Gun related deaths committed by homicide was never the issues for politicians. The issue was to disarm the population so they could not fight back if they need too. Disarm the population, and you have instantly created a population of subservient slaves.
Oh! bulltwang! Only those who buy into American made conspiracy theories believe that The outrage following Port Arthur was political gold - riding on the back of reports from the ABS like the one I linked to earlier that showed the correlation (and yes I am aware that correlation is not causation) between firearm regulations and death rates
You are using that anti gun lobby misleading language again. There is no correlation between firearm regulations and death rates. As for your link, it is a media release with no author, substantiation or explantation of methodology whatsoever. What is your usual response to such Links? But let's have a look at it anyway; How did they decide that guns were more easily available in one state than another? The stats are for one year only. Why 1994? Is this representative of all years? "Over the past decade the rate of firearms deaths per 100,000 population has fallen, as legislation of the late 1980s in some states has made firearms somewhat more difficult to obtain." Why haven't they broken firearm deaths up into homicide, suicide, accidental and legal killings? Why haven't they told us which States? How did they determine and what do they mean by "made firearms somewhat more diffcult to obtain"? How did they determine that this was the cause of a fall in fiearm deaths? Was the fall in firearm deaths equal across homicide, suicide, legal and accidental? Was this fall in all states or only in the states that enacted legislation? They haven't mentioned or apparently even considered that there may be other factors involved from state to state that may affect the rates of firearm deaths. What is their definition of "mass firearm killings"? And I could go on and on. As you can see this media release is a missleading piece of crap that should be dismissed as such.
Bowerbird, we both know you are an intelligent individual. For once, why don't you use your intelligence & stop dancing around, and admit that all the non sense about gun deaths relating to homicide were incorrect and false information. In fact all the ABS data demonstrates that 80% of gun related deaths before Howard's gun buy back scheme were related to suicide, and not homicide. Howard pretended that all gun deaths were related to homicide, but he failed to tell the people the truth, and that is dishonest, and you know it. Taking your own life with a gun is a suicide; not a homicide. You produce ABS data and other information to support your argument on climate change, and expect other members to accept and believe this without question, but when members produce ABS data and information to support their arguments on anti gun control, you refuse to believe and accept the credibility of the data. Is it just the case that you don't like to be proven wrong, because you are so biased on this subject?
Nah! No basis = it was only a press release hosted by the AIC and authored by the AIC with a link to the original paper in the top right hand corner http://aic.gov.au/publications/current series/rpp/1-20/rpp04.html The full paper is in PDF format and lookit what was there - a graph showing how firearm deaths were rising prior to 1996 Want to argue with the AIC??
Once again it is not the data but the interpretation of the data Let me take one claim which has been repeated here - that the firearm death rates had been falling since 1969 From the above data - can you make the same claim with a straight face??
No, you are still missing the point and peddling missinformation. I have never said firearm death rates have been falling since 1969, TOTAL homicides have been falling since 1969 has your graph clearly shows. There can be no interpretation of these statistics. The gun laws had no affect on the TOTAL number of homicides in Australia which had been falling since 1969. See the nice little trend line? Deaths my firearm are a totaly different issue and only an adjunct to the issue of total deaths. The anti gun nuts keep trying to tie the two together when they are in fact separate issues.
Har har har! and you accuse others of cherry picking! What do you call that graph if not an outrages case of cherry picking! I guess you missed the statistics that show the percentage of firearm related homicides had been falling since 1985 despite the total number of homicides staying relatively constant. I guess you missed the statistics that show the percentage of suicides using a firearm had been steadily falling since 1980 despite the total number of suicides over that period rising from 1607 to 2258. No I won't argue with the AIC, all their graphs and statistics show firearm related homicide and suicides steadily falling since the mid 80's.
One graph shows that the "Percentage of Homicides and Suicides Caused by Firearm 1915-94" Drops from around 1980 but the other shows the "Number of Firearm-Related Homicides and Suicide 1915-94" Drops from around 1985/6. Not sure at the moment the exact meaning but I will chew over some stats later, have to go "have a life" atm
Overview: What Howard didn't tell the community before he implemented his gun control bill, was the facts and evidence produced from ABS data to demonstrate and highlight that homicides from gun use was declining since 1969. What Howard did, was include the suicide figures from gun related deaths into his overall statistics to make out "everyone" was a homicide of a gun death - even individuals who killed themselves with a gun - suicides. This meant that the 80% of people committing suicide with a gun were deemed homicide victims in Howard's figures, and propaganda anti-gun campaign. How many people remember any media stories after the Port Arthur killings that told the people 80% of individuals killed using guns were people using these guns for the purpose of suicide? I don't remember any such story, or any such information being released. The whole anti-gun campaign was based on another lie and total deception by a scum-bag politician with a hidden agenda, but an agenda, you can be damn sure is not in the public's best interest. There is also "some" discrepancy in "real" data between the ABS and AIC, so you will have to sort that for yourself.
We also grew up on a farm and learnt how to responsibly shot and use firearms from an early age. Using something is about responsible education, and being training by responsible intelligent people; not CONTROL. No one in their right mind would allow an mentally challenged individual (idiot) to own or operate a firearm, but the same society say's its ok for this idiot to get behind the wheel of a fast & powerful vehicle, and use it as a weapon for killing. We have all seen these idiots, and know they are an accident waiting to happen, but they are still allowed to use a vehicle as a weapon to kill themselves or someone else without intervention.
Not sure what the average response time to an emergency call to the police is in Australia, but in the US it's an average of 10 mins. The average time span of a crime is 90 secs. (That is a US stat, but I hope our criminals aren't more efficient then yours) So once the call is place to the police (which sometimes gets put on hold here in the US) you have 10 mins that your on your own. So my question is this.......what do you do? How do you deter the criminal from doing whatever they want to you? Get a good description of the criminal and hope you survive to give it to the police?
You are lucky to have the average of a 10 minute response time. Here in Australia we have 9 minute response time, but that depends if the police are having coffee and food at McDonalds. Some people have reported it takes up to 1 hour for some Australian police to respond to emergency situations.
Talked to a cop the other day and he had a 20 minute response to his own call. I have yet to find a cop that is against civilian carry.
If the 700 were anti gun hysterical nobodies that would be even better....... The so called "gun controls" we have in this country are a joke, all they have done is to take the guns off the LEGAL owners.... but its not LEGAL owners that are shooting up the western subs of NSW now is it.... But yes yes you are right...jumping up and down on an internet forum about a subject you clearly know NOTHING about is the way to solve the issue.
Jackson is a good actor but he has not studies THIS part very well and is displaying the classic logical fallacy that if they have not seen something themselves it does not exist The south has one of the WORST gun death rates in the USA - - - Updated - - - Nice sentiment - not Unfortunately those 700 are likely to be someone you know
Better question - what are the odds of having to "defend your life" before the police arrive? Same as for surviving a traffic accident? Hit by lightning? Snake bite?
Unfortunately that does not always work http://theconversation.com/does-rural-australia-have-a-gun-problem-33364
House fire = 2010 stat says 0.3% chance it's you. Why do you have insurance on your home. Odds are you won't need it. I want to point out that it may not be your life. It may be the life of a family member, it may be a beating so bad that you are brain damaged for life, it may save you from being raped. The possibilities that I don't want to happen to me at the hands of a criminal is very long.
The mindset of weapon proliferation for security is a bad one. It effectively creates an arms race, and as we can see now in the US the Police have to become militarized because the people have access to the same 'rate' of advancements being made in weapons tech that the military - its just a different scope of access as limited by laws. When these old rules were made weapons technology was very slow, and weapons were very different. Its stupid, out of date, fear based and ignorant of likely outcomes. The argument I've heard from US folk is it reduces the chance of crime if the crim knows you might be carrying, but that ignores the fact that not everyone can get a gun, most notably since this is an Australian part of the forum - international visitors cannot carry a weapon. So the whole premise is selfish as well. The only logical solution is to approach the problem from these two angles; 1. remove weapons from society, except for those kept at secured ranges, and limit legitimate hunting rifles to bolt action with no larger magazine then 5 rounds. 2. improve armor and security of vehicles and property to withstand attempted entry until authorities arrive The downsides of this are desktop manufacturing will eventually allow production of weapons, but if possession is heavily punished and detection levels sufficient (given terrorism etc they will always be higher), it will 'eventually' dramatically reduce the occurrence. Its gotta be an active strategy though from the judges and police, but violence is the enemy of order, and guns are purpose built tools of violence. All the pro-gun arguments are just the graspings of scared people. They are too deluded in fake nationalism to understand they are tearing apart their own social fabric.... but I know, it feels good to have something hard in your hand right, and you like to think your 'safe' when you do so.....
Please define "weapons", are we talking only guns or are kitchen knives, cars, crow bars, baseball bats, and about anything else that can be found in most garages or house? and before you can roll your eyes and say I'm being stupid.....https://www.gov.uk/find-out-if-i-can-buy-or-carry-a-knife Ultimately that's what your talking about. Death, dismemberment, and permanent damage at the hands of another person can happen with about anything including a fist. So what you're saying is that your line stops at guns, and that's fine because at least in the US (sounds like some of your neighbors agree) that is your choice. My father-in-law believes in the 2nd amendment here, but says he will never take another persons life, so he doesn't have a gun in the house and that is his choice to make. For me it all comes down to the choice.
I think my post was quite clear in what I was talking about. Your point that it's the person's mindset that is the root of the problem is correct... and reducing the availability of weapons and changing the culture to detection, response and armor reduces the capacity of that hypothetical person to inflict damage/death etc. The argument is not about is violence acceptable, that should be obvious, the argument is that modern handguns and rifles are too effective at killing to be allowable personal security items. The other items listed like knives are only suitable for killing as a byproduct and abuse of their actual design and intended use, and is in no way comparable to the capabilities of an AR15 to inflict damage. Something like an AR15 has no other use, except the training for its intended use at a range but that hardly counts - and as I said, they can be kept at secured ranges for that use only, ideally.