Australian gun control did not work as intended

To clarify, Australia does not have an out right gun ban. There is, however, a large list of firearms that are considered “Machine Guns,” or “Assault Rifles” by the Australian government, and are not obtainable with any licensing. (Which many of their definitions are way off base, and incorrect, which is a cause of representatives who do not know specifics.) Shotguns and Rifles, including a set criteria of semi-automatic weaponry is obtainable. This has been a misconception of Australian gun politics. However, Australia does require the registration of all firearms, including permits for any hunting/sport based weaponry.

Each weapon is broken down into categories:

A: Shotguns, Rimfire-rifles, and air-rifles (Including bb, and paintball guns, but excluding all semi-automatic, and pump action shotguns)

B: Centerfire, and muzzleloading.

C: Semi-automatic rimfire, and shotguns. Which the rifle may only hold up to 10 rounds, and the shotgun may only hold up to 5 shells

D: Semi-automatic Centerfire rifles, or pump action/semi-action shotguns holding more than the section C's shell/round amount.

H: Firearms, including handguns and air pistols. There is a 6 month experience requirement to obtain a handgun.

R/E: Restricted firearms, including “Machine guns, rocket launchers, assault rifles, anti-artillery, artillery, and flame throwers.”

Certain antique firearms go into an undocumented category.


Many people argue that Australian gun control has caused their violent crime rates to diminish, One of the problems with this opinion is it is untrue, and many people who argue it focus only on gun related violent crimes. Violent crime data from the Australian Institute of Criminology (Link below inside cited sources) has shown that Assault, and Homicide rates have gone up since the gun control laws took effect in 1996. "Recorded assault increased again in 2007, to 840 per 100,000, compared with 623 per 100,000 in 1996. The 2007 rate was the highest recorded since 1996” Rates for robbery have “declined by 38 percent since 2001, to 86 per 100,000 per year.” Homicide remained nearly unchanged between 1.9 to 1.3 per 100,000 shifting back and forth between the two rates each year. Kidnapping remained between 3 and four per 100,000 per year from 1996 to 2007, and the rate for sexual assault increased between 1997 and 2007, from 78 to 94 per 100,000 persons per year.

I would like you all to take to heart that there is no such thing as a violent nation. Only violent people, and these kind of people are rare, extremely rare, but media loves these people, as they can get great stories for the public from them, and stir a fear that you will run into these kind of people, a fear that nobody should have. I am in no way attempting to bash the Australian government, or its people. I am merely arguing that the 1996 and 1980’s weapon regulation did not work as intended, to lower violent crime in it’s nation. (Which was unnecessary to begin with, the Australian violent crime rates were extremely low at the time, and remain low today)


Cited Sources:
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent crime.html
http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/services/firearms

 

Giant straw man


HUGE

There was never an intention that reducing guns would stop violence

BTW - your data is seven years old

And we STILL have only a fraction of your homicide rate plus

NO MASS SHOOTINGS SINCE 1996!!!

 

LOL funny considering it comes from someone culpable of posting old data and quoting MOJO, huffpo and such as real fact finders LOL talk about a giant straw woman!
However this is from 2013.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...130118_1_gun-control-mandatory-gun-gun-deaths

I like the bolded part eh,?

 

Hang on - your source is claiming that the homicide rate fell while the OP is claiming it rose - which one is correct??

 

I don't know, how close have you come to having a mass killing as meets definition of such since your controls were put in place? I remember in several posts that you came dang close...will you shrink away and disappear when one happens because the mass killing won't be determined by gun control laws....it will be decided by the intent od the evil person, and from what I hear...all sorts of illegal guns are easily obtained in Australia.

 

I use the FBI definition - more than four dead but even if we had a mass shooting tomorrow we would still have had nearly 2 decades without one

Compare that to America

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/21/mass-shootings-domestic-violence-nra/I do 1937041/

I do not care if they are the smallest minorities of shootings - they are PREVENTABLE

 

wow you had one with three deaths and one wounded....coming awful close, eh? What will you do when you have one? Given that illegal guns are plentiful in OZ and you still have criminals?

Why?


http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/02/21/mass-shootings-domestic-violence-nra/I do 1937041/

That is incredibly ill informed, nothing is preventable and a mass shooting in OZ...is easily accomplished. I hope it never happens but it is incredibly naïve of you to believe it won't or can't. Just more emotional ravings from the anti-gun!

 

There is no data past 2007, the AIC has stopped collecting data. If you know of another Australian agency that collects data after this point please share with me.

Yes, that was the intention. Former prime minister John Howard (The man behind the gun control laws) had this to say. "If we remove the use of these semi-automatic and fully-automatic. The murder rate for guns will decline, because, put frankly, it's easier to kill 10 people with a gun..." He continues though the entire video claiming gun control was meant for reducing crime rates.

[video=youtube;QLMqo1TP7fY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLMqo1TP7fY[/video]



Why would there be any difference between a mass shooting, and a universal rate for a country from crimes caused over the course of the year?

The answer is there is none. Both get logged into the same category of "Non-negligent homicide."

 

we get back to your old argument that you really don't want to disarm America, but your post indicate otherwise by making slighted collusions that it is exactly what you allude to.
Each one of your post must end with a query designed to confuse and confound the reader to accept the fact that it is exactly what you want.

 

Assuming an Australian style gun ban was implemented in the US and it reduced the number of mass shootings, why would we want to remove a handfull of mass shootings but drive our violent crime rate up 40% as Australia suffered after its gun ban? And since there are 200,000-3,000,000defensive uses of guns annually, why would we want to disarm the population? And unlike Australia, the US crime rates have dropped steadily since 1992, despite more guns and relaxed gun laws?

In fact, the worst places in the US regarding guns are also the places with the strictest gun laws.

And the US has 14 times the population of Australia, more and denser cities, has a physical border with a country (Mexico) rampant with crime gangs, the US is going to have more crime simply due to demographics and geography.

 

We had 13 mass shootings in 18 years prior to the gun restrictions - none since

If you had put restrictions on guns how many would you have stopped? How many children would be alive today>

 

What restrictions?

 

And the murder rates for guns DID decline but that is not what the OP was claiming, Oh! And here are the homicide figures for 2012

 

Because they represent preventable deaths - let me turn this around -

Why should so many die from mass shootings so a few in America can play toy soldier?

 

And what of Rape, Assault, attempted homicide, and other forms of violence?


Assault:


Rape:



Even kidnapping has nearly doubled. http://aic.gov.au/statistics/violent crime/victims.html

 

Again you are using old data to cherry pick but then the AIC has changed its format since then

Put simply correlation does not equal causation

 

Yes, I under stand that, there could be an infinite number of third variables in a two variable correlation.

I also seem to be having difficulties navigating the AIC's website. If you could, please, link me to the 2013 data for violent crime. I'd very much appreciate it.

 

Quite frankly I am having not much better luck - there seems to be some alteration in the way they are keeping stats with more recent statistics broken down into "alcohol related" and other

Try the ABS Australian Bureau of statistics

 

then, the 2ndA has nothing to do with murder rates

 

That's a false assumption.

On average, less than 30 a year die in these mass shootings. The worst year was 2012 when 72 were killed. Some years there are none.

Defensive uses of guns occur 200,000-3,000,000 time a year, crime victims with guns are injured less than crime victims without guns. Even obama's executive action to the CDC in 2013 to study gun violence concluded private ownership of guns was not nearly as big a problem as banners want people to believe.

The positive uses of guns far outweigh the negative uses.

 

Why did you put "" marks around machine guns and assault rifles?

 

There are more guns today in Australia than there was in 1996 before the "gun ban".

 

Hmmmmm - that very much depends on how you categorise "mass shooting" there have been 110 mass shootings since January 2009 which sounds like we might have more than 30 people per year http://everytown.org/article/analysis-of-mass-shootings/

 

Wow, why dont you go to the most biased unreliable source possible.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...here-been-74-school-shootings-sandy-hook-clo/

How Everytown counted 74 incidents

To its credit, Everytown provided details on each of the 74 shootings, including the date, city and school location. The group also clearly laid out its methodology at the bottom of the list. These make it possible for the critics -- and us -- to look under the hood at its calculations.

The main reason for the criticism of Everytown’s count is that its definition of "school shooting" is relatively broad. The group’s criteria goes beyond what many people would consider "school shootings" -- incidents in which a student or an intruder enters a school and fires at innocent students and staff. For many people, this is the first thing that comes to mind when they hear the phrase "school shooting" -- an incident such as Sandy Hook or, before it, the 1999 Columbine shooting in Colorado that left 15 dead, including the shooters.

Here’s the methodology as explained by the group at the bottom of the list:

Incidents were classified as school shootings when a firearm was discharged inside a school building or on school or campus grounds, as documented in publicly reported news accounts. This includes assaults, homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings. Incidents in which guns were brought into schools but not fired there, or were fired off school grounds after having been possessed in schools, were not included.... Incidents were identified through media reports, so this is likely an undercount of the true total.

This definition allows for incidents that don’t typically call to mind the term "school shooting" -- for example, a case in which a man unaffiliated with Alogna High/Middle School in Iowa killed himself in the school’s parking lot in the middle of the night, or an early-morning armed robbery on a street that goes through the Marquette University campus in Wisconsin. Both count in Everytown’s tally.​

Under the Everytown standard, AUS has had mass school shootings since the 1995 gun ban, most notably Orara High School, La Trobe University, Monash University, Modbury High School. Probably more, but I'm not going to search for more. Looks like your gun ban failed at preventing school mass shootings.

So you can't have it both ways, using one standard for AUS and a different standard for the US.

 

Americans always trip themselves up in these threads.

They claim that more guns = less crime.

They claim that crime in Australia is higher than it was in 1996.

Ergo, they claim, less guns made Australia less safe.

But there are more guns in Australia now than in 1996. Gun ownership went up and so did crime it seems.