Australian Gun Law

J

JAXX

New member
An email I received today. Don't know how true or accurate it really is, but it's not too much of a surprise to me.......

Here's a thought to warm some of your hearts...
From: Ed Chenel, A police officer in Australia

Hi Yanks,

I thought you all would like to see the real figures from Down Under.
It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced
by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars. First year results are now in:

Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent,
Australia-wide, assaults are up 9.6 percent ;
Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)!
In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300
percent.
(Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals
did not and criminals still possess their guns!)

While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in
armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed.

There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly, while the resident is at home.

Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has
decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in "successfully ridding Australian society of guns." You won't see this on the American evening news or hear your governor or members of the State Assembly disseminating this information

The Australian experience speaks for itself. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.

Take note Americans, before it's too late!
 
That email has surfaced every two weeks for the past 4 years. I'm not certain but I believe it was proven to be incorrect.
 
No; like all such internet nonsense - and this is an old, but mild, example - it goes in cycles. Just like the mythical "Ollie North warned Al Gore about bin-Laden" and the mendacious "Stella Awards," these "revelations" circles the ether, blossoming when they hit a new concentration of the thoughtless and gullible.
 
The E-Mail was supposed to have been sent in 2001 . It tells about rates from 2000 to 2001 . The chart on the Snopes site ends in 2000 . There seems to be no real numbers since 2000 . What are the numbers from 2000 to present ?
 
Good question

There seems to be no real numbers since 2000 . What are the numbers from 2000 to present ?
Click to expand...

Indeed. You would think one side or the other would be crowing.

My guess is that the evidence is inconclusive, contradictory or simply too convoluted for anyone to make practical use of.
 
It is also why one should never mindlessly forward these "pass this on to everyone you know" e-mail missives. Snopes exists for a reason.
Click to expand...

Jesus, settle down a little and don't be so judgemental. I doubted the accuracy of this right from the get, and noted so in my OP. I was just looking for some opinions and or statements of accuracy. I don't just "Mindlessly" do anything. I did not know about Snopes, and respect the opinions of people on these forums. Maybe you should take other peoples opinions into account before you "Mindlessly" make judgements about them.
 
I doubted the accuracy of this right from the get, and noted so in my OP. I was just looking for some opinions and or statements of accuracy.
Click to expand...

Yet made ZERO effort to investigate the legitimacy of the "statistics" before posting them. :rolleyes:

I don't just "Mindlessly" do anything. I did not know about Snopes, and respect the opinions of people on these forums.
Click to expand...

And is GOOGLE new to you, also? A search there or on Ask.com would have given you the information you now claim to seek - had you bothered to check.

Spreading false information is not a good use of this forum.
 
This isn't Australia. Our constitution gives us the right. I don't care if those numbers are legit or not. Our constitution is legit, that's all I know.
 
If you read some studies on firearm deaths there may not be enough to make the for or against argument. Before the 1996 laws firearms deaths were going down.

if you look at trend lines on some studies from 1979 to 1995 before the laws were passed the firearm death per 100,000 had dropped from 5 per to about 3 per 100,000. Since the legislation in 1996 it had dropped from about 3 to about 2 per 100,000. So did passing the laws really do anything at all ??????

All the studies use fancy charts and percentages...but when they throw around 40% what does that mean in actual numbers? I don't think either side has a statistically sound argument when you look at the actual numbers in the samples.

If I had 2 firearm deaths in year 1 and 1 firearm death in year 2 after a law was passed I could say I had a 50% decrease in firearm deaths. Was it due to the law though???????? Or was it due to other social and economic factors?

They can say 396,000 firearms were turned in and firearms related deaths and crimes have decreased. Does that really say anything? The only guns that got turned in were by law abiding citizens. I would bet that the criminals turned in very few knowing that they would be harder to get.

From what I have looked at I would say that firearms laws have made no difference in Australia. The politicians seized the fear factor to pass the laws. Would repealing the laws make a difference? I don't know if either side has the statistical upper hand in the arguments.

The real question should be what can we do about criminals and firearms without restricting responsible firearms owners.
 
If you don't mind, can you give us a few references? I mean, I believe you and everything, but just for my own edification.

So that when I argue with hippie liberals in the States, I can say, "well, the Australian _____ has reported an ## increase in ____ crimes since the gun ban"

... instead of just "I read on an internet message board that there's more crime in Australia."

How did the Australian voters let this slip by them?
 
Those statistics are correct and are reflected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

How did it happen you ask? Well after the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre, the newly elected Prime Minister John Howard took advantage of the ignorance and outrage of the public and enforced a bull**** (no better word sorry) new firearms legislation system that he had drafted several years earlier.

Here's some quotes to demonstrate what it's like for us in Australia:

"I hate guns"
PM John Howard - 17/4/2002 - Radio 2GB Sydney

"..a gun is designed and purchased with lethal or threatening intent."
Simon Chapman - 31/7/95 - Sydney Morning Herald 500

"He said now was the time for community debate on the restriction of capguns."
Speaking of Roland Browne - 27/10/00 - Coalition for Gun Control - Saturday Mercury - Tasmania 906

And my personal favourite:

"The gun lobby doesn't deal in facts".
John Laws - 22/5/96 - The Daily Telegraph 904

For anyone who doesn't know, we are basically restricted to manually cycled rifles, absurd restrictions on handguns (Example: barrel length at least 127mm, bore cannot exceed .45, 6 month wait for new shooters etc.) and shotguns with a capacity of no more than 5 rounds (the only type that was relatively unaffected).

Every firearms must be registered and a "permit to acquire" filled out beforehand. Self defence is NOT a reason to own a firearm.

The simple fact is that all Howard ever did was make it harder for legitimate sport shooters and proclaim that as some sort of success.
 
You know what Number6, all you are doing is trying to get a rise out of me, and in a very immature way. Sorry that I didn't research the info the way that you would have, big deal......get over it. But I do have the right to post something like that and question it's accuracy through people that I respect on these boards (NOT YOU). So, you can take your negative replies, and go do something else. Quit trolling my post.
 
As I've said before when discussing these stats, the REAL thing to focus on is that that restricting guns essentially didn't affect the amount of crime!

And yes, WA, we do have to concentrate on statistics here because Australia doesn't have our Constitution.
 
homicides in Australia have been on a downward decline since 1979. Assaults and other crimes have increased.

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/facts/2005/01_recordedCrime.pdf

here are some numbers I was able to glean from reading

1991: 84 firearms homicide deaths
1992: 96 firearms homicide deaths
1993 64 firearms homicide deaths
1994 76 firearms homicide deaths
1995 67 firearms homicide deaths
1996:104 firearms homicide deaths (35 died in the Port Arthur incident)
2004:53 firearm homicides.

So if you compare 1995 the year before the law and 2004 8 years after the net decrease between those years is 14 firearm homicides. So did the laws do it, were there more officers on the beat, ect.????????????????????????

My conclusion is that the numbers dont bear out the sttistics either way. The laws were the by-product of fear mongers. It really says something when folks just want to post percentages and fancy charts instead of the actual numbers too. The potential BS factor just increased.
 
So I had statistics drilled into me during college. Queuing models, stochastics, game theory, simulation, etc.

If the stats directly above me are correct and are free of un-mentioned facts. (the 35 deaths noted), then by six-sigma rule, and a bunch of other big words that'll bore you all, I see no "non-conforming errors."

In other words, the changes are statistically negligible and don't really amount to a trend one way or another.

I don't mean to trivialize the victims or anything, but let's not start jumping to false conclusions here.

Now, the statistics in the U.K., before and after Dunblane, DEFINITELY show a trend.

Maybe it's too soon to tell.

And I just realized how callous that previous sentence was.

More importantly, we sometimes like to cite statistics of gun-free places like England, or pro-gun havens like Switzerland. Unfortunately, as enticining as the evidence is, what works for other countries does not necessarily work for the US.
 
In other words, the changes are statistically negligible and don't really amount to a trend one way or another.
Click to expand...

you got it....

unless you use percentages and put them on nice color charts to make it look really good for your argument :eek:

you would also have to look at crime historically in the UK and Australia and gun control history in both. Niether country ever had a second amendment like the U.S. From reading some gun control was passed in the 40s and 50s due to a fear of communist subersives in the UK and Australia? So should there really be comparisons of the US and other countries without a historical perspective on rights and weapons controls for each comparison?
 
Statistics are like little children . Sit down with them for a little while and you can make them say anything you want them to .
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top