Gun Control Shown to Save Lives
I still find it ironic that in the aftermath of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre which claimed 35 lives, John Howard, Australia's ultra-conservative Prime Minister, took a politically brave stand against the Australian gun lobby and forced the states to restrict the ownership of semi-automatic weapons.
At the same time, he provided millions of dollars to buy back newly banned weapons, removing them from the community.
Critical as I am of Howard and his miserable conservative government, this is an action that earned my grudging respect. Popular political wisdom stated the gun lobby was untouchable. Howard proved that the lobby didn't have much support in the wider community.
I'd like to think, but I'm not convinced, that a Prime Minister from the other side of politics would have made the same stand.
Now, over ten years later, and after yet another firearm massacre in the US, it seems that Howard's action has shown a quantifiable benefit.
THE tough gun controls introduced after the Port Arthur massacre have probably saved about 2500 lives, economists say.Debunking a widely reported study to the contrary, their analysis suggests that removing 600,000 guns from circulation has sharply reduced suicide and murder rates ...
... Andrew Leigh, at the Australian National University, and Christine Neill of Canada's Wilfrid Laurier University found a sharp, statistically significant reduction in murder and suicide.
"There were on average 250 fewer firearm deaths per year after the implementation of the National Firearms Agreement than would have been expected," they said.
Using deaths data since 1915, the authors estimated gun control had led to about 35 fewer murders and 247 fewer suicides annually since 1997. They calculate slightly smaller numbers when their statistical model is restricted to data after 1969.
It's heartening that there's empirical evidence supporting what many suspected. Restricting firearms in the broad community saves lives.
Background: For readers unfamiliar with Australian gun laws, here is a Wikipedia article that gives a good overview.
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Great site...I'm glad there are others out there who are still talking about gun control, since the MSM is likely to let it slide, along with most everyone in DC. I've been seeking out foreign gun laws and their effects on societies...your insight on how Australia's laws work is just what I was hoping to find! Thanks -
Here is my contribution to the effort:
Arm Fratboys -or- Curb Straw Purchases?
I linked to your site on http://deadissue.com - hope you'll check it out and maybe reciprocate.
Peace - DI
Why not ban cars as well? THat would save a lot of lives, too. It would also prevent more than 3.5 million injuries per year.
If you had bothered to check, you might have learned that more than FORTY TIMES as many AMericans are injured each year by autos than by guns.
Yes, Napoleon, cars are dangerous.
That's why they are all registered and controlled by strict regulations governing design, modification and use. It's also why potential drivers have to be a certain age before learning to drive, and why they have to pass an exam before they're allowed 'behind the wheel.'
Cars, BTW, aren't designed specifically to maim and kill.
The point is, cars are forty times more dangerous than guns, despite the regulations on cars. If people wielding guns injured 3.5 million people per year, would you not be screaming for guns to be banned? Moreover, it has been repeatedly proven in the USA that increased gun control leads to more crime, and less gun control leads to less crime. Check out this article about Kennesaw, GA vs. Morton Grove, IL. http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55288
I've been involved in a raging argument on another forum - it has a big world wide membership with many from the US and most of them very much pro the 'right ' to bear arms. I'd link it but I think it's for subscribers only.
I stuck my neck out in a big way there and was so grateful for the smh article on Monday. I quoted it in full and as you say Tony the empirical evidence is priceless.
When Howard did the one decent thing in his term of office and brought in the draconian laws, I had huge argument with people here including my husband. Coming from England it was distressing me mightily to see Australia sliding towards the US model.
In desperation I said at one get together. 'Geesh you lot - there are meetings and rallies about health and education and we never see you there, but the Government makes plans to restrict your boy's toys and you all flock in. What's wrong with you?' I was something of a social pariah for a few days!!
The comparison with automobiles is so illogical. Taking a useless comparison that was made all the time during the whole 'debate' (curious how one can find him or herself engaged in a debate with a right-winger, where you're trusting science and they're not) over whether cigarette smoking causes lung cancer.
My Republican father bringing out that one again and again...basically comparing apples and doritos...
But, to be honest, tony took care of this one rather well.
tony, thanks for the link! I'm hoping to have a post on gun control debate inside and outside of the US. Glad I ran into your blog!
Peace - DI
Try doing some research on Kennesaw, GA vs. Morton Grove, IL, leftwingers.
Yep - Kennesaw is quoted in this other forum.here's one answer
[i]Using Kennesaw as an example is not entirely relevant. It also has one of the lower populations in the Atlanta area. Furthermore it has less poverty. Crime tends to follow both those factors. Furthermore, Kennesaw is pretty far out to be called "Metro Atlanta" though I do know the metropolitan area is growing by leaps and bounds. I'm a Stone Mountain native (though I've lived in a lot of places in and around Atlanta) so I know.[/i]
Another one
[i]If you read the thread . . . you'll see I've already explained that in a previous post. One thing happening after another thing is in no way shape or form a proof that the first thing caused the second thing. I was born in 1969. The argument that crime went down in Kennesaw because I was born holds just as much water as Chavez's does.
It takes a lot more than chronological order to prove causation. And as another poster already pointed out higher up in the thread, there are plenty of other demographics at work in Keenesaw that do have a proven connection to crime rates. It is, then, logical to assume that those factors are the causes, not the gun law.[i]
The recent Australian report has a much provides much greater evidence re cause and effect with the added goodness of less guns to be waved around.
Why is it logical to assume that those other factors have more to do with the low crime rate than the gun law? Because that's what you want to believe? Are you trying to make me believe that the demographics at work in Kennesaw are not at work in any other town in the Atlanta suburbs? Also, you failed to mention the high crime rate in Morton Grove.
Some links that back up the argument for tighter gun controls.
First
Second
Third
If you discount this sort of evidence, then you have to start to look for other reasons for the high death rate.
Is it a cultural problem? Lack of fundamental social services? Over-the-top religion?
The sad fact is that the US is way out there in gun deaths per capita for developed countries. If access to firearms isn't the problem, what is??
The violence rate in the Soviet Union was higher than in the United States, despite gun control laws. It's quite easy to pinpoint the problem: selfishness. Why else do 17,000 Americans commit suicide with guns every year? Why do so many Americans fly into rages and assault other people, whether it's with guns, knives, fists, or whatever else? Why is there so much crime in the first place? Because some people have an egocentric view of the world. People are responsible for violence, not guns. Taking away the guns will not solve the disease (selfishness); it won't even mask the symptoms (crime), because people will simply use something else (or buy guns illegally). I'll guarantee you Cain did not kill Abel with a Glock handgun!
Perhaps if US citizens didn't have such easy access to guns they wouldn't be able to use them so often?
It works for us. And we have a much more relaxed society because of it.
Anyone can buy guns off the street the same as they can buy illegal drugs. Outlawing guns will not prevent criminals from getting them.
Your correct, there'll always be a black market. If you really want a firearm, there'll be always one to buy if you know the right people, are prepared to break the law, and want to pay a lot.
Criminals will always have them and will always be a danger, but why make it easy for everyone to buy a weapon, thereby creating a lot of other potentially dangerous people?
Your latest massacre wasn't by a known criminal. He was a weird loner who wasn't crazy enough to be locked up before he went berserk with an semi-automatic pistol. And that's the problem. It's all very well to say "guns don't kill, people do," and the answer to the problem is to vet gun buyers. It's very difficult in practise to actually predict if your currently law abiding citizen is going to stay that way.
My view is that you restrict access to weapons to everyone who hasn't got a valid reason to have one.
There's probably several reasons why the US has such a woeful gun injury / fatality numbers. They're too easy to obtain, there's too many in the community, and, I suspect, there's some cultural factor that makes people inclined to use them.
At the end of the day, what the US does about guns is its own problem and its own business. However, as a final point; I'd hate to see a similar situation here. I feel much safer knowing that there's a negligible chance of people I encounter possessing a weapon. Our police have a much easier time doing their job for similar reasons. We haven't had a Port Arthur style massacre (touch wood!) since the gun laws were tightened and semi-auto guns removed from the community over 10 years ago.
Our gun statistics prove the point.
Letting a law-abiding citizen own a handgun will not turn him into a criminal any more than letting him own a machete. Or any more than giving an average person a claw-hammer will turn him or her into a master carpenter. As for Cho, he did not become a murderer because he purchased a pair of handguns; he purchased a pair of handguns because he intended to murder people. If he could not buy them legally, he could have bought them illegally, or built bombs or whatever. Outlawing guns will not end murder any more than outlawing drugs has ended drug abuse. As the saying goes, where there's a will there's a way. If you intend murder dozens of people, you will find a way to do it.
If Cho had run up against armed students and/or professors, do you think he would still have murdered and wounded more than sixty people?
Cho didn't buy guns to murder people - he bought guns to commit suicide in a grandeously public way. Recent studies show that most of these mass killers have suicide as their main motive.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/breakfast/stories/2007/1902122.htm
Making gun purchase and availability much harder for people determined to commit suicide has halved the rate of gun suicides in Australia over 9 years. Facts speak for themselves. People determined to commit suicide by other means don't take 30 others with them.
Napoleon15, your arguments are illogical; you twist them to support your fixed views. You sound just like all the arguers 9 years ago when the Australian Government first grabbed the chance to control guns - and most of their points have been shown to have no validity (and in many cases look downright silly) in the years since.
So let me get this right - if napolean15 had his way then as soon as Cho drew his weapon there'd have been numerous students and teachers there to defend the peace and gun him down? What say person#3 failed to see person #1 draw their weapon and only saw person #2 pull their gun? And person#8 ony saw person #5 react to person#3 but persons #4 and 7 saw the whole lot and managed to work out who should be shot. Person #6 who is studying law wisely decided to avoid a jail sentence and dived for cover as good citizens 2/3/4/5/7/8 all attempted to uphold the "peace".
I lived in Strathfield and had been at the shopping centre only a few hours before the awful incident in 1991 and was genuinely concerned because we thought my MIL to be was actually there at the time - and this was in the days pre mobile phones and we had no idea of her exact whereabouts when the radio broke the story. It's a sickening feeling I don't want to experience ever again.
Give me Australia's draconian gun laws any day and let's hope Max Barry isn't a visionary. http://www.maxbarry.com/jennifergovernment/
The statement of "there will always be a black market for guns" is true, but the whole thing isn't as simple as saying just that. A gun bought illegally and smuggled into DC for resale, will get at least a 110% markup...if you cut off the supply in Virginia, you force the price up, thereby taking a chunk of buyers out of the market altogether.
Likewise, if a throwaway is more expensive and harder to get, you'll be more apt to choose a murder victim more wisely...and in some cases, be too cheap to get another one and stupidly hang onto it, so the police have a prosecution they wouldn't have had before.
Guns aren't like crystal meth...you can't go manufacturing guns out in the woods somewhere. So the comparison with drugs is incorrect in this instance.
The comparison of guns with drugs is indeed correct. Illegal drugs are far more expensive than they would be if they were legal. How, then, are drug-addicts able to purchase drugs at such exorbitant prices? Credit, my friend, credit. And if you don't pay up eventually, you get beaten up or knocked off. Many people can't pay up and that's what happens to them.
Say Cho bought a gun instead of drugs. If he couldn't pay for it upfront, he didn't have to worry about paying later -- he intended to commit suicide anyway.
As for the idea that armed citizens could not figure who was shooting at them and starting shooting each other instead, that is patently absurd. If you see someone in the doorway with a gun and several of your classmates shooting at him, naturally you're not going to know who the bad guy is, right? Nonsense. Besides, most people, if they heard gunfire, would freeze or dive for cover. Only someone who actually knew how to use a gun would have the presence of mind to shoot back.
"Making gun purchase and availability much harder for people determined to commit suicide has halved the rate of gun suicides in Australia over 9 years."
Has it halved the rate of suicides in general?
"Facts speak for themselves. People determined to commit suicide by other means don't take 30 others with them."
People determined to take thirty others with them will not be able to do so if they get shot first.
Eventually, I will write an article showing why gun control is a bad idea. Before I do, there are other sites to check out. You can check out my blog and numerous others. Basically, there are three major arguments against gun control: 1) looser gun control restricts crime; 2) looser gun control protect the general populace from government oppression; and 3) the government simply has no right to take away people's guns.
Sigh
Napoleon15 - read this article linked in tonys first post in this thread.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/gun-laws-credited-as-lifesavers/2007/04/22/1177180487704.html
I challenge you to refute this report.
I don't seen anything in that report worth refuting. The gun controls "have probably saved about 2,500 lives" in about eleven years. That's just over 200 per year -- which could easily be attributed to other factors. It could also be attributed to the fact that "in NSW, the number of guns in the hands of registered owners has risen in the past six years." All that hype over a report like that? I wish I had read it earlier, so I would have known just how weak your arguments are!
Napolean15, how can you argue that lax gun control prevents crime? The US is awash with gun deaths, as the figures clearly show.
As for your other two reasons, surely not in the world's bastion of democracy? Sounds a bit paranoid to me.
Tony, how can you argue that strict gun-control prevents crime? You can point to the high crime rate in the United States if you want, but I can point to the higher crime rate in the Soviet Union, where firearm access was restricted. I can also point to Switzerland's low crime rate, the fact that Vermont has the 49th lowest state crime rate in the US (and no concealed-weapons permit required), that citizens shoot and kill twice as many criminals per year as the police, and that non-fatal firearm-related crime in the US has declined over the past decade as more states loosened their restrictions on gun ownership. I will continue to argue that your highly-touted statistics do not prove your point.
http://www.guncite.com/cnngunde.html
The numbers don't lie. And let's compare apples with apples. The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state that hasn't been in existence for well over a decade.
Russia is awash with guns and has a dismal crime rate.
That's it from me on this issue, napolean15.
The high gun murder rate of US is tied to its black population, not to its easy availability of guns. Most gun deaths are blacks killing other blacks in inner city areas. Offcourse old media that controls TV and newspapers would be loath to even hint at it. The country with the highest gun violence rate is South Africa whose relative prosperity makes buying guns more affordable than other black countries.