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It is has been a big news week with some terrible tragedies and also major talking points. To digest it we are joined again by Unshackled Contributor Jacob Watts.

What is happening in the world right now is the United States is reeling from the Las Vegas Massacre and how to respond to it, the independence referendum in Catalonia, Spain has led to a violent constitution crises in Spain, the first release of data from the marriage plebiscite indicates a strong voter turnout. The latest proposals from the Turnbull government is to threaten to withhold  ST from states that limit gas exploration as well as to have a new round of anti-terror laws. Nick Xenophon has resigned from the Senate to contest a South Australian state electorate, Andrew Forrest has proposed to raise the smoking age to 21 and the UK Government wants to crackdown on far-right propaganda online.

We discuss the Las Vegas country music massacre which is now the worst mass shooting in US history with 59 dead and 489 injured. Even a week after we still don’t know the shooter 64 year old Stephen Paddock’s motive so it is difficult to formulate an appropriate response. But it didn’t stop the usual suspects from immediately calling for gun control, although there is some agreement from the NRA about the need to regulate gun modifiers. There were also some leftists who wanted us to make more of deal about the shooter being white and asked why we hadn’t called the massacre terrorism.

The autonomous Spanish community of Catalonia held a referendum on the question of becoming an independent nation. It was violently suppressed by the Spanish authorities who deemed it illegal. Despite this 90% of Catalans who cast their ballots voted to become independent. We discuss the merits of secession and how it has been permitted by the international community and been successful in other parts of the world. We also highlight that the actions of the Spanish government show that even in western liberal democracies the freedom of its citizens are only extended so far.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics released the first set of data regarding the marriage postal survey. 9 million responses have been received which is a 57.5% turnout so far. We conclude that Australians obviously liked having their say despite the vote not being compulsory. Recent polling indicates yes majority vote, we however conclude that we are just glad the campaign is winding down and after this issue is resolved we can move onto discussing more important policy matters.

We discuss the proposal from mining billionaire Andrew Twiggy Forest to raise the smoking age to 21 to fight cancer and smoking addiction. But we believe we don’t need to treat young people as children longer and we already have enough nanny state measures in place with regard to smoking. This proposal would only lead to more black market activity and people’s informed choice to smoke should be respected in a free society.

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Author Details
Tim Wilms is the Founder and Editor in Chief of https://theunshackled.net. the Host of Tim’s News Explosion, the WilmsFront interview program and The Theorists with Andy Nolch. He based in Melbourne, Australia where he also conducts field reports.
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Tim Wilms is the Founder and Editor in Chief of https://theunshackled.net. the Host of Tim’s News Explosion, the WilmsFront interview program and The Theorists with Andy Nolch. He based in Melbourne, Australia where he also conducts field reports.