gun control

schrafinator says: "Can you imagine any state in the US having a comparable population to the UK having a gun death toll of only 23"I suspect that the Home Office is referring to data for England and Wales. Their combined population is just under 53,000,000. You would need to add a couple of the most populous States in the US together (say California and Texas) to obtain a comparable population size. Then compare their fiearm deaths with the British figure of 23.Another interesting statistic. The homicide rates (excluding firearm homicides) for the US and Australia are roughly equal. However the US homicide rate using a firearm is 10 times the Australian rate.

Perhaps I need to expand a little on my message #3 in which I cited the comparative homicide statistics for US and Australia so as to point out the bloody obvious.Americans and Australians have close cultural affinities. They have comparable social and economic systems. They show similar rates of homicide using weapons such as knives, blunt instruments, by hand etc. However the glaring anomoly is that the rate of homicide by firearms in the US is 10 times that in Australia. Not so co-incidentally, gun controls are much tighter in Australia than the US. Ownership of military type weapons is banned. Owners and users of handguns and firearms are required to go through a licensing process. There is a cooling off period for any purchase of a firearm. Firearm owners are required to store their firearms in approved containers.There are no firearms manufacturers in Australia and they must therefore be imported.Firearms are the preferred weapon by military forces for arming their ground troops? Could this be because they offer the greatest effectiveness with the least risk to the user? Surely this make them also the most effective means of committing homicide.Simple hypothesis: the greater availability of firearms in a community increases the rate of firearms homicides.I don't know if it is too late for America but it should at least recognise methods whcih operate elsewhere which have prevented those countries from following the American trend.

John, please advise how I can make things more bloody obvious if you do not read what I write.Now do you have a comment after your misreading has been straightened out for you?

Somehow jdean's last comment from his message #19 seemed so fitting, and filled with pathos.

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The US population is 90+ million greater than Australia's. Similar if you exclude math from the equation I guess.

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Australia's population is about 20,000,000, US population is 290,000,000. Mathematics isn't your strong point, is it jdean. Of course the relevent fact is that I was referring to homicide RATES, not total numbers. Rates such as 3 firearm homicides per 1,000,000 population for Australia and 41 per 1,000,000 population for the US.

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What is the homicide by boomerang or poisoned tip blow dart statistics there?

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Not surprisingly they don't warrant separate catagories. However if one should occur I'm sure it would get national headlines due to its novelty. Similarly I don't believe the FBI keeps separate statistics for bow and arrow or cutlass homicides either.

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I woulnd't want firearms readily available to a population of ex-convicts either.

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Yes, Australia is a nation of immigrants founded by the British, retaining a small population of indiginous inhabitants, with a significant multicultural component. Vastly different to the US. IIRC, the impetus to establish a penal colony in Australia was that convicts could no longer be sent to the Americal colonies after their rebellion.Would the characterisation of Americans as being build by slaves and slaveowners be a suitable one?Nevertheless jdean seems to ignore the concept of restricting firearm ownership to responsible persons and ensuring that they are secured.

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Of course they are the weapon of choice. Guns are produced solely for killing. Not a hard concept. Not an evil one either.

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Obviously not evil if one take's one's moral stance from the genocide incidents in the old testament.

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Too late? The firearm gave birth to American society as we know it. Americans should not forsake their heritage but instead embrace the right to bear arms.

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It seems a pity that American society cannot grow out of its toys. Heritage is something to be acknowleded, not blindly followed. And I think there is some debate in the US on the "right" to bear arms.

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Here is another bloody obvious tip: Don't pull facts out of your ass if you're going to write an arrogant post.

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Couldn't have said it better myself, although I would use "arse".

red vento, define violent crime and I will provide real data rather than your assertions of "skyrocketing" rates.

red, here are statistics for Queensland {one Australian state} and Australia for violent crimes for 1993-1999.Where is the skyrocketing violent crime rates? The post-Port Arthur gun control laws banning semiautomatic firearms were introduced in the middle of this period. Since then, there has been no firearm mass murder in Australia instead of the previous trend of a multiple firearm murder event every 2 years.

redvento

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I cleary stated in a previous post that murder rates were not on the rise in Australia, violent crime was.

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"skyrocketing" was your description for violent crime rates in Australia (message #43). This link (bulletin #9), provides statistics for murder, assault, sexual assault, robbery inter alia for 1993-1999. This would encompass the range of violent crimes. How are the trends described?murder: "No statistically significant trends relating to murder occurred in Queensland or Australia. The murder rate, rate of weapon usage and proportion of weapons that are firearms have not shown any significant trends in the period 1993—1999."assault: "Australian rates of assault have shown significant increases from 1993 to 1999, while Queensland rates have remained fairly steady. The percentage of assaults involving weapons and the percentage of weapons that are firearms have both displayed significant downward trends." The rate for Australia increased from 561 to 705 per 100,000 population, an annualised 6% pa increase.sexual assault: "The national rate of sexual assault has shown no significant trend while Queensland rates have trended upwards."robbery: "While the national robbery rate exhibited a significantly greater upward trend than the Queensland rate, neither Queensland nor Australia showed any significant trend in the use of weapons. On the other hand, both showed very significant downward trends in the use of firearms as weapons." More descriptively: "The Australian robbery rate showed a steady increase from 72 in 1993 to 127 in 1998, before dropping slightly to 119 in 1999 (figure 4)." And a general comment regarding firearm use in crime: "The use of firearms as weapons has decreased markedly in assault and robbery while it has remained reasonably steady in the commission of murder."The complicated nature of the relationship between firearms, other weapons and various types of crime is indicated in the following comment: " The overall trend for violent crimes for both the use of weapons and the use of firearms have shown significant reductions. Further research is needed to determine whether these coincide with the introduction of tighter gun control legislation in 1996. Significant decreases occurred in 1993, 1994 and 1995 prior to the law changes but reductions since 1996 have slowed."So, redvento, where is the skyrocketing violent crime rates?

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"Since Australia's gun ban, armed robberies increase 45%"

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Please reconcile this scaremongering statement with figure 9. And the percentage of armed robberies using a firearm decreased from 25% to 18%. So what?

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In the Australian state of Victoria, gun homicides have climbed 300 percent;

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Australian Instirute of Criminology No. 116 table 2: Firearm-related deaths in each jurisdiction : number and rate per 100 000 population, 1993-97
Victoria
year no. rate
1993 111 2.48
1994 103 2.30
1995 99 2.19
1996 94 2.06
1997 100 2.17
1998 76 from hereIn fact this site treats one of your sources as an urban legend.

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In the 25 years before the gun bans, crime in Australia had been dropping steadily;

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Care to be a little more specific?I really don't think you should rely on NRA for accurate data on the Australian scene.