News & Events Gun Control is NOT WORKING

[Scotland]

If guns were more readily available for "self defence" purposes here I don't think I'd want one. The way our pissweak justice system works if some hoodlum broke into my house in the middle of the night and I pulled a gun on him I'd end up being the one going to jail then having to pay him damages for emotional distress...

Anyway, I've fired a few guns in the states to give it a try. Pistols and rifles are relatively accurate if you know what you're doing, and shotguns are good if you want to put a large hole in something. Guns like Uzis and AKs are about as precise as tipping a bucket of water into a shot glass. I don't know why anyone would think being able to own a gun like that is a good idea.

 

[Blackout]

If guns were more readily available for "self defence" purposes here I don't think I'd want one. The way our pissweak justice system works if some hoodlum broke into my house in the middle of the night and I pulled a gun on him I'd end up being the one going to jail then having to pay him damages for emotional distress...

Anyway, I've fired a few guns in the states to give it a try. Pistols and rifles are relatively accurate if you know what you're doing, and shotguns are good if you want to put a large hole in something. Guns like Uzis and AKs are about as precise as tipping a bucket of water into a shot glass. I don't know why anyone would think being able to own a gun like that is a good idea.

Because... real men have high-powered assault rifles.

 

[vealesy]

Surely you draw the line some where? Should criminals be sold guns? Should bombs and explosives be allowed?

Yeh maybe we should ban bunnings and the internet.

 

[MrCharisma]

Yeh maybe we should ban bunnings and the internet.

lol.

 

[vealesy]

lol.

Exactly.

 

[MrCharisma]

Exactly.

I'm lol'ing at your silliness, not agreeing with you.

 

[little graham]

Are they still recovering weapons from criminals and tying them to crime scenes even though they were handed over to police during the Howard gov buy back scheme?

 

[Sterge]

These are the types of awesome things that happen when every nut job has a gun

It was about 2:30am on Saturday when Renisha McBride was reportedly in a car accident. Her mobile phone's battery was dead so she sought help at a home in Dearborn Heights, Detroit.
But the Detroit News reports that she was killed with a single gunshot wound to the head in apparent self-defence by a man who believed she was an intruder.

http://www.news.com.au/world/woman-...-heights-detroit/story-fndir2ev-1226755510304

 

[vealesy]

Do soldiers and cops count as nut jobs?

 

[The Passenger]

Do soldiers and cops count as nut jobs?

I would be more comfortable if cops didn't have guns as well.

You don't really see soldiers on the streets.

And a lot of cops and soldiers are nut jobs too. Not all, but a solid % - higher than the general population imo.

 

[stralia]

Link?

Unfortunately, for gun control advocates, the reality is that defensive gun use is a very common occurrence. According to our own federal government's National Institute of Justice (US Department of Justice), there are at least 1.5 million defensive gun uses (DGUs) that occur in this country every year.

http://www.examiner.com/article/a-practical-look-at-the-reality-of-defensive-gun-use

And a 22 wouldnt do the job? Only high powered semi autos?

Unless you're a great shot and calm enough to put one in someones eye I wouldn't want to rely on a 22 for self defence.

On a funny note a mate of mine copped a 22 ricochet to the shoulder while small game hunting. It didn't penetrate the skin but he called me straight away freaking the **** out because he was also tripping balls on acid at the time.... Don't do acid and go shooting, kids (< important comma).

Pay that. Stralia is a good bloke.

Cheers bro... It's good to have a sparring partner that can handle the banter.

If you actually look at the graph (i know it's hard to ignore the misleading long term trend line) the gun homicide rate from 89-90 to 95-96 was actually rising faster than the knife/sharp instrument rate from the same time which trend line has remained relatively linear. I'm not surprised you want to buy the rock.

Not really:

The downward trend started in 87. The bump in 96 is solely due to Port Arthur.

Yeh maybe we should ban bunnings and the internet.

Don't even need to make bombs. In theory if I wanted to destroy everything someone loved I could do it with $10 worth of unleaded... Maybe $20 at today's prices.

 

[Lach72]

Moar guns:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/388093/4-year-old-us-boy-shoots-friend-in-head

NEW YORK—A four-year-old American boy shot and wounded a six-year-old friend in the head Tuesday, police said, the second such accident involving children in a day.
Police in the New Jersey town of Toms River said the young boy took a .22-cal. rifle and shot his friend at a distance of about 14 meters (45 feet). It was unclear why the weapon discharged.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/boy-8-shoots-friend-5-head-accident-article-1.1342802

​

An 8-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed a 5-year-old friend with a .22-caliber rifle on Saturday, police in Denton, Texas, say.

http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Crump-Murder-221470761.html

Boyhood Friend Shoots Teen 10 Times Over $60 PlayStation 3: Police

http://www.wlwt.com/news/national/b...aps/-/9837944/22588758/-/2xep9qz/-/index.html

Babysitter charged in 5-year-old's death

19-year-old babysitter had removed gun from safe, police say

Hey Vealesy, your 70 old mother babysit?​

 

[Illinois Nazi]

Vealesy, you don't need a gun for self defence. Just throw your disease-ridden children at them.

 

[Thrawn]

I've put accurate rounds from .22's into puddy cats and still they survive.

You shouldn't even be using a gun on an animal when you know it will survive the hit.

 

[Confuscius]

What about Switzerland? How come no one ever says Switzerland?

Because it doesn't pander to the scare mentality

Isn't it compulsory for all males to serve time in the military in Switzerland? So they've all received some form of training with their firearms at the very least whilst having quite a few women volunteer as well.

So unless you want conscription reintroduced, that's probably why nobody mentions Switzerland...

 

[little graham]

You shouldn't even be using a gun on an animal when you know it will survive the hit.

I would of preferred an m60 (or even grenade launcher) but you crazy intolerant misinformed ignorant city folk won't let me.

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

The major problem that I see with the current gun control legislation in Australia, is that if we ever have a zombie apocalypse I'm going to have to do a lot of caving in of heads with blunt objects.

A good supply of firearms and ammo for them would make things easier. I could shoot the zombies in the head from a distance and not have to risk any splatter on my face.

If I had to rely on blunt force trauma then I'd have to wear a mask over my face so that any droplets didn't infect me thus robbing the zombies of the opportunity to see how pretty I am before I stove their heads in

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

Because their livelihood depends literally on how accurately they can present and disseminate information. They are specialised in their field. If you don't trust education/logical thought at all, and consider the opinion of the average man to be worth the same as the opinion of a specialist, maybe you should just go live in the woods as a hermit? You certainly don't belong in modern society.

Providing they have practical experiences to go along with their theoretical ideas. It's not uncommon for people to be highly intelligent yet have almost zero relevant life experiences.

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

If someone wants to get their hands on a gun then it can be done.

That there are things in place which makes it a little more tricky to be done, particularly for people who may only have fleeting urges they want to take advantage of, is not a particularly bad thing for mine.

There are very few things on this planet that concern me, but guns and weapons are one.

In saying that neither are near as big an issue as they are made out to be in Australia, and most weapon related problems are kept to people within "gangs" (once again, the gang issues is another blown out of proportion by our media).

Interestingly in Ireland, a country where the police (garda) don't have guns, the gun homicide rate is 0.61 per 100k population in 2006. Ours was 1.3 in 2006/07.

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/cp/ireland
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide.html

The highlighted is probably the most important aspect of our gun control for me. It takes away the opportunity for a by and large law abiding citizen from, in a fit of rage, grabbing a gun and doing something impulsive that will have ramifications for not only them for the rest of their lives. Yes they can walk into the kitchen and grab a carving knife and kill someone with it but I'd rather a mad person with a knife as opposed to a mad person with a multi shot firearm with potentially multi shot magazines to go with it.

Without wanting to derail the thread into a whole conspiracy theory discussion, in current day Australia would a Martin Bryant be able to cause the carnage that he did in 1996? I doubt he'd even be able to get his hands on the weapons that he used.

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

Well, that isn't actually the case.

"The hypothesis that the removal of a large number of firearms owned by civilians [would lead to fewer gun-related deaths] is not borne out by the evidence." - Samara McPhedran, University of Sydney

This would say otherwise to the highlighted above.

The National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP) has been compiled and analysed now for 21 years – since 1989. Through it, the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) monitors trends and patterns in homicide across Australian jurisdictions. NHMP data are the most comprehensive collection on homicide in Australia, providing details of victims, offenders and circumstances of incidents.
There has been a steady decrease over the past three decades of homicides within Australia. Over the latest two year reporting period, there were 510 homicide incidents involving 541 victims and 611 offenders. Following a decline in the number of incidents, victims and offenders in 2008–09 over the previously published 2007–08 figures, there was a marginal increase in the number of homicides in 2009–10. However, the rate of homicide remained at a historic low of 1.2 deaths per 100,000 persons.
While gun related homicide has dropped to an historic low of 13%, the proportion of people dying through stab wounds has increased from 30% to 41% over the last 10 years
The current report marks a shift from annual to biennial reporting and depicts new data on homicide in Australia for the period from 1 July 2008 to 30 June 2010.

Sarah McPhedran by the way, who you've quoted, is a representative of the International Coalition of Women Shooters and Hunters Association.







Also, since the 96' buy back, assault has grown at 5% a year- four times the annual growth of the population in the same time.

Imagine if during those assaults even a small number of them had a gun tucked into the back of their pants or in the pocket of their jacket.

And 96' seems to roughly mark a base level of armed and unarmed robbery.

Increased security measures coupled with better technologies may have had a lot to do with the drop off. Armed robberies now don't seem to be the old classic of armed men raiding a bank from what we read they tend to be desperate druggoes with knives. Thank goodness they don't have guns.


Yeah, they have... Well, if you don't consider what happened at Monash Uni a mass shooting.

But mass shootings have also stopped in New Zealand, where they have 1.1 million registered firearms in a population of 4.4 million compared to our 2.7 million registered firearms in a population of 23.3 million, and who have much less restrictive gun laws than our own...

And in countries with very strict gun laws, mass shootings have continued:

2010 in the UK, Derrick Bird killed 12 people and injured 11 before killing himself in
Cumbria.

2009, in Germany, 17 year old Tim Kretschmer went on a shooting spree that claimed the lives of 15 people.

2002 also in Germany, 19 year old Robert Steinhäuser shot and killed 16 people before taking his own life.


Any relationship between gun control creating an increase in public safety is flimsy at best (and in a lot of cases the correlation is reversed... see DC, Chicago, Jamaica).

So keeping in mind the recent spate of violent home invasions, if you really think gun control will make you safer, I invite you to put a 'gun-free zone' sign up out the front of your house and see how well you sleep.

Read above in blue.

If you want unbiased numbers go to the Federal Government, Australian Institute of Criminology and have a look at the National Homicide Monitoring Program.

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

In 1970, 1,061 people died on Victorian roads and 3,798 died nationally. Fast forward to 2012 and despite the huge increase in population and the increased number of cars on the road and new distractions like phones, 282 died on Victorian roads and 1,308 nationally.

What happened? Current revenue raising notwithstanding, they introduced seatbelt laws and gradually cracked down on drink driving as well as continued education and of course the increased safety aspects of vehicles.

Government legislation with regards to vehicles and road use have saved lives and Government legislation with regards to firearms have undoubtedly save lives.

 

[The Passenger]

Without wanting to derail the thread into a whole conspiracy theory discussion, in current day Australia would a Martin Bryant be able to cause the carnage that he did in 1996? I doubt he'd even be able to get his hands on the weapons that he used.

Anyone willing commit anything if they have enough will to do it.

One thing you read from pro gun people is "If the population had guns they could take down a guy as soon as he starts his murder spree".... But when was the last (or first) time that a civilian person shot down a bloke in the middle of murder spree? Happy to be pointed out wrong here but I've never read of it happening. And even if has happened then it's a very rare occurrence. In the majority of these massacres everyone is just running to get the **** out of there.

 

[MrCharisma]

http://www.examiner.com/article/a-practical-look-at-the-reality-of-defensive-gun-use

Did you read the actual study though? https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf

Some notes from the author:

This survey and others like it overestimate the frequency with which firearms were used by private citizens to defend against criminal attack."

Should the number of DGUs serve as a measure of the public benefit of private gun possession, even in principle? When it comes to DGUs, is more better? That is doubtful, for two kinds of reasons:

o First, people who draw their guns to defend themselves against perceived threats are not necessarily innocent victims; they may have started fights themselves or they may simply be mistaken about whether the other persons really intended to harm them. Survey interviewers must take the respondent's word for what happened and why; a competent police investigation of the same incident would interview all parties before reaching a conclusion

o Second and more generally, the number of DGUs tells us little about the most important effects on crime of widespread gun ownership. When a high percentage of homes, vehicles, and even purses contain guns, that presumably has an important effect on the behavior of predatory criminals. Some may be deterred or diverted to other types of crime. Others may change tactics, acquiring a gun themselves or in some other way seeking to preempt gun use by the intended victim.[16] Such consequences presumably have an important effect on criminal victimization rates but are in no way reflected in the DGU count



"Any estimate of the incidence of a rare event based on screening the general population is likely to have a positive bias. The reason can best be explained by use of an epidemiological framework.[15] Screening tests are always subject to error, whether the "test" is a medical examination for cancer or an interview question for DGUs. The errors are either "false negatives" or "false positives." If the latter tend to outnumber the former, the population prevalence will be exaggerated."

The reason this sort of bias can be expected in the case of rare events boils down to a matter of arithmetic. Suppose the true prevalence is 1 in 1,000. Then out of every 1,000 respondents, only 1 can possibly supply a "false negative," whereas any of the 999 may provide a "false positive." If even 2 of the 999 provide a false positive, the result will be a positive bias--regardless of whether the one true positive tells the truth.

Respondents might falsely provide a positive response to the DGU question for any of a number of reasons:

o They may want to impress the interviewer by their heroism and hence exaggerate a trivial event.

o They may be genuinely confused due to substance abuse, mental illness, or simply less-than-accurate memories.

o They may actually have used a gun defensively within the last couple of years but falsely report it as occurring in the previous year--a phenomenon known as "telescoping."

Of course, it is easy to imagine the reasons why that rare respondent who actually did use a gun defensively within the time frame may have decided not to report it to the interviewer. But again, the arithmetic dictates that the false positives will likely predominate.

one woman reported 52 (defensive gun uses in a year)

The authors clearly state the DGU estimates are complete bullshit and there is no link between public safety and DGU .

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

Fairly sure you're not permitted to use any firearm in self defence in Australia. I know its definitely the case for pistols.

And seriously, what's wrong with stabbing people to death anyway? If you absolutely have to kill, show some guts and do it up close and personal.

Don't know about the pistols bit but as long as you could justify it then I don't expect there'd be any problems with it.

Crimes Act 1958 - SECT 462A Use of force to prevent the commission of an indictable offence
462A. Use of force to prevent the commission of an indictable offence
A person may use such force not disproportionate to the objective as he believes on reasonable grounds to be necessary to prevent the commission, continuance or completion of an indictable offence or to effect or assist in effecting the lawful arrest of a person committing or suspected of committing any offence.

 

[Herne Hill Hammer]

Anyone willing commit anything if they have enough will to do it.

One thing you read from pro gun people is "If the population had guns they could take down a guy as soon as he starts his murder spree".... But when was the last (or first) time that a civilian person shot down a bloke in the middle of murder spree? Happy to be pointed out wrong here but I've never read of it happening. And even if has happened then it's a very rare occurrence. In the majority of these massacres everyone is just running to get the **** out of there.

We had this discussion in another thread following the shooting spree in the cinema in America a year or so ago.

An American joined in the discussion and told us how if he and his mates were there with their handguns that the shooter wouldn't have been able to shoot so many people because they would have put him down.

I asked him how many instances there had been of this sort of action in the past and how he and his mates would have gone in a dark cinema with lots of people panicking and rushing around? I don't think I got a response to that one. They probably would have all ended up shooting each other.

It's absurd.