I have it on good authority that Australia has their firearm issue firmly tamped down. They have lots of laws and even had an amnesty program where people could give up their guns without having to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions about why they had the most efficient tool of self-defense without their overlord’s permission.

This guy apparently didn’t get the memo.

A man has been charged after police allegedly found 109 unregistered guns at a rural property in north-western NSW at the weekend. Police went to the home in Cobar at about 9.45am on Sunday to carry out a firearms audit. When detectives from Darling River Local Area Command searched the property, they allegedly found 118 guns, including revolvers, rifles, shotguns and shortened rifles. Although the man had a firearms license, it is alleged 109 of the guns were not registered and not stored safely. In a statement, police said thousands of rounds of ammunition were also seized.

Here’s the Facebook post with the firearms in question displayed.

A man has now been charged in relation to more than 100 firearms seized by police from a rural property in Cobar at the… Posted by NSW Police Force on Wednesday, January 3, 2018

That’s not an individual who intends to hurt anyone. That’s a collector who didn’t get governmental OK to keep his collection.

Seriously, a couple of the pistols look like flintlocks, for crying out loud.

Yet let’s note how authorities learned of this:

A man has now been charged in relation to more than 100 firearms seized by police from a rural property in Cobar at the weekend. About 9.45am on Sunday 31 December 2017, detectives from Darling River Local Area Command attended the property for the purposes of a firearms audit and spoke with a resident. During a subsequent search of the property, officers located and seized 118 firearms, including revolvers, rifles, shotguns and shortened rifles. It is alleged 109 of those firearms were unregistered and not stored safely. Thousands of rounds of ammunition were also seized. Following further investigations, a 56-year-old man was arrested at Cobar Police Station today (Thursday 4 January 2018) and charged with the unauthorised possession of firearms in circumstances of aggravation and not keeping firearm safely. The man’s firearms licence was also suspended. He was granted conditional bail to appear at Cobar Local Court on Wednesday 24 January 2018.

In other words, the police showed up to look at his guns because they could. They had the legal authority to just show up and demand to be shown what he has.

While I won’t say his collection couldn’t be used for horrible purposes–any firearm can, after all–that’s not the stockpile of some militant nut or arms dealer. That’s the stash of a guy who just enjoys firearms. While I get that these weren’t properly stored, I can’t help but wonder how much of that was the result of trying to avoid detection rather than actual callousness.

Make no mistake, this is what some people want for us. Australia’s been held up as a model for some time, after all.

Some people don’t like the idea of armed American citizens, especially since some of us have collections like this. They want to regulate what we can own, how we can store them, and then punish any deviation from the approved path, no matter the reason. Keep a gun in the nightstand in case you need it? Nope, that’s a criminal charge.

If they get their way, that is.

Luckily, we still have our rights. Unlike this poor bastard in Australia.