The 2nd is worth all the lives lost to gun crime

The 34% "uptick" has existed for 19 years. Is that "in the short run"? Is changing a declining crime rate into a persistent increase "to be expected"? Australia has normalized - it has more crime.

Studies in the US clearly show that more guns means less crime. For example, in cases where gun owners are publicized, crime in those areas decreases and crime in surrounding areas increase.

Interesting how the crime bubble started in 1996. Downward trending crime rates became upward rates, 1996 was the year it all changed. Unless some other major social change started in 1996 and has a long lasting impact, then the one major social change that did occur in 1996 (the gun ban) seems like a pretty good cause.

You just repeated your initial claim - no guns means no gun crime. That's obvious. It does not mean no crime or even a reduction in crime - re Australia.

Total crime is the measure, not just gun crime. Australia has a higher rate of violent crime, rape, aggravated assault then the US, and by a wide margin. Homicide is the only violent crime in which the US has a higher rate than AUS, 4.6 for the US and 2.0 for AUS. The US has 2.6 more homicides, AUS has 100's more rapes and aggravated assaults. All Australia did with their gun ban was decrease an already low homicide rate in exchange for a huge increase in total violence.

The UK is similar, low homicide rate, high aggravated assault rate.

 

I obviously didn't explain myself properly.

In a fit of bad policy-making the Howard government chose a stupidly populist approach to firearms control laws in the wake of the Port Arthur shootings. Instead of focusing on mental health issues the feds went after the states and territories to change firearms control laws already in place and which were (apart from a couple of states) were managing quite well.

In Australia we have historically had firearms control laws based on the type of firearm and the person seeking to lawfully own/use the firearm. Until Howard I could lawfully (and did) own a pump-action shotgun. I could and did lawfully use rifles with ten bullet magazines. I couldn't own an automatic weapon. I could own a semi-automatic weapon. But I had to be over 18 and of good character etc. Howard comes along and semi-autos - even .22 - are removed from the lawful list, similarly shotguns with more than two cartridge capacity, rifles with mags over 5 bullets and so on. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

I fully realise the firearm is a tool, I carried them for work.

Now, your comments above are ludicrous, try to think for yourself instead of chanting slogans.

A woman dead in an alley raped and strangled is dead. A woman who shot a man dead is merely a suspect until she is successful in demonstrating that she resorted to self-defence. It doesn't matter if she shot the bastard or stuck him in the eye with the heel of her shoe, she's entitled to plead self-defence. So firearms are irrelevant in that situation. As has been said elsewhere in the forum, a knife is more likely to kill than a firearm and we all have knives, it's just that most of us use them properly.

The point of firearms control laws is to reduce the harm from lawfully owned weapons - and to prohibit certain types of firearm and to prohibit certain people from lawfully obtaining firearms. The substantive criminal law exists to deter crime and to deal with criminals in whatever situation they are in.

 

Two things - correlation is not causation, but I know you knew that.

Second - statistics are wonderful if they're used properly. You should realise that Australia's statistics regarding crime and authoritative when it comes to crime. In the US it's a shambles. Comparisons are meaningless in that situation.

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@...ase, most other crimes down (Media Release)~1

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@...3~Main Features~Victims of Crime, Australia~3

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

St Pierre et Miquelon - homicide rate of 16.5 (one victim)
United States - homicide rate 4.7
Australia homicide rate - 1.1

Those statistics are not all that flash for comparison due to collection methods and definitions. But there's a picture there.

 

SInce you believe laws can make citizens safer, why not simply pass a law that murder is illegal? That should solve the problem. </sarcasm>

The slogan was to illustrate the point most people never think beyond their own fear of guns and do not realize the lives saved each year by personal ownership and bearing of firearms. Heck imagine the possible outcome of the Paris attack if two or three private citizens were armed or even the police.

Americans have the right to own weapons to defend their liberties, property and lives. That right is not to be infringed, but has been over the years. I can buy a fully automatic machine gun. artillery piece, a military tank or a fighter jet here, if I choose. Our rights are not for hunting, to repel home invasions or target sport but to defend our liberties. I understand it is much different in your nation. That's too bad, I understand the violent crime stats have gone up since the government confiscated you privately owned weapons. That won't happen here.

 

What I proposed in my initial post is for a hypothetical no-guns or 99.99% no guns state, not a "no legal guns" state, which is what Australia is in right now, so it's not really a good example to be using.

In any case, the point of the post is not whether reducing gun ownership will reduce crime, its whether the price of having guns in a country is worth it.
If there's already hundreds of millions of guns in a country, then having more guns in any given area in the hands of law abiding citizens is obviously going to reduce violent crime, because as I said, career criminals fear armed opposition.

 

Much of what you post is relevant to your country and fair enough. I have no comment on that.
As for violent crime in my country and the supposed confiscation of weapons. Firstly the confiscation, stupid though it was, was restricted to certain types of firearms. Secondly violent crime has not escalated as a result of the policy.

 

I may have confused the AU gun ban with the one in Britain. My apologies. What I did read when I just looked to refresh my memory was, Australian gun buy back (how can it be a buy back, when they never owned them in the first place ) reduced private gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns. But that was quickly changed afterwards with increased gun purchases to the point of the pre-ban levels. Yet, violent crime rates, as they have in the US dropped over the recent years even with a large private gun ownership.

 

All good, no worries.

The buyback forced law-abiding firearms owners to surrender their weapons. They received compensation courtesy of the taxpayer. The legislation enacted at the behest of the feds by the states and territories uniformly banned certain firearms. I need to make it very clear that this was in response to one, admittedly terrible incident. What seemed to panic Howard was that a bloke could wander around and kill so many people using firearms that had fairly large magazines. It didn't matter that it wasn't happening on a regular basis and apparently the fact that the killer was a nutter didn't cause Howard to think that perhaps there was a problem with how we deal with persons suffering mental illness. Howard went populist, he rode on the ignorance of most Australians about firearms and used the horrific events to bully the states and territories into falling in line. To this day there are still progressives who express admiration for his actions. That is how stupid some people are. Howard was a populist, he wouldn't do a thing without sniffing the polls for what gave him an advantage. Ironically that was his undoing because his downfall came about because he ignored the polls, but that's another story.

I'll make a broad statement that is obviously to me intuitively correct but for which I would have to work hard to present some evidence. But what the hell....

In Australia there is a very small connection between lawfully owned firearms and the general rate of crime. The connection is that some lawfully owned firearms may be stolen by crooks. Some dealers, a very few, have supplied illegal firearms to crooks. That's it. We don't fight crime by resorting to the use of privately owned firearms simply because we don't have to. The average Australian in a large-ish city would not dream of carrying a firearm (obviously a handgun would be best) for personal protection on a routine basis. We don't need to. Knives, different issue, lots of young blokes carry knives and they use them to deadly effect, but again, another issue.

The two gun buybacks forced by the Howard government (the second was related to handguns, which are still lawful under certain conditions by the way) were based on single incidents, not lots of incidents or trends. It was typical Howard, cheap and populist, the purpose was for him to gain kudos from the electorate which is basically ignorant about firearms. At the anti-Howard rallies firearms owners turned up to protest but the majority of those law-abiding firearms owners would have still voted for Howard at the federal election later on. There was no moral or political courage shown by Howard, merely his usual political opportunism. I mentioned an irony earlier. In industrial (labour) relations Howard was a committed right wing ideologue, strongly anti-labour. He tried to crush the labour movement in Australia by introducing radical IR legislation. His ideology overwhelmed his political opportunistic senses and he was booted from office and lost his own seat. That's the irony.

Anyway, just my views - the facts about firearms and crime in Australia speak for themselves.

 

I've seen the knives you blokes carry on Dundee films. ha*

If you would ask average Americans if they come into contact with anyone on a daily basis who carries a handgun, they would say no. The statistics are that at least 5% of Americans polled, on average say they carry a gun on a regular basis. FWIW

 

That's a fairly low percentage I think. Good to get rid of stereotypes.

 

What if you could have both - gun ownership and reduced death rate?

 

We already do. Thanks

 

About 3% of Texas' total population has a CHL. That's at least 5% of the adult population. If each of those people come in contact with 50 people in a day, the odds of coming into contact with someone carrying a gun are very high. Myself as an example: I carry at church and greet over 100 people every week, most of the time with a hug. Only about 4 people in my church know that I carry. I felt obligated to tell my pastor and his wife and there are a couple of other people who also carry. We kind of instinctively sit in different areas of the church for better coverage, but most of the people have no clue that there are armed people among them.

 

seperate out the suicides,and the scumbags who SHOULD get shot to death, and throw in the ones who are no loss, and the odds are HEAVILY in favor of the guns in civilian hands are well worth the cost. suicides will just find another way, and actually should be encouraged to get the hell out of the way of people who WANT to live.

 

Why throw out suicides? It has been proven that reducing the immediate availability reduces the rate of death

 

Except your own nation has discounted this notion, when their non-firearms related suicide rate increased.

 

I can go research paper to research paper on this
http://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abs...irearm_Ownership_and_Rates_of_Suicide.31.aspx

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...sCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704353/

 

Which would ultimately lead to what? Dueling research paper to research paper will do little to yield further development of discussion, as each side will argue that only their cited sources are correct. Sources will be attacked in attempt to discredit the information within, on the basis of who funded the study, who carried out the study, what sources are cited, what individuals participated, how the study was carried out, and countless other matters that can be picked apart.

Ultimately the matter will be a stalemate, unless one side is willing to consider the possibility that they are supporting the incorrect position.

 

Mate where I am coming from is simple - 75% of near suicides never attempt again. If we can improve survival of attempted suicide then we have a great chance that this person will never again get that low and will turn around their life

Yes reducing suicide rates and more importantly survival rates is very worthwhile

 

But is it really worthwhile?

I would ask then, how many suicidal people who fail to succeed then become a bigger problem. How many of these depressed and troubled people become drug addicts, abusers, murderers, etc. Is society not better off if they succeed? I say for one say yes. I point to the recent Germanwings crash. If the co-pilot had had a gun in his home the odds are quite good that he would have simply taken himself out instead of taking 149 innocents along with him.

 

Fewer than you think 75% never attempt again and that is a cure rate many doctors envy, Commonly there is no warning signs - especially with men and it can be triggered by circumstance such as a break up of a partnership. Now you are not telling me that a young 21 old who has just broken up with a girlfriend has a few drinks alone and sees a gun then on the spur of the moment shoots himself would, had the gun not been there, have recovered to be a benefit to society

Coming to that when we talk of mortality rates we do not consider the injury rates which are much much higher.

This is a little old so the costs would be significantly higher today

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=191001

 

suicide has no relevance to discussions about laws that are supposedly designed to prevent criminal behavior through the threat of punishment

 

suicides should be ENCOURAGED and aided to succeed. there's 10x too many people who WANT to live, so making more room for some of them is a great thing.

 

Source?

How many have other serious issues?

How many are call for help attempts not real attempts?

How many survivors become trouble for others?

 

Let us start with overall figures - they are rather confronting

http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html

http://www2.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Illnesses/Suicide_Teens.htm

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/769745