In the US, guns are so normalized you might imagine Glocks one day being handed out with Happy Meals. Australia, on the other hand, treats firearms with a little more gravitas. Just ask Lillian Goodson, a 30-year-old American sentenced to 12 months in jail this week for bringing a gold-plated pistol into the country in April of last year.
Goodson, who had packed the $3,000 gun in her checked luggage, was in Australia to attend clown school. That’s not a joke or an insult; Lilian Goodson had flown to Australia to learn how to be a clown. Here are some more facts from her gun smuggling case.
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When customs officers at Sydney Airport asked if Goodson had any prohibited items on her, she confidently said no. Then they pointed to the $3,000 gold-plated gun in her luggage, which is when she said, verbatim, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.”
Unfortunately, the forgetfulness excuse didn’t cut it with authorities. A quick look through Goodson’s search history revealed a trail of evidence suggesting she did in fact remember she had the gun on her. She’d searched questions like “Can I have a gun in my suitcase?” and set a calendar reminder that bluntly read, “Put gun in suitcase.”
Goodson later said that the gun was just to deter potential threats, and that she was “scared” of actually shooting it. “If that didn’t do it, I would probably just pistol whip,” Goodson reportedly added.
While that is objectively a funny thing to say, magistrate Susan Horan wasn’t laughing. Thids week, Goodson was sentenced to a year in jail—four months of it in full-time custody. Horan explained that Australia has a strong stance against firearms, and setting a prison term would send a clear message to anyone tempted to smuggle weapons into the country.
