Under the gun Rod out of the firing line
ROD Haugh insists he knew straight away police were looking for something that was not there.
The veteran Geelong gun dealer’s ordeal began out of the blue with an audit in early 2013 when police, after searching high and low, alleged The Outdoor Sportsman had a discrepancy of 162 guns to the state’s official firearms registry.
Mr Haugh said he dismissed the allegation in an instant.
Within two days, he says he had located 64 of the supposedly missing guns, and about 100 of them within about six weeks.
“Ninety per cent of them was their fault; they had seen them during the audit and (marked them) not seen,” he said.
Mr Haugh said he told police he had found many problems with their records, which was making his job much harder.
With the paperwork for about 50 firearms in dispute, police did another audit in August of 2013, subsequently seizing all the guns in the store, mostly sporting rifles, with many being kept in storage for their owners.
At the time, Senior Sergeant Dennis Tocock, of the Licensing and Regulation Division, told the Geelong Advertiser the store had been under investigation for a substantial time and that because of compliance issues, its licence had been suspended.
“We’re still working through the final stages of the re-audit but many (guns) are unaccounted for,’’ Sergeant Tocock said.
“This is all about bookkeeping and the owner has put his hand up in regards to that.
“It got to the stage where we couldn’t let it go any longer.’’
Mr Haugh immediately appealed to have his licence restored.
The Geelong Sportsman stayed open, selling ammunition under a separate licence and gun and sporting accessories, but staff were let go.
Mr Haugh said The Outdoor Sportsman was a low margin business and selling a sporting rifle was the gateway to the wider offering.
“We were lucky to survive,” he said. “We are $9 million down in sales.”
However, he was determined to see the matter to the end.
The lengthy legal battle culminated at the Firearms Appeals Committee earlier this year, with Mr Haugh alleging police were forced into a series of admissions that cast doubt over their own records.
“They admitted in court they didn’t know how many guns they had taken off us,” he said.
Mr Haugh said representatives of the police then offered a deal that included the return of the licence, subject to 12 conditions.
“We rejected that offer. We didn’t agree with eight of those conditions,” he said. “The next day, before we got into court … they agreed to drop those eight conditions and give us our licence back that day.
“We would have won if we had gone into court, and they knew it.”
Mr Haugh, who suffered a stroke last September, said he would like to see laws that restricted the abuse of power by statutory authorities that have access to unlimited money and time to drag matters through courts.
“I have always been confident I will see it out but I had a stroke last September,” he said.
“I was told by the doctors it was probably a lot to do with what was happening in the business and the stress. It has taken its toll, yeah.”