Australian gun laws

[Victor-Storm]

Hi. I saw this article online, which describes that since Australia passed strict gun laws after a mass shooting in 1996, they have had virtually no more tragedies of that sort. The way they present it, the gun regulation has been extremely effective and made mass shootings "a thing of the past". I noticed, that they talk about homicides by firearm, and not murders per se, but I was still wondering if anyone had a good counter argument to this? 

I like to think that freedom is better than control, morally and practically, so I hope there is a good explanation for this!  

 

 

http://mic.com/articles/123049/19-years-after-passing-strict-gun-control-laws-here-s-what-happened-in-australia?utm_source=policymicFB&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social#.pWkbj9PoF

[ResidingOnEarth]

Stef did a video on gun control recently:

https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/45566-youtube-the-truth-about-gun-control/

 

Below the video on that page, check out the links under the heading "Australian Gun Control".  There's some interesting stuff.

[dsayers]

Guns are an inanimate object incapable of behavior. So reacting to a behavior by targeting an object isn't rational. Nor is punishing people (prior restraint) for things that not them had done. You can do a lot more damage with cars. A car in a parking lot has greater ballistic energy than your average handgun shot. People aren't made to submit to background checks to purchase a gallon of gasoline and yet that same gasoline could level the very people and property it's purchased from. So it's not a principled conclusion either.

 

When I first read your post, I went to youtube and typed in Australian police abuse. Sure enough, they were carrying guns. So clearly guns isn't the problem, but can still contribute to the harming of human being even if it's not by way of putting holes in them. People in libertarian circles aren't afraid of pointing out things like taxation is theft or that political voting is the initiation of the use of force. One of the less common ones is that when a cop knocks on your door or turns on their light bar behind you, they are issuing a death threat. Because if you don't do exactly what they want when they want, they WILL escalate. They are trained to and they are told (and accept) that they have the right to. Up to and including your murder if they think it's necessary. And adrenaline isn't conducive to rational, controlled behaviors.

 

http://www.bobinoz.com/blog/4548/look-out-shes-got-a-gun/

[ResidingOnEarth]

Guns are an inanimate object incapable of behavior. So reacting to a behavior by targeting an object isn't rational. Nor is punishing people (prior restraint) for things that not them had done. You can do a lot more damage with cars. A car in a parking lot has greater ballistic energy than your average handgun shot. People aren't made to submit to background checks to purchase a gallon of gasoline and yet that same gasoline could level the very people and property it's purchased from. So it's not a principled conclusion either.

 

Beautifully put!

[J. D. Stembal]

I recently had the "gun control works in Australia" argument used against me. My response, "I don't live in Australia."

What the gun control advocates don't ever talk about is how many times firearms are used to save a life or stop a crime by lawfully shooting or deterring a criminal. Any gun homicide can look bad on paper because it doesn't not distinguish between murder, manslaughter, and lawful self-defense.

[Victor-Storm]

Guns are an inanimate object incapable of behavior. So reacting to a behavior by targeting an object isn't rational. Nor is punishing people (prior restraint) for things that not them had done. You can do a lot more damage with cars. A car in a parking lot has greater ballistic energy than your average handgun shot. People aren't made to submit to background checks to purchase a gallon of gasoline and yet that same gasoline could level the very people and property it's purchased from. So it's not a principled conclusion either.

 

When I first read your post, I went to youtube and typed in Australian police abuse. Sure enough, they were carrying guns. So clearly guns isn't the problem, but can still contribute to the harming of human being even if it's not by way of putting holes in them. People in libertarian circles aren't afraid of pointing out things like taxation is theft or that political voting is the initiation of the use of force. One of the less common ones is that when a cop knocks on your door or turns on their light bar behind you, they are issuing a death threat. Because if you don't do exactly what they want when they want, they WILL escalate. They are trained to and they are told (and accept) that they have the right to. Up to and including your murder if they think it's necessary. And adrenaline isn't conducive to rational, controlled behaviors.

 

http://www.bobinoz.com/blog/4548/look-out-shes-got-a-gun/

 

I understand that it is not guns themselves that kill, and that you can kill in other ways. But it makes it harder to argue against gun control if there are examples of places where it does work. Even the article you link to concludes, after going through murder rates in Australia, the UK and USA: "So do police carrying guns make for a safer country? No, not according to these figures. Do restrictions on private gun ownership make for a safer country? Yes, it looks pretty conclusive to me."

 

It seems that, even when you account for overall murders as opposed to only gun murders, USA still has a much larger murder rate than Australia, England (and probably any other western country). I find it hard to reject that it could have something to do with the very high gun ownership in USA.. 

[dsayers]

Beautifully put!

Thank you for the feedback. It's a topic I've been arguing about for over 10 years now, mentored by somebody who has been doing it for over 40. In fact, my road to philosophy, rational thought, and self-knowledge began when I first bought a gun. I become more politically aware, which led to me being exposed to rational cases against the State, which lead to rationality and self-knowledge (Pete Eyre -> Larken Rose -> Stefan Molyneux). While I wouldn't suggest this is typical, it's why I personally find people claiming guns lead to tragedy particularly entertaining: It led to my liberation! I'm sure I'm not the first human in history that could make the claim that firearms brought them freedom

[ResidingOnEarth]

Victor-Storm:

 

The moral argument for not banning guns is enough for me.  For those who don't care about the moral argument and try to claim there is a measurable practical benefit when you ban guns and therefore we should ban guns, I think these are two very good counter-arguments:

 

What the gun control advocates don't ever talk about is how many times firearms are used to save a life or stop a crime by lawfully shooting or deterring a criminal.

 

my road to philosophy, rational thought, and self-knowledge began when I first bought a gun. I become more politically aware, which led to me being exposed to rational cases against the State, which lead to rationality and self-knowledge (Pete Eyre -> Larken Rose -> Stefan Molyneux). While I wouldn't suggest this is typical, it's why I personally find people claiming guns lead to tragedy particularly entertaining: It led to my liberation! I'm sure I'm not the first human in history that could make the claim that firearms brought them freedom

 

Victor-Storm:

The purely quantitative studies of murders in environments with banned guns vs environments with legal guns do not account for all the positive benefits guns bring.  It's like judging whether cars should be banned or not purely by examining noise pollution, emissions and accidental road deaths while ignoring all the positive benefits of cars.

[Victor-Storm]

Victor-Storm:

 

The moral argument for not banning guns is enough for me.  For those who don't care about the moral argument and try to claim there is a measurable practical benefit when you ban guns and therefore we should ban guns, I think these are two very good counter-arguments:

 

 

 

Victor-Storm:

The purely quantitative studies of murders in environments with banned guns vs environments with legal guns do not account for all the positive benefits guns bring.  It's like judging whether cars should be banned or not purely by examining noise pollution, emissions and accidental road deaths while ignoring all the positive benefits of cars.

Very good points! It's true that we rarely hear about when privat guns save lives.. And of course the moral argument is enough. 

[ResidingOnEarth]

it's why I personally find people claiming guns lead to tragedy particularly entertaining: It led to my liberation!

 

Let's just say there would be plenty of entertainment for you if you came to England.  It's pretty rare over here to find someone who doesn't support the use of deadly force to disarm and prohibit trading of firearms.

 

I'd like to think the recent tragedy in Paris would make many British people reconsider their stance, but it's doubtful. 

 

I've read-up on what I'm aloud to use to defend myself here: it's pretty horrifying.  There's not much you can legally do.  We are very much encouraged here to "call for help", eg carry a loud siren, scream/shout, ring 999 (our emergency number), honk your horn, trigger a silent attack alarm.

[dsayers]

What the gun control advocates don't ever talk about is how many times firearms are used to save a life or stop a crime by lawfully shooting or deterring a criminal. Any gun homicide can look bad on paper because it doesn't not distinguish between murder, manslaughter, and lawful self-defense.

I'm quoting this to emphasize the "lawfully shooting OR DETERRING A CRIMINAL." I've been forced to pull a gun on another human being four times. Never once did I even have to put my finger in the trigger guard because the presentation of the gun was enough to diffuse the situation. A lot of people forget this. Or the fact that just allowing for private gun carry can be correlated with reduced crime. Which logically follows. Your common criminals are like any other animal; They seek the path of least resistance. It's a lot easier to commit a crime if you can tell by the labeling on a car or the uniform on a person that they're able to stop you. When that capability is extended to everybody, suddenly it's not so easy.

 

I understand that it is not guns themselves that kill, and that you can kill in other ways. But it makes it harder to argue against gun control if there are examples of places where it does work. Even the article you link to concludes, after going through murder rates in Australia, the UK and USA: "So do police carrying guns make for a safer country? No, not according to these figures. Do restrictions on private gun ownership make for a safer country? Yes, it looks pretty conclusive to me."

 

It seems that, even when you account for overall murders as opposed to only gun murders, USA still has a much larger murder rate than Australia, England (and probably any other western country). I find it hard to reject that it could have something to do with the very high gun ownership in USA.. 

With all due respect, I think you missed the point. First of all, it's not gun control. Gun control is treating every firearm as if it's loaded, never pointing it at anything you don't intend to destroy, never putting your finger on the trigger until you're ready to shoot, knowing your target and what is beyond, using two hands and the sights, etc. What's actually being talked about when people say gun control is PEOPLE control.

 

A LEO is a human being. They are not fundamentally different from any other human. So unless people are talking about blanket disarmament, they're not talking about guns anymore. And if they are, they have yet to account for criminals who would just get them illegally, same as they do where there aren't bans and where there are. We haven't yet perfected the technology allowing us to close our eyes and wish something out of existence. Until that time, "guns exist" is a fact. Banning a gun (or anything that isn't theft, assault, rape, or murder) is just another way of saying "we're allowed to initiate the use of force against you for unprincipled reasons simply because we say so."

 

A number of years ago, there was an incident where a legally armed man who was additionally licensed as a firearm bearing security guard/private investigator was messed with by a cop (who had a gun) because he had a gun. This cop (among other things) illegally cut his driver's license in half on the scene, in front of his young daughter who was with him at the time. A local guns rights group arranged for an open carry walk (which is legal where I live). Over 70 people assembled, most of them dual-wielding, and we marched on the local police station, took pictures, and then marched to a local restaurant for brunch (the police were notified in advance and permission was secured from the restaurant). Anecdotal evidence: I've never felt safer in my life than walking among those 70 strangers, with well over 100 guns between them (compared to my one on that day). Compare this to the behaviors of the one, armed cop that precipitated this. Just as that article I linked before said "it's a cop, so that's okay." This is not a rational conclusion and the failure to account for this perception means that so-called gun control advocates are not being honest.

[Xdreamist]

I understand how you feel; Australian's have a compliant slave mentality to Government. It makes me sick. We're literally not allowed to carry any item of defense on our person.

 

If you really want to bother with pragmatic instead of ethical arguments:

 

If we look here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

 

...I'm going to add actual "homicides", and count all the "undetermined" gun deaths as potential homicides (and no, I'm not concerned about suicides, it's 100% within every person's agency to take their own life - Or accidents, which would be a pointless statistic to include when attempting to determine acts of purposeful violence) - which gives us the following numbers per 100,000:

 

Australia: 0.19

Switzerland:  0.3

USA: 3.64

 

To easier compare:

 

Australia  = 1

Switzerland  = 1.57

USA  = 19.15

 

According to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland

 

 

In Switzerland, with the latest statistics posted, with it's population of only ~8.2 million: They have around 420,000 fully automatic assault-rifles (machine guns), and 320,000 semi-auto rifles and pistols, kept in private homes around the country.

 

...From that alone it's very obvious that the legal gun ownership rate has VERY little to do with the homicide rates in a country. I don't understand how that could possibly be rationally debatable.

 

 

As far as the US goes, here are some useful facts:

http://americangunfacts.com/

 

If you want to look more into how the 1996 laws effected gun trends, I'd suggest looking up the studies done by: 

 

Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran - Enhancing Evidence-Based Policy: Principles and Practice from a Case Study of Australian Firearms Legislation

Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran - Mass Shootings in Australia and New Zealand: A Descriptive Study of Incidence

Wang-Sheng Lee and Sandy Suardi - The Australian firearms buyback and its effect on gun deaths

[Thus_Spake_the_Nightspirit]

Australia may not have "mass shootings" of schools as often as America, but the population here is about the size of California. And we definitely do have gun crime. It's almost never highly publicised, but it does get reported. It's just usually pushed to the back of the newspaper and only given a small blurb. There are gun murders in Australia, almost every day, despite the ban, and they are never committed by those of us who legally own them.

 

Australia's lower crime rate might have something to do with the fact that until quite recently, they were not taking in hordes of immigrants of questionable backgrounds. The more racially diverse Australia becomes, the more violent crime there will be. It's not hard to see that most of this crime is clustered around the neighbourhoods with a lot of council flats where these newcomers tend to end up.

 

The average Australian doesn't know much about crime or the realities of living in close proximity to it. Most them have never seen a real gun, let alone handled or fired one, so they are irrationally afraid of them. They love to pretend they are morally superior to Americans because of their gun ban and take every gun-related tragedy in the US as an opportunity to pat themselves on the back.

 

I'm an American, so when people here hear my accent, a lot of times they will immediately bring up the gun issue (because asking a total stranger for their opinion on guns is great introductory conversation!) and the amount of misinformation they have is astonishing. One Aussie fellow I spoke with recently believed the 2nd amendment was put in place so the colonists could legally fight against the British. He didn't believe me when I told him the 2nd amendment wasn't yet in existence during the Revolutionary War.

[Coonage]

That reminds me of the Simpson's episode, where Homer offers to buy Lisa's 'Tiger charm' rock.    To say that "...places where it does work" is a logical fallacy, no?

 

How do you measure if it's working? Is it even doing what was intended? Frequently, the term "gun control" is merely liberal-speak, for disarmament and prohibition, disguised as "public safety initiatives."

 

'Violence'  (note:the term "gun violence' is a silly misdirection) is a symptom of a larger problem. The idea that firearm's prohibition will "clean up the ghetto," is really no different than the idea, that jamming a Kleenex up your runny nose, will clear up your cold.

 

If I had a sig line, it would read something to the effect of: I own guns, I love guns. Deal with it!   Merry Christmas!

[AccuTron]

Some questions I had have been answered:  crime is clustered in immigrant/ghetto areas; and significant unreported incidents exist.

 

I have another question, re Australians being easy to disarm.  In the USA, whatever the reality, there is a strong cultural heritage of gun ownership, frontier skills, protecting the farm, etc.  Australia had Botany Bay.  Not to suggest Aus. farms don't need protected, but what is different?  Different threats?  Different cultural history?

I just glanced thru the article a bit, had to stop once Obama started pooping into the microphone.  So Big O is gonna use his powers to stop mass killings?  No need, here, to go over the expanse of illogic there.  

 

What really gets me, is that a whitey shot some blacks, step one.  Obama tries to be heroic, step two, lookin' good on camera.  But what did that shooter have in mind to begin with, and if not him, how many other potentials?  I don't know how many of them are aware, but AGW is 100% fraud, Obama claims it as his legacy, ergo Obama is the biggest cultural and economic rapist, just about ever, along with Gore, etc.  It might be other topics.  "That damn nigger in the white house" becomes an attractive phrase.  Is the shooter disgusted at the media and Democratic All Night Party of trashing truth, culture, and ironically gender?  Like Obama supports?  Obama is the ultimate fraud.  Even for politics, he stands out.

[dsayers]

what is different?  Different threats?  Different cultural history?

The American Revolution was won against a larger army. Firearms were one of the great equalizers, so that is why they felt the need to enumerate their importance.