The making of monsters: the construction of firearm owners in Queensland courts

Very little is known about the legal firearm-owning community in Australia. This study explored the nature and response to firearm violations in Queensland courts. An integrated theoretical framework was used in exploring judicial characterisations of legal firearm owners. Consideration of the critical, intersectionality, and master status theories allowed for the influence of interacting and contradicting status characteristics to be explored. Sentencing transcripts (n=79) from firearm violation cases were analysed in two stages. The first stage employed an attributional analysis framework in analysing the entire dataset. A subset of the transcripts was then thematically analysed. Results indicate that (1) the nature of firearm violations are predominantly regulatory, (2) firearm-owners experience stigmatisation due to their firearm ownership and the onset of this stigmatisation can be traced back to the events of the Port Arthur Massacre, and (3) the broad societal stigmatisation of firearm-ownership is reflected and reiterated in judicial perceptions of firearm-owners. The second key finding was that the relationship between privileged and stigmatised identities was contingent, intersectional, and reflective of the pre-existing structural power dynamics. This study provides a more nuanced understanding about the influence of privilege on judicial decision-making and sentencing outcomes.