Domain: aic.gov.au
Stories and comments across the archive that link to aic.gov.au.
Comments · 135
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Re:He's crazy but...
lucky enough to be in a country that has proven gun laws work.
Can you explain then why your gun control laws have not had any meaningful reflection in your homicide rates, or your general violent crime stats?
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html -
Re:Which Europeans?
At the risk of stating the obvious, the problem with guns is that they make it far, far too easy to kill someone. In a country like the UK where I live, a disagreement or fight might end up with someone getting punched; it is fantastically unlikely to end with someone getting shot.
You missed the point of my question. You were talking about how you have "less gun crime" - i.e. you looked at the actual numbers (commendable!) instead of just saying that guns obviously cause more murders; but then chose to focus on a narrow category of murders instead of all of them. Why not look at all murders? In the end, that's what matters.
Case in point - in Australia, after their 1996 gun ban and mandatory buyback, all anti-gun organizations in US were proudly proclaiming that it "significantly reduced gun crimes". Which it did, but if you looked at the whole picture, the total number of murders actually increased (and so did the number of assaults, rapes and suicides). They just weren't gun crimes, and so they weren't counted. But from utilitarian perspective, your goal should be to decrease the total number, not one particular subcategory. If statistics show that the same number of people die, just from knives rather than guns, your policy didn't have any meaningful effect.
By the way, if you don't trust me and want to go look the numbers up - you will quickly find that murder rate in Australia today is lower than it was immediately before the ban (but still higher than a decade before that). It spiked somewhere in 2002, IIRC, and then returned to its usual downward progression common for all developed countries, at the same rate it was going down before the ban. Ditto suicides. If you want to see the whole picture, don't look at specific points in time only - find graphs, preferably for at least a couple of years before the ban went in effect, so that you can see the trends as well as changes. E.g. this, this and this (taken from here).
Gun-lovers can protest all they like, the fact is that the murder rate in the US is much higher than in comparable Western countries.
The fact is that there's no evidence that specifically points out at guns as the factor that causes that higher murder rate. There are numerous differences between countries like US and UK, and some of them - e.g. much higher wealth and income disparity in US, or lack of efficient public healthcare system - are known to be considerable contributors to more and stronger poverty in US, and poverty correlates very well with violent crime.
On the other hand, in US itself, if you look at state-by-state statistics, murder (and other violent crime, and suicide) does not follow gun ownership at all. And the data about Australia shows the complete lack of any meaningful correlation between murders and gun ownership, and slight positive correlation between lack of guns and assaults/rapes (though I would be very reluctant to claim causation on these grounds). For that matter, similar figures are available for UK, where the murder rate was several times lower than US long before any wide-reaching gun bans went into effect, and actually rose over the years as gun control tightened (again, I'm not claiming causation here, just lack of correlation in the other direction).
Here's one interesting bit of data that I think is directly related, though. In US, 13% of all burglaries occur while the owner is at home. In UK, it's 45%.
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Re:Which Europeans?
At the risk of stating the obvious, the problem with guns is that they make it far, far too easy to kill someone. In a country like the UK where I live, a disagreement or fight might end up with someone getting punched; it is fantastically unlikely to end with someone getting shot.
You missed the point of my question. You were talking about how you have "less gun crime" - i.e. you looked at the actual numbers (commendable!) instead of just saying that guns obviously cause more murders; but then chose to focus on a narrow category of murders instead of all of them. Why not look at all murders? In the end, that's what matters.
Case in point - in Australia, after their 1996 gun ban and mandatory buyback, all anti-gun organizations in US were proudly proclaiming that it "significantly reduced gun crimes". Which it did, but if you looked at the whole picture, the total number of murders actually increased (and so did the number of assaults, rapes and suicides). They just weren't gun crimes, and so they weren't counted. But from utilitarian perspective, your goal should be to decrease the total number, not one particular subcategory. If statistics show that the same number of people die, just from knives rather than guns, your policy didn't have any meaningful effect.
By the way, if you don't trust me and want to go look the numbers up - you will quickly find that murder rate in Australia today is lower than it was immediately before the ban (but still higher than a decade before that). It spiked somewhere in 2002, IIRC, and then returned to its usual downward progression common for all developed countries, at the same rate it was going down before the ban. Ditto suicides. If you want to see the whole picture, don't look at specific points in time only - find graphs, preferably for at least a couple of years before the ban went in effect, so that you can see the trends as well as changes. E.g. this, this and this (taken from here).
Gun-lovers can protest all they like, the fact is that the murder rate in the US is much higher than in comparable Western countries.
The fact is that there's no evidence that specifically points out at guns as the factor that causes that higher murder rate. There are numerous differences between countries like US and UK, and some of them - e.g. much higher wealth and income disparity in US, or lack of efficient public healthcare system - are known to be considerable contributors to more and stronger poverty in US, and poverty correlates very well with violent crime.
On the other hand, in US itself, if you look at state-by-state statistics, murder (and other violent crime, and suicide) does not follow gun ownership at all. And the data about Australia shows the complete lack of any meaningful correlation between murders and gun ownership, and slight positive correlation between lack of guns and assaults/rapes (though I would be very reluctant to claim causation on these grounds). For that matter, similar figures are available for UK, where the murder rate was several times lower than US long before any wide-reaching gun bans went into effect, and actually rose over the years as gun control tightened (again, I'm not claiming causation here, just lack of correlation in the other direction).
Here's one interesting bit of data that I think is directly related, though. In US, 13% of all burglaries occur while the owner is at home. In UK, it's 45%.
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Re:Really? "Sheep by law"???
Yes I did. Properly. Taking time to find the figures and the quotes from the prime minister of the day. And you don't even remember. Like I said, waste of time.
I'm pretty sure that I have never had a reply from you with quotes from the prime minister, much less figures. You must be confusing me with someone else.
But, in any case, the figures are the same, so long as you had them from the same reputable source (i.e. Australian government), and they show that the rate at which murder rate decreased did not change with the ban (in fact, it spiked 8 years after, and so did armed robbery), and that assault is 25% higher now than it was then. The tricky part would be reconciling that with your argument.
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
http://www.ic-wish.org/Australian%20suicides%20rates%201979-2004.gif
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view%20paper.html
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/4524a092e30e4486ca2569de00256331/ -
Re:Really? "Sheep by law"???
Yes I did. Properly. Taking time to find the figures and the quotes from the prime minister of the day. And you don't even remember. Like I said, waste of time.
I'm pretty sure that I have never had a reply from you with quotes from the prime minister, much less figures. You must be confusing me with someone else.
But, in any case, the figures are the same, so long as you had them from the same reputable source (i.e. Australian government), and they show that the rate at which murder rate decreased did not change with the ban (in fact, it spiked 8 years after, and so did armed robbery), and that assault is 25% higher now than it was then. The tricky part would be reconciling that with your argument.
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
http://www.ic-wish.org/Australian%20suicides%20rates%201979-2004.gif
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view%20paper.html
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/4524a092e30e4486ca2569de00256331/ -
Re:Really? "Sheep by law"???
Yes I did. Properly. Taking time to find the figures and the quotes from the prime minister of the day. And you don't even remember. Like I said, waste of time.
I'm pretty sure that I have never had a reply from you with quotes from the prime minister, much less figures. You must be confusing me with someone else.
But, in any case, the figures are the same, so long as you had them from the same reputable source (i.e. Australian government), and they show that the rate at which murder rate decreased did not change with the ban (in fact, it spiked 8 years after, and so did armed robbery), and that assault is 25% higher now than it was then. The tricky part would be reconciling that with your argument.
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
http://www.ic-wish.org/Australian%20suicides%20rates%201979-2004.gif
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view%20paper.html
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/4524a092e30e4486ca2569de00256331/ -
Re:Really? "Sheep by law"???
New Hampshire... that doesn't disprove the link between guns and violence. What you've effectively done is identify the second variable: hunting culture. NH is, as I understand it, a very rural, forested area, where lots of people hunt regularly for edible game. What's the biggest urban area in NH? Manchester, population c.100,000. Not big.
Yes, of course. That was the point of the exercise - there are many more factors to account for. Comparing New Hampshire to, say, Illinois is about as meaningful to compare US to UK. And there are many more variables that affect the picture. For example, income and wealth inequality has shown to correlate very strongly with crime rates, and UK has them significantly lower than US.
That's why, if you want a meaningful comparison, you take two sufficiently similar countries on all counts (very hard to do, and very subjective) - or take a single country that had considerably changed its gun politics, and analyze the data both before and after the change. I mentioned Australia because it is a prominent example of such a rapid change, and all the numbers are available online for anyone to look at. Although other countries' data - UK, Canada etc - is largely similar.
Someone who owns a rifle with the express purpose of having wild turkey at Thanksgiving is very different from someone who owns a Colt revolver for self-defense.
True, but "different" does not have to mean "more dangerous". How many people are killed in hunting accidents, vs people killed in cases of mistaken identity or confusion in self-defense? How many people are deliberately shot by legally owned hunting rifles vs being deliberately shot by legally owned handguns? We need to talk hard numbers, not "common sense" (which is not so common, seen how widely it differs on such issues from person to person).
Speaking of hard numbers, here's the links for Australia - most straight from the govt statistics bureau. I'll let you draw your own conclusions. As a point of reference, the gun ban was in 1996, and the mandatory buy-back completed in 1997.
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
http://www.ic-wish.org/Australian%20suicides%20rates%201979-2004.gif
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view%20paper.html
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/4524a092e30e4486ca2569de00256331/ -
Re:Really? "Sheep by law"???
New Hampshire... that doesn't disprove the link between guns and violence. What you've effectively done is identify the second variable: hunting culture. NH is, as I understand it, a very rural, forested area, where lots of people hunt regularly for edible game. What's the biggest urban area in NH? Manchester, population c.100,000. Not big.
Yes, of course. That was the point of the exercise - there are many more factors to account for. Comparing New Hampshire to, say, Illinois is about as meaningful to compare US to UK. And there are many more variables that affect the picture. For example, income and wealth inequality has shown to correlate very strongly with crime rates, and UK has them significantly lower than US.
That's why, if you want a meaningful comparison, you take two sufficiently similar countries on all counts (very hard to do, and very subjective) - or take a single country that had considerably changed its gun politics, and analyze the data both before and after the change. I mentioned Australia because it is a prominent example of such a rapid change, and all the numbers are available online for anyone to look at. Although other countries' data - UK, Canada etc - is largely similar.
Someone who owns a rifle with the express purpose of having wild turkey at Thanksgiving is very different from someone who owns a Colt revolver for self-defense.
True, but "different" does not have to mean "more dangerous". How many people are killed in hunting accidents, vs people killed in cases of mistaken identity or confusion in self-defense? How many people are deliberately shot by legally owned hunting rifles vs being deliberately shot by legally owned handguns? We need to talk hard numbers, not "common sense" (which is not so common, seen how widely it differs on such issues from person to person).
Speaking of hard numbers, here's the links for Australia - most straight from the govt statistics bureau. I'll let you draw your own conclusions. As a point of reference, the gun ban was in 1996, and the mandatory buy-back completed in 1997.
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
http://www.ic-wish.org/Australian%20suicides%20rates%201979-2004.gif
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view%20paper.html
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/4524a092e30e4486ca2569de00256331/ -
Re:Really? "Sheep by law"???
New Hampshire... that doesn't disprove the link between guns and violence. What you've effectively done is identify the second variable: hunting culture. NH is, as I understand it, a very rural, forested area, where lots of people hunt regularly for edible game. What's the biggest urban area in NH? Manchester, population c.100,000. Not big.
Yes, of course. That was the point of the exercise - there are many more factors to account for. Comparing New Hampshire to, say, Illinois is about as meaningful to compare US to UK. And there are many more variables that affect the picture. For example, income and wealth inequality has shown to correlate very strongly with crime rates, and UK has them significantly lower than US.
That's why, if you want a meaningful comparison, you take two sufficiently similar countries on all counts (very hard to do, and very subjective) - or take a single country that had considerably changed its gun politics, and analyze the data both before and after the change. I mentioned Australia because it is a prominent example of such a rapid change, and all the numbers are available online for anyone to look at. Although other countries' data - UK, Canada etc - is largely similar.
Someone who owns a rifle with the express purpose of having wild turkey at Thanksgiving is very different from someone who owns a Colt revolver for self-defense.
True, but "different" does not have to mean "more dangerous". How many people are killed in hunting accidents, vs people killed in cases of mistaken identity or confusion in self-defense? How many people are deliberately shot by legally owned hunting rifles vs being deliberately shot by legally owned handguns? We need to talk hard numbers, not "common sense" (which is not so common, seen how widely it differs on such issues from person to person).
Speaking of hard numbers, here's the links for Australia - most straight from the govt statistics bureau. I'll let you draw your own conclusions. As a point of reference, the gun ban was in 1996, and the mandatory buy-back completed in 1997.
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
http://www.ic-wish.org/Australian%20suicides%20rates%201979-2004.gif
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view%20paper.html
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/4524a092e30e4486ca2569de00256331/ -
Re:Reduce gun violence?
There should be a reason why the murder rate and gun violence in US is 3 times higher than in other countries with comparable living standards
Thing is, they aren't comparable living standards for most of the population - only averages look similar.
US is really set rather apart from most other developed country if you look at various socioeconomic indices beyond GDP. It has a very high Gini coefficient, for example. It does not have a true public healthcare system, even after Obama's reforms. Generally speaking, it has much less redistribution of wealth, and, consequently, the rich are richer, and the poor are poorer than in your typical European country. And poverty is the prime contributor to violent crime. But, of course, tackling that is "socialism" in American parlance, and so it is generally off-limits - much more so than gun regulation.
I agree that more in-depth studies are necessary on the subject, but, most certainly, comparing US to a random European country at a single moment of time is a meaningless metric - while comparing a single country before and after it enacts restrictive gun laws is much more sensible. If you want to compare different countries, at least pick ones that are closer together on other factors (e.g. Czech Republic, with its liberal gun laws that allow handgun carry vs Slovenia or Hungary).
And don't forget to look at other categories beyond "gun crime" - most anti-gun studies of Australia focus on that, and proudly proclaim that the numbers for it have dropped after the ban (well, duh), while ignoring the fact that other weapons simply replaced guns for murders for no change in total count, and other violent crimes actually rose slightly.
As a side note, here are some graphs on Australia (raw official govt data - up to you to interpret them) that you might want to look at - keep in mind that gun ban happened in 1996, and the buy-back program was over by 1997.
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/4524a092e30e4486ca2569de00256331/Body/13.4240!OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=gif
http://www.ic-wish.org/Australian%20suicides%20rates%201979-2004.gif -
Re:leaked huh ?
First of all, while murder rate did indeed fall sharply in 1997, one year after the ban, it then went back up - in fact, it was higher in 1998 than it was in 1996. The gun-related murder rate was lower, of course, but it turns out that you can murder people with other things, too - who knew?
If you look at the murder rate graph for Australia for the last twodecades or more - e.g. like this or this - you'll see that murder rate did not meaningfully respond to the gun ban (1996) at all. If you look at the bigger picture and average the spikes out, what you see is an ongoing decline that started somewhere in mid-80s. And if you don't ignore the spikes, the picture is even more bleak for the ban, as there is a big one five years after it went into effect.
As for suicides, again, it does not seem to be correlated with the gun ban. Yes, the ban reduced the number of gun suicides. But it did not affect the overall number of suicides - there were more in 1997 than there were in 1996. The overall number went down over the years, but that is from the peak in late 90s - the overall suicide rate in Australia today is basically the same as it was in early 80s, long before the gun ban. The only difference is that people used to shoot themselves to do it, and now they hang themselves instead.
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Re:Clearly, this will fix the problem.
Australia has also seen a 47% increase in the rate of violent assault and a 22% increase in the rate of sexual assault since enacting that ban.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view%20paper.html
In their case the lack of guns has resulted in fewer murders but an overall increase in violent crime.
In short, less death, more criminals stand trial. Your point?
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Re:Clearly, this will fix the problem.
Australia has also seen a 47% increase in the rate of violent assault and a 22% increase in the rate of sexual assault since enacting that ban.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view%20paper.html
In their case the lack of guns has resulted in fewer murders but an overall increase in violent crime.
But they are just being assaulted and not killed. Surely that is an improvement.
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Re:Clearly, this will fix the problem.
Australia has also seen a 47% increase in the rate of violent assault and a 22% increase in the rate of sexual assault since enacting that ban.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view%20paper.html
In their case the lack of guns has resulted in fewer murders but an overall increase in violent crime.
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Re:Almost no one is killed by "assault weapons"
A: in 1780s America, guns were typically flintlocks and muskets.
And we didn't have email, the internet and digital books. Your point? The gatling gun and the rifled mini ball were the advanced arms of their time and believe me, these same arguments were used in the 1800s...
B: Australia has virtually no legal civillian gun ownership and their firearms homicide rate has dropped 47% between 1991 and 2001. (nb. AU bought back guns from owners in 1996)
C: Provinces and Cities outside of the US with strict gun control regimes are some of the safest places to be in North America wrt gun related homicides. (n.b. CA ended casual gun ownership in 1997 with Bill C-51)Homicides and violent crime are what matters, not "gun homicides". People who die and who are attacked but can't defend themselves are what, morally superior if they are not armed? Read John Lott's book and tell me that your handful of cherry picked examples matters...
Oh, BTW Lets see how Australia is doing these days...
http://www.youtube.com/embed/hoB3GBuhehABy using manipulated stats you are biasing the conclusion. Canada has also been loosening it's firearms laws in recent years. More importantly Australia's violent crime rate is rising as the criminals learn how to work the system. The UK has a very high violent crime rate 5+ times ours because those who fight back get in more trouble than those who just suck it up and take it. The yobs run the show there.
D: just because someone is for reasonable limits on guns doesn't mean they don't know anything. Your arrogance is absurd when some of us think reasonable gun limits and gun rights can be reconciled.
The people in this thread are not trying to reconcile gun rights with anything. They are secure in their belief that certain things are not covered by the scope of the right and more importantly that any of this crap matters. The VT shooter used handguns and killed more people, all of whom where capable of fighting back (as opposed to kindergarteners) than the lunatic in CT but yet they demonize extra killy clips and black rifles. In CO the kid actually killed very few and had a 100 rd drum. Oh, it jammed. Yeah, that's what they do. They suck. The best thing the anti-gunners could do is given them away. They are jam-o-matics. So what is being reconciled here? How am I being arrogant? Because I actually know what I am talking about?
in the US, a concealed carry program that is rigorously administered as well as making manufacturers liable for advertisements and the gun culture they foster would be several ways to achieve these without infringing on a US citizen's right to self defence. We would have to compromise. you're willing to do that, right?
Compromise requires your side give something. All I see is people taking something. Everyone said 10 rounds was acceptable. See what happened in NY? 7 rounds is now the "safe" limit. There is no compromise here. It's all take and no give. If people would actually listen to gun owners, you would know we don't want people to die and that we know how to prevent it. Focus on dangerous people and not on us with no records. But really all people do is focus on plastic boxes and black colored rifles because they want to ban guns and are doing everything and anything to make it happen. Meanwhile lunatics in the subways will continue to kill a few people every month in NYC and the next lunatic school killer will be working on his pipe bomb
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Re:Almost no one is killed by "assault weapons"
A: in 1780s America, guns were typically flintlocks and muskets.
B: Australia has virtually no legal civillian gun ownership and their firearms homicide rate has dropped 47% between 1991 and 2001. (nb. AU bought back guns from owners in 1996)
C: Provinces and Cities outside of the US with strict gun control regimes are some of the safest places to be in North America wrt gun related homicides. (n.b. CA ended casual gun ownership in 1997 with Bill C-51)
D: just because someone is for reasonable limits on guns doesn't mean they don't know anything. Your arrogance is absurd when some of us think reasonable gun limits and gun rights can be reconciled.
in the US, a concealed carry program that is rigorously administered as well as making manufacturers liable for advertisements and the gun culture they foster would be several ways to achieve these without infringing on a US citizen's right to self defence. We would have to compromise. you're willing to do that, right? -
Re:Wont stop the sicko...
I am sure glad you can account for homocie numbers by the drop in guns...
What I'd like to see is the overall homocide rate... Because when people get angry enough to kill they often switch weapons to those available like knives and such.
But you don't like to see it enough to type "australia homicide rate" into Google? Because if you do this very informative page is link number one: http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html
Answer the overall homicide rate dropped to the lowest level on record: "The 253 murder and 29 manslaughter victims recorded in 2007 were the lowest annual number yet recorded." (The data ends in 2007.)
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Re:Wont stop the sicko...
Nicely cherry picked information. too bad it's inaccurate. Come on back with REAL data not from a pundit site.
Hi, Australian here.
Actually it's entirely accurate.
This is from the Australian Institute of Criminology
I'm sorry that it doesn't "jive" with your beliefs but it's true.
It's incredibly nice to know that if I get mugged, the change that the attacker has a gun is so infinitesimally low that I don't need to worry about it. Gun crime in Australia is much lower than in the US and we have a much stricter definition of gun crime than the US does. -
Re:Wont stop the sicko...
Looks like robberies and kidnappings had a nice spike after the ban. And Australia remains as one of the leaders of the the 1st world in rapes per capita.
sources:
http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/0/B/6/%7B0B619F44-B18B-47B4-9B59-F87BA643CBAA%7Dfacts11.pdf
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_rap_vic-crime-rape-victims -
Re:Its all in the language
I am, however, anti-rape, though that does not inform my opinion on guns.
I suggest that you watch the video. To be honest, I was expecting a flamebait mod for that sig, not a reply. It was on topic for another thread I was posting in though. The standard of moderation has declined, obviously. Nevertheless, we all see the victims of shootings on the news and should rightly have compassion for them and try to prevent them. I think that similarly we should have compassion for those that have taken responsibility for their own defense and not strip that defense from them.
Labeling people pro-rape is not a reasonable way to frame an argument.
No, it's an emotional provocation because it's an emotional issue, I've now removed that statement. Perhaps it would be better to say that Australia implemented the National Agreement on Firearms in 1996 and that according to the government report from Australian Institute of Criminology sexual assault numbers went from 14,542 in 1996 to 18,211 in 2006. There isn't room for that in the sig. It's also not a definitive argument for a particular position but it's worth consideration.
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Re:A view from out side the USA...
People here would know if they are interested and inquiring. These policies are not hidden or secret.
Way to miss the point. We have the information he published, we know he got arrested. He didn't disappear in secret. In any case, if you say it's not important to have guns because information is more important and you concede control of information to the government (as you appear to) then you have in effect accepted dictatorial control. Since you have accepted dictatorial control, your opinion of the role of firearms in maintaining freedom isn't worth listening to. The US still has the death penalty for treason, I'm sure that is more of a deterrent than Manning's treatment bad as it is.
so you don't like me using - cast as a traitor
It's not that I don't like you using that, it is indeed a popular opinion. It is just absurd. It's also irrelevant to the topic of gun control.
Just owning a vehicle that isn't road worthy isn't a crime because it poses no threat. The moment it's driven it is a threat, which is why that is not legal
It was illegal for Susan Falls to obtain and possess the gun she used, but according to the jury, not illegal for her to use it. That is an absurdity in our legal system. No amount of car analogies will change that. She had to break the law to exercise her self defense "rights".
It is not that her ability to defend herself was removed if she didn't have a gun
Don't be an idiot. Look at a picture of her and her husband side by side. She is a little woman and he was huge. Guns are an equalizer, without them violent confrontations will almost always be won by the strongest.
You might be lucky and meet a stupid unsophisticated attacker and win with your gun.
Going by that "logic" then mass murderers with guns will only succeed against stupid unsophisticated victims. Or are you claiming that guns are really effective in the hands of criminals but don't work very well in the hands of the law abiding?
And, by the way, if this is the reasoning - why refer to the second amendment at all
The reference to the militia in the second amendment is not a limitation on the right to bear arms. There is a linguistic analysis here:http://www.constitution.org/2ll/schol/2amd_grammar.htm
As I said in my original post - the process of removing guns from the social environment is one that calms the situation over time.
That's not demonstrated. I grew up in rural Australia (just because I defend the second amendment doesn't mean I'm American) and everyone we knew had guns, nobody we knew were "gun nuts" (despite what you may think of me I do not actually own any guns and haven't fired one in over 20 years). Nobody was scared of bikers, we didn't need "anti-association legislation" and things like "glassing" were unheard of in mainstream pubs and clubs.
The murder rate in Australia was declining for a couple of decades before the gun laws were brought in (yes, even including the three mass shootings we had) and kept declining at approximately the same rate. According to the Australian Institute of Criminology - Australian crime : facts and figures 2007 http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/facts/1-20/2007.html
From 1996 to 2006 murder rate went from 354 to 319, assault went from 114,156 to 170,907, sexual assault from 14,542 to 18,211, robbery from 16,372 to 17,248 and kidnapping from 478 to 725.
Did you watch the video? What I really want to know is if you can watch that video and have the guts to look her in the eye as you take her guns. The link is in my sig now. -
Re:it tells you one thing, at least
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html It has been on a declining trend with no statistically significant fluctuations (note only 300 total homicides). Note also that a constant homicide rate is actually about -5% year on year in per capita due to pop growth. Australia never had gun culture or ghetto culture so the homicide rate was always really low. Regardless it's all a strawman. Most of the calls for gun control stem from preventing massacres not low number homicide. In that regard the Australian gun control worked perfectly - we have had zero since Port Arthur.
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Re:Stop watching Fox
Seriously kid, stop watching fox, your bain is rotting away. Australia and Europe both got lower crime rates.
Rather bad news, I'm afraid, it seems that the rot has got you as well.
UK is violent crime capital of Europe - 02 Jul 2009
The figures were sourced from Eurostat, the European Commission's database of statistics. They are gathered using official sources in the countries concerned such as the national statistics office, the national prison administration, ministries of the interior or justice, and police.
A breakdown of the statistics, which were compiled into league tables by the Conservatives, revealed that violent crime in the UK had increased from 652,974 offences in 1998 to more than 1.15 million crimes in 2007.
It means there are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the UK, making it the most violent place in Europe.
Austria is second, with a rate of 1,677 per 100,000 people, followed by Sweden, Belgium, Finland and Holland.
By comparison, America has an estimated rate of 466 violent crimes per 100,000 population.
France recorded 324,765 violent crimes in 2007 – a 67 per cent increase in the past decade – at a rate of 504 per 100,000 population.
The Home Office says there has been a downtrend in overall violence for the past decade.
But last October it emerged that levels of violent crime in England and Wales had been underestimated for more than a decade because of a blunder in recording methods.
Regarding Australia:
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.
AUSTRALIA: MORE VIOLENT CRIME DESPITE GUN BAN
Since it "can't happen" . . .
Gun crimes soaring despite ban brought in following Dunblane - 15 Jul 2001THE controversial ban on the ownership of handguns which was introduced after the Dunblane massacre has failed to halt an increasing number of crimes involving firearms.
An independent report, Illegal Firearms in the UK, to be published by the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College in London tomorrow, says that handguns were used in 3,685 offences last year compared with 2,648 in 1997, an increase of 40 per cent.
Culture of violence: Gun crime goes up by 89% in a decade - 27 October 2009
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And in other news...
... grass is green, the sky is blue, and the sun will come up tomorrow.
The entire Silk Road operation is dependent upon bitcoin being used as a method of money laundering.
Any transaction obfuscating the exchange of value for illegal goods is ipso-facto money laundering.
US law: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1956
Australian law: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tcb/1-20/tcb004.aspx
And both laws encompass "known or should have known" concepts - that if it's obvious and you wilfully or negligently turned a blind eye, you're in trouble anyway.
--
BMO -
Re:So....
Australia has not had any major increase in crime committed with firearms.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view%20paper.aspx
The public's perception is that violence is increasing, but trends in violent crime reported to police since the early 1990s reveal a mixed story. Homicide has decreased by nine percent since 1990 and armed robbery by one-third since 2001, but recorded assaults and sexual assaults have both increased steadily in the past 10 years by over 40 percent and 20 percent respectively. The rate of aggravated assault appears to have contributed to the marked rise in recorded assault, and for both assault and sexual assault the rate of increase was greater for children aged under 15 years, with increases almost double that of the older age group. Neither population changes among young adult males nor rates of offending seem to explain the trends in recorded violent crime, and indicators of change in reporting to police provide only a partial explanation. Based on self-reported victimisation and reporting to police, it would seem increased reporting of assault is somewhat responsible for the rise in recorded assault rates against adult victims. However, victimisation survey data suggest there has been little change in rates of sexual assault, although reporting to police by women seems to have increased. Victimisation survey data also do not illuminate the most significant recorded increase in violent victimisation, against children, as they are collected less frequently and only apply to those aged at least over 15 years. The paper speculates that the rise could be due to better public understanding of child protection issues and increased reporting due to public awareness of what constitutes physical and sexual assault - especially within the family - but this requires further investigation to examine how many recorded violent crimes against children relate to current and/or past events and of the relationship to the offender.
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Re:Pissweak Cybercrime Legislation
Under Crimes Act 1958, Section 247B ("Unauthorised access, modification or impairment with intent to commit serious offence") one can claim they did not know access was unauthorised because no policy was stated as mentioned by the Australian Institute of Criminology amongst a variety of things. Also, it requires intent to commit another serious offence.
The Crimes Act 1958 Section 247G ("Unauthorised access to or modification of restricted data") states that 'restricted data' is "...data held in a computer to which access is restricted by an access control system associated with a function of the computer." so if there is no access control governing access to the data then it's not restricted data thus no offence has been made against the section.
Assuming parent is correct regarding there being no access control, the investigation is a fishing expedition, which has happened before to the Australian media and they've always seized far more then was required. If they aren't using encryption and data compartmentalisation by now. then they aren't really serious about keeping their sources confidential. -
Re:Ban guns
> All I can say is, you're far too trusting, and whatever "safe" part of the world you live in, I strongly urge you to stay there.
I can do one better. I'll never visit the US, how about that? Because then I won't have to meet people like you, with the attitude you have, and the knowledge that you might have a gun on you to back it up.
Gun deaths in Australia (2006): 27.
Gun deaths in US (2006): 12,791Your silly bravado becomes even more laughable when you factor in the population. USA has about 14 times the population of Australia (hint: 27*14 is considerably less than 12,791). You are wrong and deluded. Try opening your eyes and maybe visiting a country outside your paranoid, "free" borders.
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Re:Here's a radical idea
Anecdotally, I live in a small town (approx' 20K people) in Arizona. More than half the population here has a handgun (I have 2), closer to 75% if you add rifles and shotguns. In the last 2 years there has been 2 murders, only one with a gun, and that involved a gang that chased someone and happened to catch up with them in our town.
Anecdotally, I live in a large country (approx' 20M people) in the Southern Hemisphere. In the 10 year period from 1991-2001, 5083 were killed by guns (3930 suicides). So that's 0.0025% of people per year killed with guns (or 0.00057% excluding suicide). From the latest statistics we see 260 murders in 2008, 12% of which were committed with firearms - 31 murders with a gun. Out of 21 million people (population reached 21 million in 2008). That is 0.00014%.
Now in your example you have 1 murder out of 20k, i.e. 0.005%. That makes your "safe" example 33 times more dangerous!
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Re:What do you bet...
If guns are more prevalent, then chances are that you're more likely to have one yourself, so if you fly off the handle, you can use your own in the committing of the crime.
This is such a tired old argument that I'm growing weary of dispelling it. Repeat after me: Normal human beings do not "fly off the handle" and murder other human beings. If they did then we'd also have to outlaw cars (hint: it's much easier to kill someone by running them over than by shooting them), kitchen knives, etc.
Patently bullshit. I can walk up to you with a concealed gun and shoot you in the head much more easily than with a concealed car.
In fact, the entire rest of your post is so idiotic that it's not worth dissecting. The self-evident facts are:
- Guns are specifically desinged to kill things. All except some rifles are specifically designed to kill people.
- Guns _are_ the most efficient and easiest way to kill someone. Or do you think the army should use hit-and-runs or throw knives at the Taliban in Afghanistan?
It's amazing the cognitive dissonance that otherwise rational people in the US are willing to put up with to defend their "right" to carry guns. The plain facts are that while the US has a similar crime rate to other industrialised countries in most respects, it's homicide rate is astronomical. Doesn't it tell you anything that your country has a worse homicide rate than Albania, Ethiopia, the Ivory Coast and Palestine?
Also, please have a look at these two links. They describe homicide rates in the US and in Australia (which has strong anti-gun laws) respectively. In 2003, 16% of homicides in Australia involved firearms. In the US, the figure is about 50%.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/weapons.htm http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.aspx
Please take some time to read these links and (hopefully) re-evaluate your position. -
Re:The focus should be on the account.
i.e. Hackers whose goal in life is to disrupt access to the system rather than to break in.
Those type of hackers are rare and have less resources. There isn't any point in pure vandalism you see. In any case research has shown that it's not a primary motive.
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Altering Data without Consent *IS* a crime
IANAL but in Australia we have laws which among other things makes it a crime to alter data without the owner's consent. There's a similar crime in Britain. I don't know the specific European Laws he'd be prosecuted under, but altering data without consent is one of the first things that cybercrime laws legislated against. Shop around, but this Giorgio Maone is treading on some shaky ground here and he did it with clear forethought. Unlikely Maone will be prosecuted - few people ever are, but if I were him I'd be apologising profusely now and promising never to do it again. Instead he's been pretty obnoxious over the whole affair and pretty much killed the NoScript brandname. He's also violated Mozilla's T&Cs.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/htcb/htcb006.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/htcb/htcb005.html
http://www.saflii.org/za/other/zalc/dp/99/99-CHAPTER-3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Misuse_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noscript#NoScript_exceptions_and_AdBlock_Plus> MattHawk (215818): It's not actually illegal.
Well, yes it is. Either state IAAL and/or give links to support what you are saying. -
Altering Data without Consent *IS* a crime
IANAL but in Australia we have laws which among other things makes it a crime to alter data without the owner's consent. There's a similar crime in Britain. I don't know the specific European Laws he'd be prosecuted under, but altering data without consent is one of the first things that cybercrime laws legislated against. Shop around, but this Giorgio Maone is treading on some shaky ground here and he did it with clear forethought. Unlikely Maone will be prosecuted - few people ever are, but if I were him I'd be apologising profusely now and promising never to do it again. Instead he's been pretty obnoxious over the whole affair and pretty much killed the NoScript brandname. He's also violated Mozilla's T&Cs.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/htcb/htcb006.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/htcb/htcb005.html
http://www.saflii.org/za/other/zalc/dp/99/99-CHAPTER-3.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Misuse_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noscript#NoScript_exceptions_and_AdBlock_Plus> MattHawk (215818): It's not actually illegal.
Well, yes it is. Either state IAAL and/or give links to support what you are saying. -
Re:just about everyone
In NSW, no: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/htcb/htcb008.html
2 years for possession, 5 years for distribution, both also carry fairly big monetary fines.
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Never forget the past Australia: state, fed files
Australia will so misuse this.
Any computer internet use will be a "computer crime".
Also recall the total force wide corruption. In Australia it *was* not who is corrupt, the only question *was* anyone not corrupt.
If /. readers want to understand what was done in my state:
Political surveillance and the South Australian Police
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/lcj/wayward/ch7t.html -
Re:Is this....legal?
I'm not saying it's a worthy justification, but it simply isn't true to say that they'd find another deadly weapon. Yes, they may then just strike with their hands in an attempt to kill, but it is less likely to succeed than a gun or knife.
Australian crime : facts and figures 2007 page 21: "18% of homicides were committed using physical force (hands/feet)"
All that does is disadvantage the physically weaker rather than let everyone be equal through the use of a tool. Many people carry lethal capability through their size and strength, in particular men have it over women, but also others, the elderly or disabled. Personal firearms are to self-defence what the printing press and then the internet are to education and discussion. Such tools of freedom should never be given up by democratic people. -
Re:Laws just hamper the law abidingOK, I've only bothered to half research your post and can see how wrong you are.
Allow me to enlighten you about laws, they don't work immediately so bringing statistics from 1997 wont help, lets look at 1996 to 2000 shall we.
Let's ignore the first link as you clearly cherry picked that one and go to the google link you so graciously provided.there are a LOT of people who's way of life and experience require some form of protection. A gun is one of those things.
Another thing, when you're talking about the number of gun deaths, what about the crime rate? You quote VIOLENT crime... but what about overall crime. Hmm lets look!
http://www.gunsandcrime.org/auresult.html ... wait that can't be right it says the crime rate INCREASED... in fact it says the crime rate exploded... lets look at more references... this one must be flawed...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=AU+crime+rate+gun+legislation&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=The first link off the google search you provided is: http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/australiaguns.html I'll list a few stats for you.
Armed robberies:
1995 - 27.8%
1996 - 25.3%
1997 - 24.1%
1998 - 17.6%
1999 - 15.2%
2000 - 14.0%
There was a shocking 10% decrease in the space of 2 years? how can this be explained?
The most shocking statistic (for you) is that criminals are now targeting those who cant fight back in a fair fight. Criminals are cowards so crime against the elderly has increased whilst crime overall has decreased.
Also firearm hospitalisations have decreased. http://www.aic.gov.au/media/2001/20010402.html
The number of crimes against People and households is decreasing. http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/bb8db737e2af84b8ca2571780015701e/8D4BD468F3B92E33CA2573D2001089F8?opendocument
The relevent info is under "13.4 Victims of Crime 2005" Overall crime has dropped, the only form of crime to increase are assaults, assaults are up whilst gun related deaths and gun related hosptial adminssions are down. The rise in this statistic also means that more assaults were reported to police, I tend to like the fact that if I'm attacked I'm going to live to tell about it. My wallet can be replaced, knife wounds heal, a gun shot is forever.It's littered with the same thing. You are WRONG. Your violent crime might be down but your crime went through the roof!!!!!
*Cough*
The US has laws in place that pretty much screws anyone who shoots their gun without using their brain.
Which laws are these pray tell.
Gang violence is rife amongst many of your cities and you continue to protest that people who cant keep their guns under control are punished. Gun crime is a daily occurrence in the US, a single gun related murder is national news here in Australia
But this is exactly my point, contrary to the opinions of many uninformed Americans, guns are not banned in Australia they are restricted. I have a license, I can go and get myself a hunting rifle during lunch if I wanted to, I used to own guns but I sold them when I quit my blue collar job to further my education (they were for sporting purposes). American gun nuts tend to like bringing up the point that guns are no more dangerous then cars (which is total BS, guns are orders of magnitude more dangerous then cars, most people involved in car accidents survive while firearm accidents tend to ki -
Re:God, please let this be true.
I don't find your comment very funny. The elderly are weak and most-likely to be attacked by criminals. Since they can't rely on aged muscles or frail bones like younger men/women, their ONLY recourse is to shoot the asshole dead.
These are Australian statistics (haven't found any similar report for the US), but the 15-19 years old [warn: PDF] age group is the most likely to be victimized by armed robbery. And, there are a few other options besides "shoot the asshole dead" anyway--like, say, not carrying around large amounts of cash. Avoiding bad neighborhoods. Walking with groups and staying in well-lit public areas. Locking your doors at night. The elderly and weak are the least-likely to leave their homes on a regular basis anyway.
And I agree that the right to self-defense is just as important as the right not to be enslaved or the right to self-determination, but none of those three rights are exactly a medical issue. Why shouldn't Medicaid buy everyone guns, in that case?
Unless you're joking, in which case, I knew all along.
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Re:'cause everyone knows
You call me friend. I call you the same, but you're the one who trusts me so little as to hold a weapon.
Not so, friend. He's the one that trusts you so much as to be ok with you holding a weapon. You don't seem to hold him in the same high opinion.
Civilised society is where guns are unnecessary.
When the government decides what is necessary and unnecessary and bans the unnecessary you are no longer in a free society. Whether any given thing is necessary is irrelevant. A few feet away, I have a brass vase. Certainly it is unnecessary, but it would be a horrible direction for society to take to ban it on that basis. Incidentally, it's big enough to be an effective weapon.
Few British police have guns
... ... and yet you have this knife violence problem. You're not the only ones either, check out page 21 of the 2007 Australian Institute of Criminology report[pdf warning] and you'll see that in 33% of homicides the weapon is a knife, 14% blunt instrument, 18% hands and feet. So unless you think that being stabbed or beaten to death is somehow preferable to being shot, the gun laws don't seem to have accomplished anything of value. What they have done is given the advantage to the physically strong. Restrictive gun laws are inherently discriminatory against women and the elderly and have no place in a civilised, equitable society. And don't get me started on mass murders, the Rwandan genocide had about half a million people killed, largely by machetes. There have also been a number of smaller scale mass murders with machetes and similar weapons, including Laskar Jihad (who use guns when they can get them, but aren't at all stopped from mass murder by using swords, machetes and fire).I mentioned in an earlier post about how the British fought for their own freedom in the English civil war but this whole "right to bare arms" thing.. a fascist monarch wanted to take over the country. Enough people wanted to overthrow the bastard, and guns suddenly appeared and the new model army defeated him.
And yet at the end of the English civil war, they instituted the Bill of Rights 1689 which gave, among other things, the right to bear arms (although in a more limited sense than the US bill of rights did later). Why did they do that do you suppose? Guns did not "suddenly appear" they were manufactured and distributed, and you need those guns to be manufactured and distributed before the shooting starts. "Guns will suddenly appear if we need them", sheesh!
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Re:From a lawyer's perspective...
There's also no reason for them to be hard to read. See, for example, the FTC's privacy policy: http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/privacy.shtm.
Governments (well some governments anyway) seem to be outstandingly good at providing comprehensible, sensible privacy policies. Look at the one from the Australian Institute of Criminology for example or the New Zealand Police (those sites chosen because they're organisations that some people would be a bit nervous about
:-). They tell you exactly what they collect, how they collect it, why they collect it, what they do with it, and how to disable some of it (e.g. cookies) if it makes you feel uncomfortable.Now compare it to Telsta's policy which more or less says "We'll do anything we feel like with your personal data" - is there anyone in Australia that isn't included in some manner in their list of organisations that they'll hand your details to?.
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Re:The difference is...
Well, I didn't see anyone pull a gun on the 9/11 hijackers, did you?
Guns are banned on planes, yes? Nevertheless, hijackings were expected to end in the release of most or all of the passengers. This is no longer the expectation and peoples responses would be different now. Guns being banned on planes would negate any difference between the US and Oz attributable to gun laws obviously.
To think that terrorists would be more likely to get shot in the US is a laughable idea
1) "More likely" doesn't necessarily mean it is very likely. In a situation where a terrorist was able to be shot, it could happen in the US but not here in Oz where only police and security guards can carry except for very narrowly defined activities.
2) Kidnappings are sometimes carried out by terrorists and would be an example of an activity that would expose the terrorist to the danger of being shot, in the US. http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/facts/2007/facts_and_figures_2007.pdf Kidnapping rose from 478 in 1996 (couple of years after our gun laws) to 725 in 2006. In addition, not every terrorist plans and executes their task well and discreetly, Richard Reid for example. Someone who bungled like that on US soil could certainly be shot and would have a higher chance of success in Australia or other place where the population is disarmed, like the UK.
In addition, it appears, among other things, that personal gun ownership part of the control of terrorism in Israel. -
Re:What about the 2nd?
"Look into the numbers. There are links in my other posts, or simply use Google."
Ok...I looked into the numbers here in Aus..
Suicide by hanging has increased at *exactly* the same rate as suicide by firearm decreased since the 1996 gun laws.
http://www.atypon-link.com/GPI/doi/abs/10.1521/suli.33.2.151.22775
So *that* little bit of your post was "sounds about right" completely wrong rubbish, how much else of it is?
Oops here in Aus accidental firearm deaths have RISEN since the 1996 gun laws...
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi066.html
Hmm, perhaps your making things up. -
Re:What about the 2nd?
Sorry, homicides here in Australia have always been in the 10s per year, even before the 1996 gun laws.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi066.html
The gun laws have only reduced suicide by firearm.
That is all.
Don't let facts and hard figures get in the way of a good bullshit rant though. -
Re:What about the 2nd?
Statistics can be manipulated, but omitting facts is LYING.
And a nice little graph for the illiterate.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi066.html
77% of firearm related deaths here in Australia were suicides, 90% of those 250 reduced deaths were suicides.
Unfortunately suicide by hanging has increased *exactly* the amount that suicide by firearm has decreased. Homicides involving firearms have decreased by about 1% since 1990 and have been decreasing at the same rate since the 1980s. So those 250 people, most of them are still dead, they just hung themselves.
Australia NEVER had a gun crime problem.
The Institute of Criminology says:
"In total there were 5083 registered firearm related deaths in Australia between 1991 and 2001. Suicides accounted for the majority of these firearm related deaths (77 per cent), followed by homicide (15 per cent)."
- http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi066.html
"When the firearm suicide rate for Australian males declined the hanging rate increased simultaneously, with no statistical difference in the rate of change of the two methods."
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12882416
Everyone *please* stop talking rubbish about Australian gun laws until you read the figures yourself.
Homicides have not been statistically altered by the gun laws here. -
Re:What about the 2nd?
Statistics can be manipulated, but omitting facts is LYING.
And a nice little graph for the illiterate.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi066.html
77% of firearm related deaths here in Australia were suicides, 90% of those 250 reduced deaths were suicides.
Unfortunately suicide by hanging has increased *exactly* the amount that suicide by firearm has decreased. Homicides involving firearms have decreased by about 1% since 1990 and have been decreasing at the same rate since the 1980s. So those 250 people, most of them are still dead, they just hung themselves.
Australia NEVER had a gun crime problem.
The Institute of Criminology says:
"In total there were 5083 registered firearm related deaths in Australia between 1991 and 2001. Suicides accounted for the majority of these firearm related deaths (77 per cent), followed by homicide (15 per cent)."
- http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi066.html
"When the firearm suicide rate for Australian males declined the hanging rate increased simultaneously, with no statistical difference in the rate of change of the two methods."
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12882416
Everyone *please* stop talking rubbish about Australian gun laws until you read the figures yourself.
Homicides have not been statistically altered by the gun laws here. -
Re:It's only class 3 and 4 lasers
The gun restrictions came in last century. The point is that there was an immediate increase in violent crime.
Since you ask though: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/facts/2007/facts_and_figures_2007.pdf
According to the Australian Institute of Criminology report "Australian crime: facts and figures 2007" (linked pdf) page 23:
Homicide, type of weapon, 2005-6
Knife 33%
Physical force (hands and feet) 18%
Blunt instrument 14%
Other unknown 21%
Firearm 14%
So people are being killed with knives or hands and feet more than 3 times as often as with guns. Great step forward. Colour me unimpressed.
On page 33, knives are used in 33% of armed robberies, firearms in 16%. Yay, at least we don't have guns! -
Re:They took guns away, so who's left to stop them
As an Australian you seem to be pretty misinformed.
In 1992 pro and anti gun groups estimated betwen 2 and 10 million guns in the country.
700,000 were bought back in the gun buy back scheme. So only a small percentage of guns have been removed from the community.
You're deluding yourself if you think the gun laws of 1996 have made you safer, so says the Australian Institute Of Criminology...
http://www.aic.gov.au/research/homicide/homicideRate2.png
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/77/rpp77.pdf
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/12/13/gr_guns_narrowweb__300x362,0.jpg
And no you can't just get hunting permits willy nilly, you have to own a farm and show a need to remove pests. Also, by getting a gun license now you give the government power of entry into your home at all times with no warrant.
Regarding the ability of our government to prevent a full blown revolution...You have got to be kidding. There's ~40,000 people in the Army here, provided you could even get half of them to go to war against their own countrymen, we're a country of 20 million, vs 20,000. If 100,000 thousand people will turn out to protest the iraq war, I reckon I could find at least 50,000 to take up arms and march down Commonwealth Ave in Canberra if the government ran away with itself.
The cynics among us do tend to see a correlation between the man who drove the pre-written gun laws through on the back of a national tragedy in 1996, admitting on many occasions that he knew didn't believe they would reduce gun crime. As the same man who tried to tear the foundations of this country apart and rebuild it in an image that *he* prefered whether the we liked it or not. The same man sho shut and locked down the CBD of the biggest city in the country, surrounded it with barbed wire fences and 5000 armed agents so that the rich and powerful could rub shoulders without having to worry about seeing or hearing the rabble. He was a little emperor and thank $diety, our system of governance worked extremely well and never allowed him to fully project his narrow idea of what this country should be onto everyone else.
That said I do agree with you, democracy and liberty in general is better protected by robust debate, citizen involvement and under our (Australian) system a strong *diverse* senate. If the only reason the governing power isn't authoritarian is because it fears out an out revolution...then the country is already lost. -
Re:They took guns away, so who's left to stop them
As an Australian you seem to be pretty misinformed.
In 1992 pro and anti gun groups estimated betwen 2 and 10 million guns in the country.
700,000 were bought back in the gun buy back scheme. So only a small percentage of guns have been removed from the community.
You're deluding yourself if you think the gun laws of 1996 have made you safer, so says the Australian Institute Of Criminology...
http://www.aic.gov.au/research/homicide/homicideRate2.png
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/77/rpp77.pdf
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/12/13/gr_guns_narrowweb__300x362,0.jpg
And no you can't just get hunting permits willy nilly, you have to own a farm and show a need to remove pests. Also, by getting a gun license now you give the government power of entry into your home at all times with no warrant.
Regarding the ability of our government to prevent a full blown revolution...You have got to be kidding. There's ~40,000 people in the Army here, provided you could even get half of them to go to war against their own countrymen, we're a country of 20 million, vs 20,000. If 100,000 thousand people will turn out to protest the iraq war, I reckon I could find at least 50,000 to take up arms and march down Commonwealth Ave in Canberra if the government ran away with itself.
The cynics among us do tend to see a correlation between the man who drove the pre-written gun laws through on the back of a national tragedy in 1996, admitting on many occasions that he knew didn't believe they would reduce gun crime. As the same man who tried to tear the foundations of this country apart and rebuild it in an image that *he* prefered whether the we liked it or not. The same man sho shut and locked down the CBD of the biggest city in the country, surrounded it with barbed wire fences and 5000 armed agents so that the rich and powerful could rub shoulders without having to worry about seeing or hearing the rabble. He was a little emperor and thank $diety, our system of governance worked extremely well and never allowed him to fully project his narrow idea of what this country should be onto everyone else.
That said I do agree with you, democracy and liberty in general is better protected by robust debate, citizen involvement and under our (Australian) system a strong *diverse* senate. If the only reason the governing power isn't authoritarian is because it fears out an out revolution...then the country is already lost. -
Re:Why?
I replied to this further down as response but I just spent two hours researching this and sifting through source data so i'm going to post this higher.
I really hate the intellectual dishonesty on both sides of this issue.
Here in Australia guns were effectivly banned a decade ago...we have the harshest gun laws in the western world.
Homicide rates are declining at exactly the same rate as they were before laws were enacted...
http://www.aic.gov.au/research/homicide/homicideRate2.png [aic.gov.au]
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/12/13/gr_guns_narrowweb__300x362,0.jpg [smh.com.au]
Pro and anti gun groups estimated between 2-7 million guns in the country before the ban.
~700,000 guns were handed in.
If you dont respect the law, why would you follow that particular one?
The vast vast majority of guncrime here is, and always was, suicide.
Last year alone...
# Accident 40
# Suicide 193
# Homicide 54
# Legal etc. 3
The Australian Bureau of statistics says that suicide by firearm has halved! Rejoice!
Oops suicide by hanging has now doubled...
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/161eb35db8be9152ca256f6a00733990/Body/0.75F0!OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=gif [abs.gov.au]
Oh Well, No matter! As long as a gun wasn't involved then that's not our problem.
On the other hand mass shootings have become non-existant.
One side says gun deaths have gone down, yay! Except those people are still dying...they're just hanging themselves or being bludgeoned or stabbed to death.
The other side says that it makes no difference, that gun crime will continue as criminals keep their guns. Yes, this is true. On the other hand your average mass shooter doesn't have a criminal mindset or connections, and wouldn't know where to get a gun if they wanted one.
So from our real world data...gun bans reduce mass shootings, no doubt. They have no effect on *general* homicide or suicide rates.
Then again in this country guns have never been anywhere near the top of the list of ways to kill someone. Knives and hands and feet hold that priviledge. 33% for knives, 18% for hands and 14% for guns (down a whopping 1% since the new gun laws a decade ago).
You've got more chance of being stabbed or bashed to death outside the bar than being shot, it's always been this way.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/77/rpp77.pdf [aic.gov.au]
So...
Half a billion dollars to reduce the homicide by firearm rate by 1%
BUT
No mass shootings for a decade.
BUT
Private citizens are now left merciless.
BUT
There is still probably over a million guns in the country.
Don't be fooled...by either side. -
Re:Why?
I replied to this further down as response but I just spent two hours researching this and sifting through source data so i'm going to post this higher.
I really hate the intellectual dishonesty on both sides of this issue.
Here in Australia guns were effectivly banned a decade ago...we have the harshest gun laws in the western world.
Homicide rates are declining at exactly the same rate as they were before laws were enacted...
http://www.aic.gov.au/research/homicide/homicideRate2.png [aic.gov.au]
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/12/13/gr_guns_narrowweb__300x362,0.jpg [smh.com.au]
Pro and anti gun groups estimated between 2-7 million guns in the country before the ban.
~700,000 guns were handed in.
If you dont respect the law, why would you follow that particular one?
The vast vast majority of guncrime here is, and always was, suicide.
Last year alone...
# Accident 40
# Suicide 193
# Homicide 54
# Legal etc. 3
The Australian Bureau of statistics says that suicide by firearm has halved! Rejoice!
Oops suicide by hanging has now doubled...
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/161eb35db8be9152ca256f6a00733990/Body/0.75F0!OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=gif [abs.gov.au]
Oh Well, No matter! As long as a gun wasn't involved then that's not our problem.
On the other hand mass shootings have become non-existant.
One side says gun deaths have gone down, yay! Except those people are still dying...they're just hanging themselves or being bludgeoned or stabbed to death.
The other side says that it makes no difference, that gun crime will continue as criminals keep their guns. Yes, this is true. On the other hand your average mass shooter doesn't have a criminal mindset or connections, and wouldn't know where to get a gun if they wanted one.
So from our real world data...gun bans reduce mass shootings, no doubt. They have no effect on *general* homicide or suicide rates.
Then again in this country guns have never been anywhere near the top of the list of ways to kill someone. Knives and hands and feet hold that priviledge. 33% for knives, 18% for hands and 14% for guns (down a whopping 1% since the new gun laws a decade ago).
You've got more chance of being stabbed or bashed to death outside the bar than being shot, it's always been this way.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/77/rpp77.pdf [aic.gov.au]
So...
Half a billion dollars to reduce the homicide by firearm rate by 1%
BUT
No mass shootings for a decade.
BUT
Private citizens are now left merciless.
BUT
There is still probably over a million guns in the country.
Don't be fooled...by either side. -
Re:Why?
I really hate the intellectual dishonesty on both sides of this issue.
Here in Australia guns were effectivly banned a decade ago...we have the harshest gun laws in the western world.
Homicide rates are declining at exactly the same rate as they were before laws were enacted...
http://www.aic.gov.au/research/homicide/homicideRate2.png
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2006/12/13/gr_guns_narrowweb__300x362,0.jpg
Pro and anti gun groups estimated between 2-7 million guns in the country before the ban.
~700,000 guns were handed in.
If you dont respect the law, why would you follow that particular one?
The vast vast majority of guncrime here is, and always was, suicide.
Last year alone...
# Accident 40
# Suicide 193
# Homicide 54
# Legal etc. 3
The Australian Bureau of statistics says that suicide by firearm has halved! Rejoice!
Oops suicide by hanging has now doubled...
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/95553f4ed9b60a374a2568030012e707/161eb35db8be9152ca256f6a00733990/Body/0.75F0!OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=gif
Oh Well, No matter! As long as a gun wasn't involved then that's not our problem.
On the other hand mass shootings have become non-existant.
One side says gun deaths have gone down, yay! Except those people are still dying...they're just hanging themselves or being bludgeoned or stabbed to death.
The other side says that it makes no difference, that gun crime will continue as criminals keep their guns. Yes, this is true. On the other hand your average mass shooter doesn't have a criminal mindset or connections, and wouldn't know where to get a gun if they wanted one.
So from our real world data...gun bans reduce mass shootings, no doubt. They have no effect on homicide or suicide rates.
Then again in this country guns have never been anywhere near the top of the list of ways to kill someone. Knives and hands and feet hold that priviledge. 33% for knives, 18% for hands and 14% for guns (down 1% since the new gun laws a decade ago).
You've got more chance of being stabbed or bashed to death outside the bar than being shot.
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/77/rpp77.pdf
Don't be fooled...by either side.