STATE OF TASMANIA v SEAN RICHARDSON 29 SEPTEMBER 2023
COMMENTS ON PASSING SENTENCE PEARCE J
Sean Richardson, you plead guilty to possessing two firearms while subject to a firearm prohibition order. I also agreed to deal with your plea of guilty to possessing the firearms without a licence, failing to ensure their safekeeping and possessing a firearm in breach of a family violence order. The firearms in question are both gel blasters. One is a replica of an 18 select fire Glock pistol. The other is similar in design, shape, size and features of a generic six chambered revolver. These were found when the police went to your home in Newnham on 16 March 2023 for an unrelated reason. They were in a shopping bag inside an unlocked safe in your bedroom. Gel blasters are designed to propel spherical gel balls by means of compressed Co2 gas. Items like this are sometimes used as recreation even though they are capable of causing an injury if used in an unsafe way. Neither of the items you had were in working order. You purchased them from your cousin some weeks earlier for $300 knowing they did not work. You claim that the safe in which they were found was usually locked but on this occasion it was accidentally left open. You admitted to the police that you knew that you were subject to the prohibition order and that you should not have had them. When I heard the facts I was very concerned that the only plausible explanation for your possession of these objects was the possibility that, because they look very much like real firearms, they might have been used by you or someone else in a threatening way to serve a criminal purpose. However your counsel asserts that you purchased them to fob off repeated requests from your relative to sell you things as a way of extracting money from you from a payment you had received. I confess to some reservations about that explanation. It would be for you to establish its truth. However counsel for the prosecution takes no issue with it and I have decided against requiring evidence before proceeding to sentence. The charge of possessing a firearm without a licence does not add to the seriousness of your criminal responsibility. These firearms posed no risk in a family violence context although possession of them was breach of the order. Leaving them unsecured did add to the risk that someone else might have used them for an unlawful purpose but that risk was very low because they were in your bedroom and usually locked away.
Firearms prohibition orders are made if the Commissioner of Police forms the opinion that a person is unfit, in the public interest, to possess or use a firearm. In your case the order was made on 3 December 2014 and served on you on 18 February 2015. The order prohibited you from possessing or using a firearm. It is not the first time you have breached the order. On 19 November 2019 I sentenced you to imprisonment for four months for the same crime because you had been handling a rifle in the bush when out with a friend. I summarised your record for crimes involving violence and dishonesty and for firearm offences. I said then that it is not difficult to see why a firearm prohibition order was made and served on you especially because on 24 September 2015 you were sentenced to imprisonment for five years for an aggravated assault and wounding committed on 29 July 2013. On that occasion, motivated by revenge, you shot a hand gun from the passenger side of a moving car at a man on the footpath, only to hit and injure an innocent bystander. You are currently serving a total term of eight months without a parole order for a range of offences including driving and family violence offences, although they do not involve actual violence and nothing concerning firearms. Your counsel correctly submits that since your release on parole in 2017 the nature and extent of your offending has not been as serious as it was before then. You are now 32 and in a relationship. You have demonstrated the capacity to undertake employment. However, concerning these offences there remains a strong need to uphold the regime which regulates firearms. You knowingly breached the order for a second time. The fact that you usually kept items which did not operate and were of little monetary value in a locked safe makes clear that you understood the nature of the items and that you should not have had them. Of course it is not as serious as it might have been had you possessed real firearms or possessed them for a sinister purpose. In either case the sentence would have been considerably longer. However in my view this is not to be dismissed as a trivial breach. There is an obvious need for specific deterrence. I think the same sentence which was imposed for the previous breach is the appropriate sentence. Because you have already been in custody for some time I will allow for parole.
Sean Richardson, you are convicted on the indictment and on counts 7, 8 and 9 on complaint 31579/23. I order that the firearms be forfeited to the State. On the summary counts I make no further order. On the indictment you are sentenced to imprisonment for four months cumulative to any term you are presently serving or liable to serve. I order that you not be eligible for parole until you have served half of that term.