Calls for Tasmania to abandon gun changes

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners is among the groups demanding the Tasmanian government abandon plans to water down gun laws.

Health groups are calling on the Tasmanian government to back away from proposed changes to gun laws.

The Liberals in March revealed plans to double the duration of some gun licences and make weapons such as pump-action shotguns more readily available.

On Sunday, groups including the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners called on Premier Will Hodgman not to push ahead with the changes.

"I'm not only concerned about patients but I'm also concerned about health professionals ... who need to look after people who have been affected by gunshot wounds, who have been killed," the college's president Bastian Seidel said in Hobart.

One of the first responders to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, Pru Peschar, said it was in nobody's interests to change the laws.

"I saw firsthand the devastation that was wrecked by one person with one gun. It was horrific, we never want that again," the Health and Community Services Union delegate said.

After being returned to government in Tasmania's March poll, the Liberals agreed to an upper house inquiry into the proposed changes.


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Source: AAP


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