Gun Control, the Mexican Drug Cartels, Violence and the Black Market

Except that in times where gun control has been brought in to a country that has a history of cultural freedom, such as Australia, Canada, South Korea, Switzerland, Germany (West Germany and unified Germany after the Fall the Berlin Wall), the UK, and others, can you prove that it was done to facilitate the total confiscation of weapons? Of course not, because in democratic and free countries, such as those listed, it hasn't been done. Some types of weapons (such as full and/or semi-automatic) may have been confiscated, but I know in Australia at least, that was done willingly, and further constraints have generally been minimal.

No, but the flow on effects will eventually affect criminals, by raising black market prices of weapons, such as how an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle can fetch more that $25,000 on the black market in Australia.

I live in a country with gun control legislation. I have zero problem obtaining a firearm as a registered firearm owner, including handguns. Sure, I can't obtain semi or full automatic long arms, but that doesn't bother me. I only need one round to take down my target at 300 metres.

 

Whilst isolationism may be seen as a practical policy in the US, the effects of policies inside the US have implications in places outside the US. This is why countries have embassies and lines of communications open with one another.

 

So we agree then that government funding is a legitimate means for obtaining information on complex problems. Excellent.

 

what happened in England and Australia is reason enough to oppose and resist registration

It has no useful purpose in a truly free society and its not within the proper power of the federal government to force registration of firearms that are NOT moving in interstate commerce.

making weapons expensive for honest people in the hope it will make them more expensive for criminals is idiotic.

no semi long arms? that would violate our constitution and any politician who suggests banning semi long guns should be tried for treason

your solution is to ban AR-15s. My solution is that a government that would ban such a weapon should be taken apart piece by piece, its leaders jailed and the laws overturned

you don't trust yourself with an AR-15 fine

but stop telling us who are not subjects what we should own

pretending that the confiscation of some weapons is not a problem is silly

anything our civilian police use, we should own freely

 

I still want to know what effect there is on a rats sex life when they watch porn. The federal government funded the study and I want to know since it was my money that funded the study.

The study mentioned in the OP was a sham.

None of those involved know jack (*)(*)(*)(*) about firearms, have no investigative law enforcement experience or any experience on analysing evidence or intelligence that was gathered. I'm sure everyone of them calls an ammunition magazine a clip and refers to a semi automatic AR-15 as an assault rifle. The study was just another left wing study that had a political agenda. They had the results of the study before they started the study. That's typical for most studies conducted for the political left especially for the current administration in the White House.

 

It's not just availability of firearms. It's your ability to use a firearm. Are you allowed to use a firearm to defend yourself? If someone breaks into your house, do you have to verify that they have a gun before you use yours? Your guns are useless if you go to jail for using them. Correct me if I'm wrong, but your protection is the responsibility of your government and you are not allowed to protect yourself unless you are Bruce Lee. Wasn't it last year when a guy was convicted of murder when 3 men broke into his shop/home and he shot and killed one of the men? He had security camera footage of the 3 men, but the disparity of force was not a defense and he was convicted of murder for using his gun. Sorry, I can't find the article.

 

I too am a gun owner in Australia, and I wildly disagree with you. Our regulation is totalitarian. Our police go beyond enforcing that totalitarian legislation to enact their own agenda. Remember the lawsuit over 338 Lapua being refused?

The legislation is overly onerous, the prohibition on hunting on public lands is unnecessary, the police do everything they can to prevent you from achieving what little you're still entitled to under the law.

The gun storage laws here are also ridiculous. I have an extremely large safe secured by two 10mm bolts into the concrete floor, and two 10mm bolts into a steel beam behind it - with nyloc nuts on the inside of the safe. Now, if the police had actually come and examined my safe, they would have realized that there was no conceivable way anybody could break in - without having the key, or driving a cement truck into it at high speed. But they refused my first application on the basis that people could navigate in behind the steel beam (not possible in this case) and undo the bolts with a spanner (definitely impossible). Did they think it was actually an insecure safe? Of course not - they just wanted to delay the application a few weeks and have a nice little power trip in the meantime. As a result I had to bring in a welder to permanently weld the bolts into the nuts, and a grinder to make the other end of the bolt circular.

The police have no idea what they're doing, and they have no interest whatsoever in serving their constituency.

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But yes, I do like the black market. It's significantly better than even the US market. We've reached a time where borders mean nothing: you can go online and purchase a full auto machine pistol on the black market for a few thousand dollars. The time has come where you can 3D print a working firearm; the time will soon come when you can 3D print firearms of similar quality to those which are mass-produced.

So I have little problem with our totalitarian policy in the long term; on the contrary, it will only serve to push people toward distributed, decentralized methods of firearm ownership.

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Finally, you have neglected to mention the extremely high rate of rape which has resulted from the state restricting all methods women might have to protect themselves. ANYTHING which could be used as a weapon is prohibited at the behest of the officer. That swiss army knife in your pocket? If the officer is having a bad day you might find yourself having to explain it downtown. Have a baseball bat in your car? Make sure you're on the way to a game. Want to carry mace to protect yourself against rapists? Don't even think about it.

The state has made women into victims by disarming them. If you're a 5"4 female you're basically (*)(*)(*)(*)ed. Accept your rape.

 

Technically, not an Obama lie, as the 90% myth was cited by people before Obama, he just parroted it (I cant remember exactly where I read it, but I do believe from my reading that it was a Mexican politician who said it first). It is like the myth that we only use 10% of our brains. It's an error of incorrectly established, but oft repeated, fact, not a purposeful lie.

Show me the picture in context.

Yes, I know. I have been in a Q-ey's armory.

Ok, but that still doesn't exclude the fact that guns are purchased in America for trafficking to Mexico. Just because some guns are not, doesn't mean all are not. And that's all that the government pictured. The ones that the ATF and other border patrol agencies recovered were American.

So, according to that statement, gun laws in America are so lax that illegal immigrants are able to purchase and traffic them. Glad we are agreeing on that point.

I am aware who Stratfor is. Did you notice, however, that the article quoted neither provided its own statistics nor denied that American guns didn't cross the border? That's because it also has no idea the exact number of firearms crossing the border, because there have neither been enough studies on the issue, nor are reporting methods perfect at the moment. They do not, however, deny that a large volume of certain types of weapons do cross the border, and that is my sole point. American firearms are finding their way across the border easily and America has in its power the ability to make it harder for that to happen.

 

I read the thread, your arguments are all old news and been beaten to death multiple times.

First, as your fellow countryman has already replied, the Australian gun ban is not as popular as you claim.

Second, the Australian gun law did flatout ban a large number of weapons, the Category D weapons - almost all semiautomatic centerfire rifles, semi-auto shotguns, and many pump action shotguns. Only the govt is allowed to have Category D. Many handguns are also banned, I believe in centerfire only 9mm and 38 caliber are allowed.

Third, crime including homicide increased substantially starting in 1996 when the ban went into full effect. A crime wave started in 1996, peaked in the 2002 period, the rates for some crimes decreased after that, others remained high. Just 2 graphs at the bottom of this post, USA data comes from th FBI Uniform Crime Reports, AUS data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Crime Reports, all available on the web. Homicide in AUS by 2001 had increased 16% over the preban rate, before 1996 homicide was on a downward trend. Violent crime increase 33% over the preban rate, assault with serious bodily injury increased 44%.

All to prevent the already rare mass killing in Australia to be even rarer. I'm sure all those 1,000's of people raped, murdered, robbed, and beaten severely are glad to have sacrificed to prevent a few people being murdered.

Fourth, studies in the US of cases when newspapers publish firearm owner data show that criminals shift their activity from areas of high gun ownership to areas of low gun ownership. This one looked at the case of a Tennessee newspaper which published a searchable data base of gun owners http://misrc.umn.edu/wise/papers/2b-2.pdf Its no surprise that when AUS disarmed much of its population that the criminals were emboldened and crime increased.

Fifth, as already pointed out, licensing and registration is the last step before forcible confiscation. That was seen in Nazi Germany, gun control and registration started in the Weimar Republic with "good" intentions, when the Nazi's took control registration was enhanced with the intent of confiscation.

In the USA, recently the Hartford Currant newspaper led a call to confiscate firearms in Connecticut using the gun background check and permit data.

Finally, in the US since 1992, homicide and violent crime in general has decreased more than 50%, at the same time states have relaxed their gun laws, and more guns are in citizens hands than ever before. If guns are such a problem, we should have seen the opposite effect of more guns creates more crime, but we do not.

Crime in the US is concentrated in the big cities, its very highly correlated with city size. Most of the US is safer than Australia, particularly since the Australain gun ban

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The photo was originally put on one of Obama's illegal websites that the Obama White House developed.

It was called Our Border. http://ourborder.ning.com It was scrubbed from the internet because what the Obama administration was doing was illegal for the federal government to engage in, attaching cookies to individuals computers who went to the website so they could track what websites people were going to who wanted our borders secured. Completely illegal and Congress and the DOJ gave Obama a complete pass. Well the DOJ didn't give Obama a complete pass, Obama's AG main job is to make sure Obama gets a complete pass.

People who joined with in 72 hours knew something was fishy.

https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/privacy/privacy_pia_dhs_ning.pdf

 

I never mentioned illegal aliens but if liberal state legislatures allow illegal aliens to be issued a drivers licence and the liberal ACLU says you have to sell a gun to someone who has a drivers license even though they can't speak English and can't produce a green card, I suppose liberals have made it easier for illegal aliens to buy a gun.

 

What, you mean like the decreased incidence of firearm related homicides? Or the decreased incidence of firearm related suicide (did you know that roughly 20,000 people in America committed suicide with a firearm, and that many studies have proven that just having the gun stored securely is enough to deter someone from committing suicide, not just with a gun, but at all?) Or what about the fact that beat cops in England are no longer having to take firearms out on patrol and are simply armed only with tasers (which, by the way, has also decreased the incidence of fatal police shootings specifically because British beat cops know they can approach someone without automatically having to fear that they might be armed)?

If that's what you are opposing and resisting, then good luck to you. Honestly.

It's not making them expensive for law-abiding citizens, it is making it harder for straw purchasers to go through legals means of obtaining a weapon for the purpose of arms trafficking. It only makes it more expensive on the black market, not the legal market.

Please show where in the constitution specifically it states that you can have semi-automatic long arms and that the government cannot restrict their sale.

So, your response to an often demonstrated, perfectly reasonable piece of legislation aimed at curbing the negative aspects of gun culture is to incite violence? All I see is fear-mongering.

I trust myself with semi and full automatic long arms. I have been trained in the use of many, including the Austeyr, Minimi, FN MAG and the M2 Browning. I am also a registered firearm owner in my country, and the proud owner of CZ 452 (22LR), CZ 455 (22 magnum), Winchester Model 70 (.30 and a Browning BL-22. I am also currently saving up for the Desert Tactical Arms Scout Recon Sniper and looking forward to getting my handgun licence in the near future.

Ignoring the fact that gun control legislation in many democratic countries in the past 20 years has attributed to lower incidences of firearm related suicides and homicides, increased prices on the black market for weapons, and less fatal police shootings is sillier.

 

So, only someone who is an expert on the subject matter should be able to comment on the subject itself. That is your position, am I correct in saying?

And a study conducted by a private facility is better? Look, I have a lot of time for Stratfor, and I am not arguing with their results specifically because they do acknowledge that a large number of firearms cross the border. That said, pretending that private companies don't have a stake in politically motivated studies is absurd. This wasn't just a 'left-wing' study, just a study. Or, considering the rates of gun ownership in America, are you honestly going to tell me that every single person in that study had never fired a firearm before or could not potentially be a gun owner?

No, they had data given to them by the ATF which, in retrospect, was discovered to be flawed. They interpreted that data into a study. Because that is how studies work: a hypothesis is made, tests are conducted to either prove or disprove the hypothesis, the data is recorded and interpreted. For further analysis or more accurate results, further studies are conducted and more data is obtained. Further testing will normalise data sets, provided that data gathering is done accurately, which is the point of both peer-review and outside analysis of findings.

 

Reasonable force is the law. You can use a firearm to defend yourself and successfully plead self defence (cases are rare because incidences are rare). However, it does entirely depend on the circumstances and is a highly dependent upon those circumstances. However, there are some clear guidelines, mainly reasonable force (e.g., if the person has no weapon, you cannot use a firearm. If you feel your life is threatened, you may use a firearm, etc). True, you cannot own a firearm purely for reasons of self-defence, but if they are used for self-defence, it is not inherently illegal.

Find the article and we can discuss it.

As for the government, yes technically, they are responsible for our protection, but there are a number of means that we have at our dispose to increase our own personal security which don't include violence. Australia is a highly urbanised country, so most Australians tend to be surrounded by neighbours. The best defences we have include motion sensor lights, security doors and home alarm systems. You can also add iron bars over doors, but that is a bit excessive. You may also think that they are frivolous answers, but the truth is that because of our dense neighbourhoods, they are fantastic defences. You are always within screaming distance of a neighbour, motion sensor lights have a strong tendency to deter would be criminals, and alarms work shockingly well (the few times I have been home in the middle of the day and someone in my household has mistakenly turned on the alarm, has always resulted in a neighbour coming to check and my dad calling home, as our alarm automatically calls his mobile phone). As well, home invasions are quite rare, and (I admit, I do not have the data but if news programs are to be believed) generally the result of gang on gang activity. Our household has been broken into twice in the past, and the criminals both times fled when the alarm went off.

 

1) your argument is disingenuous

You claimed that Black market ARs are thousands of dollars in Australia because they were banned! If STRAW PURCHASERS cannot buy them easily NEITHER CAN HONEST PEOPLE

to say a law makes something more expensive on the black market and not the lawful market is silly given what made it more expensive was a BAN

2)please show where THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WAS GIVEN THE POWER UNDER THE CONSTITUTION to enact a ban in THE USA

3) you didn't answer the question about other citizens being trusted

a loss of freedom is not worth even demonstrated minor reductions in crime

sorry we are free citizens not sheep or subjects

 

I did a little checking. Many of your claims about Australia are either misleading or factually incorrect. Homicide was 1.9 per 100,000 in 1996. In 2001 the rate was 1.8 per 100,000. Sexual assault rates didn't begin to increase after the ban until 2000. Robbery did increase but that was already increasing prior to the ban. Anyway, even if your claims were correct it is highly unlikely that a decline in the gun ownership rate from 7% to 5% would have the effect you're implying. It's best to focus on the kind of crime most likely to be affected by the gun buyback: gun crime. When we do that it does indeed appear that the buyback was a success.

 

If Aussie history mirrored American history you might have a point. Your British overlords actually wanted the USA and fought to keep it, they didn't put up the same fight for your lot...

 

You don't list a source, but your numbers are wrong.

Here are the data from the Australia Bureau of Statistics Crime Reports: http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/4530.0

year - homicide rate - sexual assault rate (rate is per 100,000 people)
1993 - 3.89 - 71.11
1994 - 3.66 - 74.41
1995 - 3.63 - 71.77
1996 - 3.74 - 78.62 (year the gun bans went into full effect)
1997 - 3.66 - 77.5
1998 - 3.8 - 77.71
1999 - 3.9 - 74.22
2000 - 3.9 - 85.7
2001 - 4.2 - 90.6 (homicide peak rate, 15.7% above the 1995 preban rate)
2002 - 3.9 - 95.3
2003 - 3.5 - 90.6
2004 - 3.0 - 95.3
2005 - 2.8 - 91.7
2006 - 2.7 - 94.5
2007 - 2.5 - 94.7
2008 - 2.4 - 93.3
2009 - 2.4 - 86.0
2010 - 2.0 - 79.5 (sexual assault is till above the preban rate)

Unarmed robbery was on the rise before the ban, armed robbery was on a downward trend, here are the rates for 1993 through 2009 (1996 data is in red):

armed robbery - 30.05 / 28.36 / 29.1 / 34.17 / 48.89 / 58.0 / 49.9 / 49.5 / 57.9 / 39.9 / 36.1 / 30.0 / 35.9 / 36.7 / 36.4 / 31.4 / 29.8
unarmed robbery - 42.22 / 50.01 / 51.51 / 55.25 / 66.15 / 69.2 / 69.5 / 72.3 / 79.1 / 66.9 / 62.9 / 52.1 / 48.3 / 47.3 / 49.2 / 45.8 / 39.9

Notice that armed robbery was decreasing and then increased dramatically when the gun laws went into effect starting in 1995 (full effect in 1996). Odd how AUS implements gun bans and armed robbery increases.

Gun ownership rates are questionable, I have not seen any reliable data on AUS gun ownership rates and can't begin to estimate it.


Focusing on just gun crime is the fallback of the gun banners because the full data does not support the gun control agenda. Criminal behavior is dynamic, motivation for crime does not go away when one tool of the criminal is removed, criminals respond to changes in the environment.

Even looking at just gun crime is not such a great deal for the banner either. In AUS armed robbery increased significantly after the ban, homicide increased after the ban.

And what about defensive gun uses? Banners focus on gun crime because it fits their agenda and bias, but they don't mention defensive gun uses.

Banners also love to pick 2 convenient points, such as looking at homicide in 1996 (rate of 3.74) and comparing it to homicide in 2010 (2.0) and claiming gun bans worked, but by leaving out the intervening years they hide the crime bubble and the increased homicide rate.

The data is not on the banners side, just the opposite.

 

Enough said. We won't tell you how to eat your Vegemite, and you stay out of US politics. Deal?

 

No real argument from me - but then I have been causing apoplexy in American Hoplophiles for YEARS

I have been accused of everything from eating babies to attempting to overthrow the American government - however in the years that I have been (somewhat gleefully) discussing this with interested Americans I have come to the conclusions that the disparity in firearm morbidity and mortality between our countries has more to do with

A) a difference in outlook and system of belief surrounding gun ownership and gun use ( I often think Americans might be better off restricting the NRA rather than restricting guns - since many of the least logical myths seem to come from the NRA)
b) The main impacts from our gun reform has been the twin initiatives of ensuring guns are secured and banning automatic loading weapons
c) the issue is often obscured by racial issues (I cannot count how many times I have been told the high gun rate is only "gangs" or "Non-whites"
But in all honesty you will NEVER get a gun ban in America - even the American Association of Paediatricians no longer call for gun bans. What is needed is a sense or social responsibility among American gun owners as a whole because it is the legal gun owner who is making the straw purchases that fuel the illegal gun market and feeds the inner city gangs

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No deal

BTW - we only eat Vegemite to upset Americans

 

During WW ll, U.S. Marines were accused of eating babies for breakfast every morning.

Twenty five or thirty years later, liberals accused American soldiers and Marines of killing babies in Vietnam.

I suppose the left was upset that the babies were being killed and not eaten.

 

Here we go again

1) Correlation does not equal causation
2) Gun reform was never intended to reduce criminality - that is a straw man fallacy
3) There are lies, damned lies and statistics - this is ABS data which is based on VICTIM SURVEYS and not on recorded crime - if you want that you have to go to the AIC

 

Not worth responding to really

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Not worth responding to really

 

First of all, you eating Vegemite does not bother me one bit. Nor does Filipinos eating Balut, or Koreans eating Kimchi. Why? Because it doesn't have anything to do with me. What they do in their country is their business. By the same token, what we do in this country has nothing to do with you. Why should it matter to you in Australia whether I own a firearm or not? If you think that I can fire a bullet from over here, and hit you over there, then you really are loony. So, if it doesn't have anything to do with you, stay out of it.

 

If you do not want us speaking about gun control may I suggest then that you keep your opinions to yourself and stop exporting your gun culture to the rest of the world?