Guns sold after raid by police

A FORMER shooting coach has sold all his guns after police raided his home and found an outlawed Browning semiautomatic rifle, a stolen Smith & Wesson revolver, a pile of gunpowder and three silencers – including one he had made himself.

On Thursday, 54-year-old Rixon Eldon Ralph faced the Supreme Court of Tasmania and narrowly avoided a sixmonth stint in prison over a raft of firearms crimes.

He pleaded guilty to trafficking a firearm, possessing prohibited guns and possessing a stolen gun, as well as 14 more minor offences including failing to comply with storage requirements, failing to comply with firearms safekeeping, possessing and manufacturing a silencer, altering identification marks and failing to comply with ammunition storage requirements.

Acting Justice David Porter said Ralph’s actions bordered on “outright contempt” for the state’s gun laws.

The acting judge said Ralph first became known to police last year when he surrendered a newly engraved action to his local station, with police noticing discrepancies – such as the serial number being engraved, not stamped. Police obtained a warrant to search his home in May last year, finding a disassembled .22 semiautomatic rifle stored in poly pipe, which Ralph said was his grandfather’s and that he kept for sentimental reasons.

He later admitted the gun – which had been stolen in 2000 – wasn’t his grandfather’s.

Ralph committed the act of trafficking by purchasing a Smith & Wesson from a “person he did not want to name”, but knew the gun was stolen.

Acting Justice Porter said Ralph now knew “how foolish his actions were”. “He has now sold all of his firearms,” he said.

Ralph was fined $1200 and given a wholly suspended sixmonth prison sentence.

He must forfeit his illegal and illegally stored firearms to the state.