EVANS T A

STATE OF TASMANIA v TIMOTHY ALBERT EVANS         17 NOVEMBER 2020

COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE BRETT J

Mr Evans, you have pleaded guilty to four counts of possession of a prohibited firearm. Each count relates to a separate firearm, all of which were found in your possession by police during a firearms check on 19 December 2019. They were found in your work shed, behind a firearm safe used for the lawful storage of properly registered firearms. At that time, you were the holder of a firearm dealer’s licence in respect of category A, B, C and H firearms. You had held this licence and, as I understand it, carried on business as a firearm dealer for some years.

The firearms came into your possession legitimately, in the course of your business. It was common for you to acquire firearms from members of the public, who wanted you to then surrender them to police. As I have just been informed by the prosecutor, there is provision in the regulations for a person in your position, holding a firearms dealer’s licence, to perform this service, but the time within which you were required to hand the weapons over to the police was seven days. So, it was a legitimate practice and it had obvious practical benefits. Many people unlawfully in possession of firearms may have been reticent about surrendering them directly to police. By you performing this service, those firearms were effectively removed from the community and placed into the possession of the authorities.

You acquired the firearms in question at the end of October 2019 from a deceased estate. When you acquired them, they were in a disassembled state. You reassembled them in your work shed. The purpose of doing this was to facilitate their presentation to police and also to check that all relevant parts had been accounted for. As you completed the reassembly of one, you placed it behind the safe, intending to subsequently store all of the firearms in the firearm safe until they were surrendered to police. I am told that you incorrectly thought you had 12 months to do this. It seems that you had far less than that, seven days, and it is also obvious, I think, that you had procrastinated in handing them over to the police. They were still sitting behind the safe where you had placed them when police came to conduct the firearms check on 19 December.

I am told that the firearms are all category D. They are self-loading centre fire rifles, intended primarily for military use. They are, therefore, prohibited for good reason. Apart from very rare cases where an appropriate licensed professional would need the use of such a weapon, firearms of this nature have no place in our community. In the wrong hands, they are capable of serious and harmful misuse, and pose a significant risk to public safety. I note, of course, that you had not correctly stored these weapons, and they were therefore vulnerable to theft. You have been separately charged with that offence and should not be punished twice, but I do think that your failure to properly store the weapons aggravates the objective seriousness of these crimes.

Having said that, the manner in which you came into possession of the firearms and your purpose in doing so, places this case into a far less serious category than some other examples of the crime. As I indicated this morning, I have in relation to other cases, particularly where the crime has been committed in the context of other unlawful activity, sentenced people to actual imprisonment for committing this crime. I note that you are a 59-year-old man of otherwise good character. The only prior matter on your record is one minor firearms offence committed in 1984. Otherwise, your criminal history is limited to a few minor traffic and street offences. You are also entitled to credit for your plea of guilty and co-operation in the administration of justice.

There is no question that general deterrence is an important sentencing consideration in respect of crimes such as this. However, in the particular circumstances of this case, I think that all relevant sentencing objectives can properly be met by the imposition of a significant fine. Accordingly, you are convicted of these crimes and I impose a global fine of $1,500.