Gunman in Australia threatens to shoot crowd

Big news here

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-...-handling-of-brisbane-gunman-incident/4562564

No-one was killed - not even the perpetrator - and yet it is HUGE news here.

Why? Because it is RARE. Even with no deaths (thank goodness) to hype up the news it is a big story because it is so rare here. I admit we like it that way.

Americans - why do you accept such a high gun violence rate as "normal" Why is having tens of thousands injured and killed each year acceptable?

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm

 

Slightly off topic but much kudos to the police involved, it was excellent work.

 

Congrads, you don't have as many psychos walking around in your country, you don't have as many gang bangers in your country, your country is not a violent culture like ours. Guns don't magically make a person violent, and if someone who wants to kill does not have a gun, he will still kill.

 

I did not want to rub salt in a wound by suggesting that but it was wasn't it! I especially liked the bit about the non-lethal bullets - and they must have been firing at his hand in particular because they said he as in RBWH with gunshot wounds to the hand

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No but I do think gun culture has a LOT to do with the differences

So tell me - do you have ads for guns in America?

 

Ads? Like ads on the tv? No.
Gun culture has nothing to do with it. Our culture consists of absence of parenting do to the cost of living and both parents having to work in a standard house. Follow that up with a violence enriched style of entertainment. You can't even smack your kid on the ass or discipline them effectivley anymore.

Regardless of all that, our crime and murder is decreasing so dramatically without gun control that trying to impose it, given its ineffective history, seems quite senseless. Its time to try and do something that could be worth while and put our tax money to good use for once, don't start taking my rights away for something useless.

 

Only on the hunting channels, and canada does not have the super high gun crime we do and they have many guns so there is no correlation. I agree the gun culture is bad in America, however I think of the gun culture as what started in the eighties when I was growing up with rappers glorifying gangsters and crime. Most anti-gunners would say the gun culture revolves around the hunting, cowboy, and rural community. The latter are not the problem, and most saying they are haven't even spent any time with them but that doesn't stop them from judging them.

 

WEll, gun crime soared in the sixties when hem lines first went up and came back down around the same rate as hemlines - is there a correlation - on the surface is there causation - let's not be silly

But everything you state is the same here and we still do not have the firearm homicide injury rate you do

I asked about the ads because we have no advertisements of any kind about guns outside some very specialised magazines and I have seen numerous advertising posters on the internet

 

Do you have a gang problem in Australia?

 

Yes and a nasty one although mostly in Western Sydney and inner Melbourne

 

It's not very high.
There is much more gun violence in Mexico, for example. More people in the USA dies from things as mundane as COLON CANCER than gun violence. The USA has other priorities to focus on.

What you have to realize is the USA is not really a first world country, at least not in the sense that most other Western countries are. So you can hardly compare the USA to Canada or Australia, because the USA has much more "ethnic diversity" and poverty. But don't worry, you'll soon find out firsthand. Coming to a city near you. All those gun laws won't protect you from the violence. Please come back to us in 50 years and tell us how the crime is in Australia.

 

BUNKUM!!

Bet we have more ethnic diversity than you! Our population growth has been primarily from immigration for the last 40 years at least

 

In 1992 Australia had immigrant populations from 187 of the 201 nations of the world. I am not sure you can get much more bloody diverse than that

 

Why is this important?

 

It counters Anders claim that the US is more ethnically diverse than Australia

 

iT seems to be a pattern among some Americans - when confronted with the firearm injury/death rate they blame it variously on

a) hispanics
b) blacks
c) gangs made of hispanics and blacks
d) bad people

 

Oh. That's it?

 

Sorry to have disappointed you - I will try harder next time

 

Aww Are you saying that because you know I'm not in Somalia, but in America?

Yeah, that looks about right, though. Oh and don't forget the firearms. Oh, and white children, and women.

 

Fixed that for you

 

Here's the deal: I believe that more people die from gunshot wounds when there are more guns around than, when there are fewer guns around. I also believe that it is still better for all adults of sound mind to have access to them. when there are more swimming pools around, more people are probably likely to drown in one, but I would rather have swimming pools than not. Automobiles are also worth having, even though many people die as a result of mishaps with them.

If we got rid of the drug war, deaths as a result of gunshot wounds really would decline.

There are no solutions to society's problems, only trade offs. Life is all about tradeoffs.

 

1/4 of Australia's population is foreign born.

Australia's population is 23 million.

There are 3 million legally owned firearms in Australia. Illegally owned is anyone's guess.

There are about 300 murders in Australia each year. That's all types of murders. Not sure how many are carried out with a firearm. For Australia to be on par with the US for murders we'd need about another 1000 a year.

 

Because you abort your own children. That's why you need foreign replacements.

 

You do realise the whites are already a minority in the USA amongst the younger generation?
(they try to cover it up in the statistics by including all sorts of ridiculous different ethnicities as "white" )

 

Let us not forget that Australia has less than 1/10 of the US' population.

Yes sir.................they probably consider murder after birth "really late term abortion"

 

Yes and no

Just as with swimming pools when we found that if we put a high child proof fence around the pool we prevented what was a horrible toll of toddler deaths so putting guns in gun safes seems to work to reduce injury and mortality rates

I think it is less about ownership and way more about responsible ownership and mostly about mandating safety