by Gamerancher » 02 Mar 2018, 9:09 am
We had an example of this a couple of years ago with a local dealer. Police decided to do an audit and found some non-compliance issues with his paperwork, nothing sinister, just "incorrect" record keeping. Then the sh!t hit the fan and they went all out on the bloke. Called in the media, told them how they had over 15000 ( actually I think it was much higher, just going off memory here), "illegal" firearms offences him. Well, that just sent the media into a frenzy, calling for all sorts of changes to the laws etc.
Turns out that most of the problem was actually with the Firearms registry and an ambiguous directive they had given to dealers in relation to record keeping.
The huge number of offences was due to the police counting each individual round/box of ammo on the premises as a separate offence.
After the dust settled, he cleared his name and returned to running his business. No retraction ever, by police or media, about him being wrongly accused.