Whoa, Australia bans guns and violent crime goes up? Who could have predicted that?
Australia experiencing more violent crime despite gun ban
http://www.examiner.com/x-2879-Austin-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m4d8-Australia-experiencing-more-violent-crime-despite-gun-ban
Update:
As firearms sales surge, Democrats drop assault weapons ban
John Byrne -- Monday April 13, 2009
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/As_firearms_sales_surge_Obama_Administration_0413.htmlAs firearms sales in the United States hit new highs, the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress are squelching talk of a renewal of the assault weapons ban passed by Congress that lapsed in 2004, saying they don't want a distraction from their agenda and don't have the votes in Congress.
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DAR
ReplyDeleteThe guy is just profoundly dishonest. He misleads in his first sentence.
"In a previous article, we examined the revisionist history of anti-rights proponents who claim that since Australia instituted their gun ban, there have been no mass murders, despite the recent “gun-free” massacre of 135 Australians."
He doesn't reveal that he is referring to forest fires, which according to his own link says "some" of which "may have" been deliberately set.
So he wants to compare gun crime with forest fires. How desperate. The guy is a clown and he makes many other errors, because he's a zealot. And he cites John Lott, which means he's really misinformed.
Reality check:
***
Sharp Drop in Gun Crime Follows Tough Australian Firearm Laws
Latest official data from Australia shows a marked reduction in gun-related crime and injury following recent restrictions on the private ownership of firearms.
Twelve days after 35 people were shot dead by a single gunman in Tasmania, Australia's state and federal governments agreed to enact wide-ranging new gun control laws to curb firearm-related death and injury. Between July 1996 and August 1998, the new restrictions were brought into force. Since that time, key indicators for gun-related death and crime have shown encouraging results.
Firearm-Related Homicide
"There was a decrease of almost 30% in the number of homicides by firearms from 1997 to 1998."
-- Australian Crime - Facts and Figures 1999. Australian Institute of Criminology. Canberra, Oct 1999
This report shows that as gun ownership has been progressively restricted since 1915, Australia's firearm homicide rate per 100,000 population has declined to almost half its 85-year average.
Homicide by Any Method
The overall rate of homicide in Australia has also dropped to its lowest point since 1989 (National Homicide Monitoring Program, 1997-98 data). It remains one-fourth the homicide rate in the USA.
The Institute of Criminology report Australian Crime - Facts and Figures 1999 includes 1998 homicide data showing "a 9% decrease from the rate in 1997." This is the period in which most of the country's new gun laws came into force.
Gun-Related Death by Any Cause
The Australian Bureau of Statistics counts all injury deaths, whether or not they are crime-related. The most recently available ABS figures show a total of 437 firearm-related deaths (homicide, suicide and unintentional) for 1997. This is the lowest number for 18 years.
The Australian rate of gun death per 100,000 population remains one-fifth that of the United States.
"We have observed a decline in firearm-related death rates (essentially in firearm-related suicides) in most jurisdictions in Australia. We have also seen a declining trend in the percentage of robberies involving the use of firearms in Australia."
-- Mouzos, J. Firearm-related Violence: The Impact of the Nationwide Agreement on Firearms. Trends & Issues in Crime & Criminal Justice No. 116. Australian Institute of Criminology. Canberra, May 1999; 6
Assault and Robbery
Those who claim that Australia suffered a "crime wave" as a result of new gun laws often cite as evidence unrelated figures for common assault or sexual assault (no weapon) and armed robbery (any weapon). In fact less than one in five Australian armed robberies involve a firearm.
"Although armed robberies increased by nearly 20%, the number of armed robberies involving a firearm decreased to a six-year low."
-- Recorded Crime, Australia, 1998. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Jun 1999
Firearm-Related Crime in Tasmania
D.
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But the real gun disaster is much closer to home:
“…the rate of firearm deaths among children under age 15 is almost 12 times higher in the United States than in 25 other industrialized countries COMBINED. American children are 16 times more likely to be murdered with a gun, 11 times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die in a firearm accident than children in these other countries.”
--Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rates of homicide, suicide, and firearm-related deaths among children in 26 industrialized countries. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 1997; 46 :101 –105
Link: http://www.cdc.gov/MMWR/preview/mmwrhtml/00046149.htm
CAPS mine.
Maybe if we had more guns we could get an even higher number!
Regardless of whether gun bans save lives or not, the real issue is about freedom.
ReplyDeleteGovernment attempting to parent (either children or adults) is unacceptable. Freedom means the freedom to fail as well as to succeed. If you believe in the ultimate justice of God this isn't a problem. You run into trouble when you believe that imperfect humans have to make a perfect world because there is no God to make it right.
Of course it is the job of government to preserve our freedom by protecting our life, liberty, and property.
The trick though is that government can't protect proactively without imposing on freedom. Government can legitimately only punish after the fact, after a crime has been committed. If government does this consistently, following the rule of law then government can have a great deterent effect.
Proponents of free gun ownership want their freedom--including the right to protect themselves with deadly force--because the police or the military don't camp on your doorstep.
A friend sent me your post called "I'm Tired" via email. I was amazed. AMEN to you. peace. I'll be following your blogs...
ReplyDeleteIf you want to understand the source of America's crime problem, just take a hard, honest look at the sort of families that produce most of America's criminals.
ReplyDeleteHuman beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force.If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat -- it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force.It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
ReplyDeleteWhy The Gun In Civilization:
By The Munchkin Wrangler
Originally published in The Urban Grind
Can someone please explain why anyone would need to buy an assualt weapon? Also where does it say that they want to eliminate the right to have a gun? Owning a gun or rifel is one thing but I don't see the need for oozies, machine guns, and other assult weapons
ReplyDeleteI coud be wrong but I see the second amendment as a protection against government tyranny. A last failsafe so to speak. The ideas about hunting or trying to protect schools from crazies is a smoke screen for the root of the issue. I could be wrong but those who want no limits on gun control want as did our founding fathers the government to be leary of its citizens not the citizens to be leary of the government. Thos who are in favor of stronger gun control of anykind are basicly living in a world of fear or want to institute a government where the people will never be able to object to it as our founding fathers did to corrupt government in the U.K. I may misunderstand it though. But as for me in my house I would rather the government be afraid then me be afraid of the goverment.
ReplyDeleteWhen People Fear the Goverment...You have Tyranny
ReplyDeleteWhen Government Fears the people you have Freedom
I am not sure what old Anonymous (April 15) meant by “rifel” of “assult”, but if he/she meant assault rifle, then they need to understand the lib’s definition of an assault rifle is my .22 cal rugger (which by the way no Mexican drug lord has any desire to smuggle across the border.) The agenda driven media and the great admirers of Saul Alinsky, Hillary and obama, have led the public to believe that certain words like assault rifle means “bad gun” whereas the truth is that nearly every AK- 47 currently in the USA (really bad assult rifel) has been rebuilt into a semi-automatic rifle not a fully automatic machine gun like the ones the enemy combatants.. or should I say terrorists… or is that the nice guy holding the assult rifel at the head of the man or should I say the headless man in the video.
ReplyDeleteI really get confused why someone who doesn’t know or understand guns tries to dictate their use or ownership. It is sort of like “if you don’t know how to fly the plane, leave the pilot alone!” Of course I am still confused why this group of people has gleefully murdered 50 million babies and is clamoring over the fact that if a criminal gets his hand on a gun he might kill someone. So let’s make it against the law to own a gun. That will sure stop those nasty criminals. God help us!
Great gun banners of the 20th century:
ReplyDeleteHitler (9 million genocidal deaths)
Stalin (51 million genocidal deaths)
Mao (22 million genocidal deaths)
That's just the starter list. Every one of them instituted gun bans, confiscations, etc. when they first began their regimes.
THAT is the legacy of gun control. When only governments have guns, only those who lockstep with that government will be spared.