well you certainly will not go deer hunting with it as it is rated as too underpowered and it is illegal to do so under our Wildlife Act.

Ordinary deer rifles are far more powerful. Double-barrelled, 12-gauge shotguns are in the lowest powered Category A, along with air rifles. The purpose of the shotgun is to take small moving game such as ducks, rabbits and animals to the size of wallabies. It is also used to break fragile claybird targets.

In parts of England, the 12-gauge shotgun is still referred to as a fowling piece. The maximum effective range of a 12-gauge shotgun cartridge is about 30m to 40m, according to the Animal Welfare Standard for the hunting of wallabies in Tasmania.

Nothing demonstrates the limitations of the 12-gauge more than the Lindt Cafe siege. Man Haron Manis fired just three shots despite the pump-action shotguns being banned because they are allegedly rapid-fire. His first shot killed Tory Johnson at point-blank range, but completely missed a bunched up group of fleeing hostages with the second, and the last shot was directed at a police officer who suffered non-life threatening pellet wounds. He certainly did not discharge all the five cartridges in the magazine.

Even the pump-action shotgun is hardly a weapon of mass destruction.

Of the 128 patents that John Browning held, the rapid-fire designs were the ones he developed for the military. Two of his stand out designs were the M2 Browning machine gun, aka Ma Deuce, with a cycle rate of 800 rounds per minute and the Browning Automatic Rifle with a cycle rate between 500 and 650 rounds a minute.

An M16 can empty a 30-round magazine in less than three seconds. It is absurd to call the Adler a rapid-fire gun. There is nothing remarkable about the alleged firing rate of the Adler which can be matched by many other legally held firearms.

The claim the importation of the Adler will lead to a mass shooting is laughable since it has not been used anywhere in the world for that purpose. In fact, an item that many of us carry around in our pockets has potential to create far more mayhem — a cigarette lighter. After Port Arthur, the next four most deadly mass killings in Australia involved deliberately lit fires that claimed a total of 54 victims.

There you have it folks — the Adler is not an assault weapon nor rapid-fire or powerful or newly developed to get around the National Firearms Agreement.

If you cannot trust the prohibitionists on the Adler, you cannot trust anything else they claim.

Carlo Di Falco is a cartridge collector, competitive shooter, hunter, member of the Arms Collectors Guild Tasmania and a member of the Shooters and Fishers Party.