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friendly_iconoclast

(15,333 posts)
Sat Jun 16, 2012, 04:17 PM Jun 2012

Let's try a gun amnesty again. *This* time, it's sure to work!

(Note- this first blog is from 2009, commenting on the then-latest gun amnesty in Australia):

http://www.thecourier.com.au/blogs/the-rant/gun-amnesty-bit-of-a-misfire/1649124.aspx

Gun amnesty bit of a misfire

ANOTHER year, another gun amnesty. And yet another photo op involving an earnest police officer looking serious and concerned in front of a pile of firearms.

It looks such an important and effective exercise in community policing. Let’s get all these nasty (cue scary
music) guns off the street.

Except, if I may borrow a phrase from the English lass at work, it’s bollocks.

The amnesty and previous gun buy-back schemes are, for all practical purposes, public relations exercises. The effect on violent crime rates would be negligible because the sort of person who might hand in an old rifle at the cop shop is not exactly the type of ‘‘person of interest’’ associated with violent crime.

That sad collection of museum pieces and rusty old .22s pictured in The Courier last week, looked sinister enough but hardly constituted a menace to society. You see, criminals will always find ways to get illegal firearms or explosives or whatever, when they want to.


Turns out, that big meanyhead was spot-on. This is from Wednesday:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-13/guns-john-rau-laws/4068264?section=sa

Gun amnesty alongside tougher SA laws

Legislation allowing for the jailing of people who illegally discharge guns has been introduced in the South Australian Parliament.

It is a response to cases including recent drive-by shootings in Adelaide.

SA Attorney-General John Rau said the bill creates a new offence of discharging a firearm without a lawful excuse.

Once the legislation passed, Mr Rau said a three-month amnesty would open for illegal weapons to be surrendered to police.

"The clear objective of this legislation is to put behind bars people who engage in any crime using firearms and to make any of these individuals who are in the habit of leaving home with guns in their vehicles or on their person to realise that if they are detected by the police they can expect to go to jail," he said...


So, umm, were they not "...put(ting) behind bars people who engage in any crime using firearms..." to begin with?
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DanTex

(20,709 posts)
1. Wow, check out the gun violence statistics in Australia!
Sat Jun 16, 2012, 04:36 PM
Jun 2012
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics Recorded Crime — Victims, Australia, 2008 paper there were 1.2 murder victims per 100,000 people in Australia. Of those, only 12 per cent involved firearms. So, given a population of 22 million, simple arithmetic gives us just over 30 gun murders in 2008 — a number still too high, especially for the families of those concerned. But not a number that is any way going to be affected by our little amnesty.


Australia's gun laws must be doing something right, because they had only 30 gun murders out of a population of 22 million. Compare that to the US where we have 10,000 gun murders out of a population of 300 million. In other words, the US experiences 25 times as many gun murders per capita as Australia. Looks like we need some tighter gun laws!

gejohnston

(17,502 posts)
3. it was about the same before the laws were passed
Sat Jun 16, 2012, 05:03 PM
Jun 2012

so maybe they are doing something right in other areas.

DanTex

(20,709 posts)
6. Yeah, and the earlier ones were passed before that.
Sat Jun 16, 2012, 05:45 PM
Jun 2012

From Wiki:

Gun laws were the responsibility of each colony and since Federation in 1901, of each state. The Commonwealth does not have constitutional authority over firearms, but it controls customs and military matters, and the external affairs power can be used to enforce internal control over matters agreed in external treaties.
During the 1920s Australia, Canada and Great Britain became concerned about the rise of communism after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and imposed restrictions on handguns.[6] The murders of three policemen in Western Australia and the rise of organised crime in Sydney and Melbourne, with a number of lurid underworld murders were also a factor.[7] These restrictions have increased over the succeeding decades. In New South Wales, handguns were effectively banned after World War II but the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games sparked a new interest in the sport of pistol shooting and laws were changed to allow the sport to develop.


I agree gun laws aren't the only factor. Australians as a people aren't as gun-obsessed as Americans, so even without sane gun laws I would imagine they still wouldn't have as much gun violence as the US. Still, it's a little bizarre for someone to be using Australia as an example of the ineffectiveness of gun control laws when their rate of gun homicide is 25 times lower than the US.

gejohnston

(17,502 posts)
7. I'm not using them as an example of ineffectiveness
Sat Jun 16, 2012, 05:51 PM
Jun 2012

other than their latest did not much, according to Time. But regardless of their gun laws, their murder and violent rate would be the same, regardless of means. That is the point.

krispos42

(49,445 posts)
8. What's the total, per-capita rate?
Sat Jun 16, 2012, 07:07 PM
Jun 2012

Let's compare apples to apples here. The purpose of gun laws is not to reduce the number of gun-related murder, it's to reduce the total number of murders.

DanTex

(20,709 posts)
9. That was a per-capita comparison.
Sat Jun 16, 2012, 07:38 PM
Jun 2012

Unless my math is wrong (definitely possible), the rate of gun homicide (per capita) in the US is (about) 25X larger that the gun homicide rate in Australia.

The homicide rate in the US is about 5/100K, whereas that article said the homicide rate in Australia is about 1.2/100K, which means our overall homicide rate is about 4X larger than Australia.

The purpose of gun laws is to reduce murder (among other things), there I agree. However, it's not realistic to think that gun control laws are going to reduce the rates of non-gun homicides by very much if at all.

krispos42

(49,445 posts)
11. Now, did the homicide rate of Australia drop after these gun restrictions were passed?
Sun Jun 17, 2012, 07:00 PM
Jun 2012

Also, another way to put it is that our non-gun homicide rate (which is about 1.8, rough guess) is higher than Australia's total homicide rate.


Even if every single gun-related homicide stopped, and was not replaced with a non-gun homicide, we'd still be a lot higher than Australia.


The problem isn't guns, it's our society.

 

Atypical Liberal

(5,412 posts)
10. I'm not willing to trade my right to keep and bear arms to achieve Australia's crime rate.
Sun Jun 17, 2012, 09:12 AM
Jun 2012

First of all, I have no faith that if I turned in my guns that it would affect the crime rate anyway.

But primarily, I'm just not willing to give up my guns because of the actions of criminals. 100% of firearm owners should not be penalized for the actions of less than 5% of them.

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