That point being, by one way or another, that the voices of rural Australia are well and truly reverberating in the current political climate.

The NSW Government is clearly running scared ahead of the Orange by-election to be held on November 12, as evidenced by Mike Baird eating one of the biggest servings of humble pie in history over greyhound racing.

At the same time, the Federal Government seems to be resorting to doing all kinds of backroom deals to get what it wants.

This isn’t the first time the government has tried to use the Adler A110 ban as a bargaining chip; It was the subject of an earlier handshake deal that never came to fruition. 

The Abbott government had previously struck a bargain with Senator Leyonhjelm, promising to let the ban lapse in August 2016 in return for his support.

But the classification of the weapon proved too thorny an issue and the ban stayed.

Now the Turnbull government is in the naughty corner for apparently attempting to have the Adler A110 reclassified in exchange for the senator’s support on industrial relations legislation.

Any news item that touches on the issue of gun control is going to be highly emotive and is guaranteed to flare up.

What some see as farmers asking for a reasonable reclassification of a single weapon to help them in the fight to eradicate feral animals, for others is the thin end of the wedge on gun control, and an attempt to water down John Howard’s popular laws.

The two issues, greyhound racing and gun ownership, of themselves are topics that tend to divide people along city and country lines.

It was in our country towns, like Orange, where the greyhound ban hurt most, as people fought hard to preserve a traditional Australian industry.

The greyhound ban was an ill thought out, knee jerk reaction made purely for political advantage, and we watched it backfire.

So too, a deal on the Adler, purely for political gain, could be one made for the wrong reasons.

The events that brought the Adler into the spotlight could taint it forever in the minds of the public, and seal its fate for good.