Research shows "In the two decades following the reforms, the annual rate of gun deaths fell from 2.9 per 100,000 in 1996 to 0.9 per 100,000 in 2016. "
What we can say with certainty is that in the 15 years prior to the first gun buyback in 1996, there had been 13 mass shootings in Australia. In the 21 years since more restrictive firearm policies came into effect, there has not been a single mass shooting in the country.
Good list, but the closest thing to a mass shooting after 1996 is a familicide with 7 killed [1]. It doesn't really compare to the Port Arthur massacre.
So, it works? But it's not enough to prove that something works (or maybe it is), there should ideally be some hypothetical method of action. What's the best theory on a voluntary buyback program stopping mass shootings?
No, it doesn't work. Picking one place an outcome happened after a law was passed, while ignoring all places similar laws were passed, is not how you evaluate evidence.
For example, New Zealand didn't pass such a law, but had the same reduction. The first world actually saw a massive homicide reduction during the same period. Some hypotheses include reduction of lead in the environment for ~prev 15-20 years, resulting in less violent people. Econ lit is full of references on all this stuff.
If you do stuff like try to correlate overall homicide rate among OECD countries (or even US states, or all countries) with gun ownership rates, you get a slightly negative correlation. If you expect less guns means less homicides, this should surprise you.
Lots of other countries also have passed similar laws - some saw increases in violence, some didn't. Picking one where violence went up and concluding laws don't work is as incorrect as picking Australia.
Cherry-picking and failure to do basic research aren't good for discussion. Not when others do it - an accusation you've slung in multiple branches of this thread - and not when you do it. Please do your part to keep this from deteriorating even further.
They didn't pass one in 1990s and they saw the same violence reduction that pretty much all first world countries saw from then till now. So attributing changes in Australia to a 1996 law without noticing the evidence for the same reduction elsewhere without such laws is still the same erroneous logic.
>Cherry-picking and failure to do basic research aren't good for discussion.
Maybe if you read what I wrote "For example, New Zealand didn't pass such a law, but had the same reduction. " and understood that to mean what it says - there was a reduction over that time without such a law. Passing one 20+ years after the fact does not change that those reductions were seen around the world, including New Zealand.
If they pass more next year it doesn't invalidate that without such a law they saw reductions. If they remove all laws in a decade it doesn't change the fact that without such a law they saw reductions. If the world ends it doesn't change the fact that without such a law they saw reductions.
See the difference?
>Please do your part to keep this from deteriorating even further.
Wow, those goalposts sure moved a long way! We were talking about the Osmington shooting in 2018, so 2019 is totally relevant. Also, New Zealand did pass an amendment to the Arms Act in 1992, in response to the Aramoana massacre. So even if you did want to restrict this to that narrower time range you're still very very wrong. You cherry-picked the numbers for reduction in deaths (without citation) and claimed it was unrelated to any law change only because you failed to do the basic research which would have shown that there was such a change after all. That's exactly the dishonesty you project onto others.
According to the guidelines, we're supposed to be curious, and not merely polemical. If you're not willing to learn the facts on your own, maybe at least engage people in actual dialogue instead of always attacking them for having reached different conclusions based on those facts.
Read the thread your replying into. Here's the descending comments:
1. Topic: Australia confiscated 650k guns. Murder and suicides plummeted. This was 1996
2. Death plummets in the decades following 1996.
3. There were more mass shootings in Australia before the 1996 law than after.
4. List with shootings since 1996.
5. List doesn't compare to the shooting in 1996.
6. Question on evidence about effectiveness of such buybacks, asking about the buyback from Australia working.....
7. Me: It doesn't necessarily work. Similarly to Australia since 1996, other countries saw similar reductions in murder, even without passing such a law. New Zealand for example saw this reduction without passing such a law (around the same time clearly implied, since we were talking about reduction in crime from around 1996....)
8. You: derailed by ignoring the thread and pointing out New Zealand passed a law in 2019, well after the crime drop.
You are really the only one in this thread confused about how to demonstrate if such laws work by looking at the evidence.
>We were talking about the Osmington shooting in 2018
Um no, we were not. It was mentioned in a comment about items on a list. The nest comment went back to asking about effectiveness of laws like the 1996 law, and the one after that clearly went back to discussing evidence for or against such laws by using other places, again from 1996. No one else jumped back to it except you much later...
>Also, New Zealand did pass an amendment to the Arms Act in 1992
Yep, and tell me exactly how many and which guns this removed? Oh, none? So they didn't remove any guns.... And how is this evidence in a thread asking about gun buyback law effectiveness? The summaries of the law even state that it did not change much, because like the US Assault Weapons Ban, it was based on scary looking things instead of important things like lethality.
But it didn't remove guns, and apparently didn't change much at all.
Since you seem unable to note the discussion is about homicide rates dropping pretty consistently despite local laws, here is New Zealand's homicide rate over the entire period in question [1]. Which laws caused this? Is there clear jumps?
Now do the same for pretty much any first world country, note the same reductions, note the variety of laws passed or not, and pretty soon you notice the laws do not seem to be the driving force in homicide reduction.
But go ahead and keep losing the thread and moving the goal posts.
> tell me exactly how many and which guns this removed? Oh, none?
What a convenient assumption ... but a false one. There was no headline-making gun buyback, but changes in classification and licensing requirements led to guns not being purchasable or leaving the system in the normal course of events. And when did this happen? Oh look, big drops in 1992 (right after Aramoana) and 2009 (after more amendments). All easy to find BTW.
The fact is that New Zealand has repeatedly tightened gun laws, and repeatedly seen corresponding drops in gun homicides. Let's not forget gun suicides and (mostly preventable) accidents, either. Reducing gun deaths is an ongoing process, but it's pretty obvious which approaches work and which don't. "Good guy with a gun" has failed the empirical test quite spectacularly, because - as we just saw in Uvalde - the "good guys" are often pretty bad. Overall, the people who love guns the most are disproportionately likely to be risk-naive (if not actively risk-seeking) and prone to escalation of conflict. Like some people on the internet.
The mental health issue we should be dealing with is not just individual violent ideation, but socially reinforced infatuation with tools that do have legitimate and safe uses but also have significant downsides when not properly regulated.
The data I just posted shows a 22% increase in 1992, 38% down in 1993, 35% up in 1994, 32% down in 1995, 12% up in 1996, 23% up in 1997, .....
There was drops before 1992 also, e.g. 16% down in 1991. Maybe the laws were not the magic cause of all this?
Know what trendlines are? Time smoothed analysis?
>and 2009
Data shows up 30% in 2009. I just posted the data.
I guess you ignore trendlines, right? Can I point to the large years of increase and simply claim the laws completely failed? You only seem able to point to successes and ignore failures.....
>The fact is that New Zealand has repeatedly tightened gun laws, and repeatedly seen corresponding drops in gun homicides.
The fact is also that the US saw fewer laws and had a much bigger drop [1] in homicide rates during the same period.... Is this evidence New Zealand's laws reduced the drop they would have gotten without any laws? This is the kind of voodoo you're chasing.
The fact is, as I've now written many times, is lots of countries saw the same drops without such laws. The question was do such laws cause the reductions, or are there other causes. Since cross country data shows these drops without such laws, that is strong evidence that the laws are not responsible for the drops. Criminology rese3atrch points more likely to reduction of lead in the environment being the cause.
If you really want to learn - lead paint was banned in New Zealand in 1979, gas phased out starting in 1986.... Australia stopped most lead paint use in 1970, and slowly banned it completely. US banned paint in 1978, This repeats all over the first world......
Want to see a source? [2]. Go ahead and keep beating the dead horse, and ignore that there is a really plausible, well-researched explanation for these drops, and it's not the one you keep implying is the reason.
You keep picking small pieces of data, ignoring counter facts, missing the overall trend, and ignoring the evidence I cite. Your "about" comment on your profile seems apt. I'm done.
The relevant data point for 1992 is the year after the amendment. That's a 39% drop from 1992 (1.9) to 1993 (1.16). Similarly, the relevant data for 2009 is the year after. That's down 36.5% from 2009 (1.55) to 2010 (0.98). Those are the two biggest drops on the chart. Citing the years before the law changes - in anticipation of changes that hadn't happened yet - is either asinine or dishonest. We don't do time travel around here.
> Know what trendlines are?
The trend line is from 1.86 in 1990 to 0.74 in 2017, as successively more restrictive laws were enacted. Apparently I'm not the one who needs to learn how to read a chart.
> lead paint was banned in New Zealand in 1979, gas phased out starting in 1986
And what were the effects on gun deaths in New Zealand? Why don't you cite those? Oh, I think we know. Those arguments are both post hoc and red herrings. You can add those to your collection, along with cherry picking and goalpost moving. Yes, you're done all right. Positively toasty.
The US also saw a huge decrease in gun deaths during that same time frame. In fact, most countries did, since violent crime peaked in 1994 and has been declining almost every year since then (pre-COVID).
More correctly, Australia had a voluntary gun buyback program, and a significant amount of the returned money went to buying more, newer guns. Today they have far more guns now than before the ban.
This is easily checked from Australian news, govt stats, and research papers covering the issue.
Its clear from the article that the objective of the buyback program was to lower the volume of certain kinds of guns, not all guns.
> One of the most significant provisions of the NFA was a flat-out ban on certain kinds of guns, such as automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. But there were already a number of such guns in circulation in Australia, and the NFA required getting them off the streets.
>the objective of the buyback program was to lower the volume of certain kinds of guns
Oh, so it only affected those types of guns that can kill people?
Note during the same timeframe, Australia saw the same decline in non-gun homicides as it did in gun homicides. Maybe there were bigger factors (lead removal from common goods for one) at play?
Note that New Zealand saw the same declines, despite no such gun laws, and the US saw the same declines, despite massive increases in guns owned, all during the same period. Most of the world saw this, and it's much more attributable to removing so much lead from society, resulting in less at risk people, than it was to laws.
> Today they have far more guns now than before the ban.
Technically true but per [0], the proportion of households with guns dropped from 20% to 6.2% and the number of licensed gun owners has dropped from 14.27% to 3.41%.
So yes, there are more guns but there are fewer people with guns.
Please don't cherry pick. Your source says gun ownership rate went from 13.58 / 100 people in 1997 to 14.83 in 2020. Selecting the sub category of those with licenses is dishonest.
Also the 6.2% is from 2005, and you picked (I think) the 20% from 1979. Why not pick the date nearest the law (1997) and 2020 for your numbers? Didn't like them?
In reality, it's best to look at academic literature on such topics, since there are nuances this low level stuff misses. A good report is from the Univ of Melbourne, 2008, which concludes:
"there is little evidence to suggest that it [NFA] had any significant effects on firearm homicides and suicides. In addition, there does not appear to be any substitution effects, specifically that reduced access to firearms may have let those bent on committing homicide or suicide to use alternative methods. Although gun buybacks appear to be a logical and sensible policy that helps to placate the public's fears, the evidence so far suggests that in the Australian context, the high expenditure incurred to fund the 1996 gun buyback has not translated into any tangible reductions in terms of firearms deaths."
People ignore the cost to Aus taxpayers to buy all those guns, money that could have been used for other things if, as these researchers claim, it had no effect on homicides.
This was the result of a 5-minute skim of the statistics to check the (unsourced) claim that Australia has more guns than it did before the ban. You're assuming dishonesty but the reality is that this was a quick internet comment, not a peer-reviewed academic paper. There's no dishonesty or malicious intent here, just laziness and lack of effort. If people wanted to check my work or learn more, I gave my source so they could do so.
That said, you do raise some valid points, even if they're wrapped in false accusations.
The gun ownership rate isn't relevant to my point. My point was that while the number of guns (i.e. gun ownership rate) has increased, the number of people owning those guns has decreased.
I "selected" (more noticed and found surprising) the subcategory of people with licenses because it was one of the the only available statistics indicating the number of people who owned guns (rather than the number of guns owned). This number is supported by the statistics for number of households with firearms.
The dates were laziness. I couldn't remember the year the NFA was introduced and couldn't be bothered, so I took the earliest datapoint and the latest datapoint.
Regarding the number of illicit firearms, I honestly just didn't think about it.
Taking this feedback into account, let's do as you suggest and look at the statistics in 1997, when the law was introduced, and 2020, the latest data we have available. First we'll look at the number of registered firearms compared to the number of license-holders, to get an idea of the trends in the legal world, then we'll look at illegal firearms.
In 1997, 6.52 of every 100 people was licensed to own a firearm. In the same year, there were 13.58 registered firearms per 100 people. This indicates that the average firearm license holder owned 2.1 firearms.
In 2020, 3.41 of every 100 people was licensed to own a firearm. In the same year, there were 13.81 registered firearms per 100 people. This indicates that the average firearm license holder owned 4.0 firearms.
So as you can see, despite all your objections, my point still holds: the number of firearms has increased but the number of people who own them has decreased. Gun ownership has consolidated.
But you brought up illicit firearm ownership. What if there's an enormous number of people who own guns without a license? Well that would be an illicit or unregistered firearm. The statistics point to a pretty constant number of 260k illicit or unregistered firearms, with the data covering 2006-2016. The number of licensed firearm owners fell from 1.2M in 1997 to 868k in 2020, so even if we assume every illicit firearm represents one person who bought or retained an illegal firearm in 1998 and kept it until now, we _still_ have fewer firearm owners than we did in 1997 and my point still holds.
Regarding the University of Melbourne report, it's not relevant to my point. The UoM report discusses gun deaths and gun violence. My point was only regarding the number of people who own guns.
So yes, I was lazy. I was not dishonest, I did not cherrypick and it's quite rude of you to throw around accusations like that.
Its clear from the article that the objective of the buyback program was to lower the volume of certain kinds of guns, not all guns.
> One of the most significant provisions of the NFA was a flat-out ban on certain kinds of guns, such as automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. But there were already a number of such guns in circulation in Australia, and the NFA required getting them off the streets.
Semiautomatic and shotguns are still quite popular in Australia. It is hard to get an exact breakdown since many Australians own them illegally though. There is a possibility there are more of these type guns than before. The only other type of guns are bolt action and revolvers. I just don't think there was a massive increase in ownership of those, but if you have any stats I would love to see them.
The number of automatic weapons dropped through the floor.
There have been no mass killings without automatic weapons (they're kind of necessary).
That said I agree this article is bad, and the authors should feel bad, they've clearly gone in with the goal of making the story "and the guns all went away"
[edit: sorry, I just saw who I replied to, and that was unintentional - I in no intent meant to be stalking or anything, many apologies]
>The number of automatic weapons dropped through the floor.
Do you have any numbers on this? As far as I know Australia had almost no automatic weapons prior to this buyback.
>There have been no mass killings without automatic weapons (they're kind of necessary).
This is just not true. Automatic weapons are very rarely (never?) used in mass killings. I think you are confusing semiautomatic (pull the trigger and one bullet is fired) and automatic (pull the trigger and bullets continue to shoot).
As I said in my other reply, to the majority of people, and especially in the context of gun control, the distinction between fully and semi automatic isn’t relevant, the relevant bit is the “automatic” part of the description, which you’ll note is present in both descriptions.
Sorry for being petulant but I’m tired of people defending americas failed response to gun violence with claims that gun control does nothing, when literally every other country that said enough was enough, introduced strict gun control and had immediate reduction, even complete cessation, in mass killings.
Yes gun control doesn’t solve all problems, but that’s like saying seatbelts are pointless because they don’t save you if you die when the handbrake fails and the car crushes you into a wall.
If somebody has no clue what they are even talking about (difference between semiautomatic and automatic) it is hard to take their arguments seriously. It doesn't really matter if a gun ban could save every single life. Gun owners in the US won't give up their guns. In other countries it is possible to restrict the right, but it is too enshrined in American culture. If there was a serious attempt to ban guns there would either be civil war or secession of a large number of states. It is just not going to happen so talking about it is irrelevant.
>The number of automatic weapons dropped through the floor.
There are almost no automatic weapons in circulation in the US and most people have never seen one in real life. Perhaps you mean semi-automatic? If so, that describes most guns other than revolvers and most shotguns.
>There have been no mass killings without automatic weapons (they're kind of necessary).
The truth is literally the exact opposite of this. There hasn't been a mass shooting with an automatic weapon in decades. The closest we have seen was the Las Vegas shooter who basically modified his semi-auto's with a bump stock which is illegal to buy now.
Also, the deadliest school shooting in US history was done by a student at Virginia Tech named Seung-Hui Cho and all he had was two handguns.
Ok, to everyone except people who seem to believe that guns are the solution to every problem, given the context there is no difference between automatic and semiautomatic.
The only thing that matters is the ability to fire sufficiently quickly to kill lots of kids.
I understand that for many Americans, the ability to play weekend warrior[1] takes priority over the risk of dozens of dead kids, but it does seem that the majority of even Americans prefer alive kids to dead ones.
[1] noting of course that weekend warriors are generally unwilling to actually do anything that puts them in danger to defend the country, they just want to shoot things.
I think one of the only things preventing the US from implementing Australia-style pandemic policies was the number of guns in civilian hands. As such, the pandemic taught me why America tolerates this sort of thing repeatedly.
The spreading of overly-simplistic black and white perspectives like this are why so many good, but nuanced, policies are politically dead in the water.
As with eliminating gun violence, there are plenty of solutions to drunk driving that don't involve eliminating alcohol from the equation, but they require that politicians and their constituents have the political will to try them.
What your saying is funny and sounds good, but is not contributing meaningfully to the conversation of how to solve these problems that need solving.
The article I'm responding to is about Australia confiscating (and banning) guns. That is hardly a "nuanced" policy and (I claim) is equivalent to banning alcohol to stop drunk driving deaths.
> is equivalent to banning alcohol to stop drunk driving deaths.
This is something most countries do for repeat drunk drivers. Ban them from driving, anyways. Most people do not have a problem with such a targeted law.
It's conceivable that a law banning repeat drunk drivers from consuming alcohol might have positive effects as well.
I seem to recall reading about a program that did exactly that. You could be sentenced to not drive, or you could be sentenced to not drink. I don't recall the details, but I think I read about it within the last six months or so.
The US has 400 million guns. Good luck with that, they'll take you away before you take them away.
It's a liberal voter delusion that the 2% of US guns in the hands of the military and police can be used to take away the 98% of guns owned by people who want to keep them. And it is a voter delusion, because the Democratic party wouldn't even be able to get the votes within its own party if there were a chance in hell of it passing, and they know it. It's just a wedge issue. It's effective because the upper-middle class liberal base can imagine themselves being affected by a mass shooting, so they care about it.
Mass shootings are a media boon, because they know that they don't have to do any work for the next week, just dust off all of the timeless partisan nonsense that they published during the last one. Right now a bunch of right-wing outlets are doing the same thing, and gun sales are about to go up.
The biggest issue/question that never comes up on this topic... do you really think the police and military are amenable to taking the weapons? These are people too. Some, possibly many in my experience, would be totally against doing that to the point of it turning into a coup.
The thing is, even in Australia we didn't try to take the guns. We just said, "give us your guns, and we will give you above market rate money. Oh and btw it is illegal to own a gun that isn't registered."
If your buy back program offers a higher rate than the market (black or otherwise). Then the buyback program will suck up the guns.
Yeah there are some unregistered guns particularly in rural areas. But they don't really enter the market, they are kept as prized possessions by their owners. There isn't a black market for these weapons that is easily accessible. Maybe if you're in one of the biker gangs you might have enough rep to get access but the mentally unstable 18 year old certainly can not.
Sure all possibilities. But the point about policies and laws is to effect change in aggregate. We have all kinds of laws that try to prevent bad stuff from happening, but it still happens. Just because we can't stop all, doesn't mean we shouldn't stop some.
What this logic does do, is give opponents a reason to bring up the slippery slope. If the laws don't stop it, then there will be more laws to try - ever increasing regulation with marginal impact.
I'd go out on a limb and suggest that way less than 98% of Americans support the government do nothing w.r.t. gun rights, even among those who actually own guns.
I find it strange when it's said in the US that universal healthcare is impossible when other countries have developed it. It's like if Russia had said after WWII that nuclear weapons are impossible and then proceeded to deny their existence.
What takes the boggle to the next level is suggesting that greater gun control measures in the US are impossible when they actually were the law within my lifetime.
FYI we didn't "confiscate" them. It was a buyback for any guns you didn't register. I am anti guns. But after living in the US for more than a decade I acknowledge a mandatory buyback program wouldn't work here. For idealogical, practical and economic reasons.
The USA is the largest manufacturer of guns in the world. And the domestic market is important to their business. In Australia we don't manufacture guns, so it's easy for us to say no more gun imports.
If people in the US want their guns, then whatever. But can we at least apply some degree of responsibility? It should not be easier to buy a gun than get drivers license. And make it difficult to get weapons which can cause outsized damage. We must acknowledge that all guns are not created equal. Some guns can kill more in a shorter period than others. If the lethality of a weapon doesn't matter then why can't we go buy tomahawk missiles or a tactical nuke. Personally I'd like an M1 Abrams Tank for self defense.
> But can we at least apply some degree of responsibility? It should not be easier to buy a gun than get drivers license. And make it difficult to get weapons which can cause outsized damage.
It's frustrating how small and simple of a step this could be but how unlikely a small, vocal, and politically active minority of American's are to it.
I'm not so sure about that. If it's such a minority as you claim, then there should be no problem with passing laws that restrict gun ownership. I think the truth is it's not a minority.
It may be a minority, but probably not a small one. The question then becomes about what restrictions would be found to be constitutional while being effective (and defining which specific part of the issue we're trying to fix). It's an interesting lead-in to the larger topic of when a majority should restrict the freedoms/rights of a minority and how that plays out - whether talking about guns or abortion, etc.
> 1. Four-in-ten U.S. adults say they live in a household with a gun, including 30% who say they personally own one, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2021.
So only 30% of people own guns, but if a family member was the one asked for the survey then we have 40% of households. <50% either way, so a minority.
Further:
> 5. Roughly half of Americans (53%) favor stricter gun laws, a decline since 2019, according to the Center’s April 2021 survey. Smaller shares say these laws are about right (32%) or should be less strict (14%). The share of Americans who say gun laws should be stricter has decreased from 60% in September 2019. Current opinions are in line with what they were in March 2017.
The question isn’t if gun owners are a minority, but rather if people unwilling to restrict gun owners are a minority.
For better or worse, people who don’t own guns and have no intention of getting a gun soon still don’t want to limit gun owners or limit their opportunity to own guns themselves.
Yes, gun control is the “easy” solution to gun crime but instead we have chosen the hard and painful solution because the easy way offends our core values. That’s an okay decision to make in a democracy, and different democracies can choose different ways. It’s not crazy.
Furthermore gun laws are getting stricter all the time, just simply to the point where it matches counties like the UK.
This is one of the interesting parts of gun control legislation. It often polls well in isolation but massively under-performs when it's a ballot initiative, even when the gun control side spends substantially more.
It is not easier to buy a gun than to get a driver's license (in part because you need that driver's license, and partly because driver's licenses are really freaking easy to get).
I'm not aware of any tests you are required to pass before you can have a firearm license. A driving test verifies if you are capable of driving a car. There should be gun safety and psych tests to verify you are capable and of sound mind for a gun.
Edit: Also, see New Hampshire (aka "New England's Texas"):
> In New Hampshire, the process for buying a gun is easy — easier than getting a driver’s license.
> You go to a gun store, you show your ID, and if you pass a background check that looks at your criminal record and some of your mental health history, you can walk out with a firearm. No training required. No registration of the gun. In the great majority of cases, not even a waiting period.
> Still sound arduous? Well, there’s a workaround: Private sellers — say, a family member or someone online — can sell you a gun without any background check at all.
> In New Hampshire, the process for buying a gun is easy — easier than getting a driver’s license.
> You go to a gun store, you show your ID, and if you pass a background check that looks at your criminal record and some of your mental health history...
I'm not sure how that shows getting a gun is easier than getting a driver's license. The ID in the sentence is generally your driver's license, and even if it's not, the process for getting a different kind of ID is roughly the same difficulty as getting a driver's license. If you grew up outside of a major city, you were also likely pipelined through the driver's license process while in high school.
To get a drivers license you often need an x amount of hours of supervised training and passing a written and driving test. I can buy a guy with a state issued ID (not necessarily a drivers license) and that’s it - perhaps a quick background check before the sale is approved.
"It should not be easier to buy a gun than get drivers license."
Why not? Cars claim more lives and are inherently more dangerous due to kinetic energy vs potential energy - essentially you're more likely to kill someone with your car than your gun because it takes active attention and constant decisions to control the kinetic energy of your vehicle. Frankly, we should be focusing on improving testing for drivers licenses to save lives. We are abysmal compared to most other developed nations.
Purchasing firearms is already regulated to varying degrees based on state. What restrictions are you proposing?
"If the lethality of a weapon doesn't matter"
It's about where to draw the line of the lethality of weapons allowed. Under the current laws there are a variety of restrictions/laws, but essentially non-automatic centerfire arms 50 cal and under is where that line is drawn. That could be redrawn again, but there would need to be discussion about where the new line would be and why.
And the real reason I wanted to comment but got caught up in those other replies... didn't the buyback miss a lot of weapons? I heard from a friend who lived over there for a while that many in the rural areas ignored the buy back and illegal guns are fairly common if you know where to look.
> Cars claim more lives and are inherently more dangerous due to kinetic energy vs potential energy
There are much larger targets then, like tobacco. But human lives are not just about statistics, it’s not as “easy” as optimizing a program where touching anything other than the hot loop is pretty much meaningless. Guns have a huge psychological effect - the quite large number of school shootings, while may not be that significant from a purely statistical view in number of deaths, are a constant stress factor for every children and parent (which by the way may itself have plenty of negative effects). Frankly, it is ridiculous that there is a market opening for bullet-proof backpacks viewing it from Europe.
Nonetheless, I have to agree that the USA’s gun problem can’t be solved easily due to the insane amount of already circulating guns. But their amount should be decreased over a long period and then the issue might be ripe for a solution somewhere down the road.
If it's really the stress of a rare event occurring, then shouldn't we be addressing the misperception around that risk? For myself, I never worried about that, and neither did my classmates. I don't worry about that now as a parent either.
> If it's really the stress of a rare event occurring, then shouldn't we be addressing the misperception around that risk?
As Bruce Schneier:
> Security is both a feeling and a reality, and they’re different. You can feel secure even though you’re not, and you can be secure even though you don’t feel it. There are two different concepts mapped onto the same word—the English language isn’t working very well for us here—and it can be hard to know which one we’re talking about when we use the word.
> didn't the buyback miss a lot of weapons? I heard from a friend who lived over there for a while that many in the rural areas ignored the buy back and illegal guns are fairly common if you know where to look.
No law is perfect. Yeah there are some unregistered guns. But i assure you that a "lot of guns" to an Aussie is very different from a "lot of guns" to an American.
> And make it difficult to get weapons which can cause outsized damage.
If people actually proposed laws that did that, we could have a real discussion about that. But instead, we get bills that are about outlawing guns that look scary. That's pointless. The pro-gun people (rightly, IMO) refuse to accept limitations that won't serve the stated purpose.
It's my understanding that it is already nearly impossible to purchase weapons that can cause outsized damage.
Three factors contribute to "outsized damage": mass of the bullet and load of the cartridge/shell, which mostly determines the total kinetic energy (colloquially called "stopping power") delivered to the target; rate of fire; and distance to target.
Assuming we agree that sport shooting and hunting are legitimate purposes for the use of firearms:
- The "stopping power" on the bullets sold really cannot be reduced. Large game targets such as deer and wild boar require much higher stopping power than are required to stop a human.
- Distance to target: since this is situational there really isn't much that legislation will help.
- Rate of fire: firearms are _made_ as single-action (bolt/lever/switch), semi-auto, and burst-fire/full-auto, with the latter only available to the military (and maybe SWAT units.) Most rifles and shotguns used for hunting are single-action. Pistols are usually semi-auto, which has legitimate sport-/trick-shooting purposes as well as being useful for scaring off smaller predators while out hunting (wolf, wildcat, maybe bear, etc.) If I recall correctly full-auto weapons are already illegal.
That leaves semi-auto rifles. I'm a little skeptical on the utility of semi-auto rifles for hunting, but larger game might require several quick shots with the right stopping power to bring down (again, wild boar fit this.) Maybe there is a little legislation that can happen here to limit the availability of semi-auto AR-15s to target/sport shooters or specific hunters, but it's hard to imagine carving out legislation specifically for that.
But when it comes down to it, there's not really a great way to prevent a quiet, lone-wolf type killer. A shotgun and pistol in close quarters will do as much or greater damage than a pair of AR-15s, and both shotgun and pistol have legitimate uses.
What I personally think is a better solution is to write legislation that adds responsibility to gun ownership. Firearms should be locked in a secure safe when not in use and access to the safe should be closely monitored by the owner of those firearms. Immediate action should be taken by the owner to report any unauthorized access, or access by an authorized person who is suspected to be suffering some mental health issues, to the police. Failure to secure firearms or to report unauthorized access in a timely fashion when said firearms are used to commit a crime should result in the firearm owner being at least partly culpable for those crimes.
Owner culpability won't solve all mass shootings, but it should start to eliminate some of the culture of callous disregard for human safety that some families seem to exhibit when it comes to handling firearms.
My favourite bit of trivia about American gun ownership is this:
All records are kept ON PAPER. The gun lobby has successfully lobbied that electronic records with easy searching would somehow infringe on people's rights.
The intent did not include any dork with a grudge.
Edit: I respected and still respect the gentlemen who taught me gun use and gun safety when I was a teenager. They understood their duties to their country - several of them had served in WW2 and had a sober perspective - and I have no doubt that men like them would and could help to put an end to our ongoing horrors.
This is an annoying article, as it reflects lazy research to support a predetermined conclusion.
This is annoying as it's so bad, that it provides evidence that "gun control reporting is misleading".
My understanding, and other commenters seem to agree, the gun buyback program didn't reduce gun ownership, and it also can't be tied to the reduction in casualties as those numbers were already tracking down before the buyback.
More accurate reporting would instead focus on the restrictions on types of guns that were legally permitted, and how those restrictions impacted the repeat of sprees (there have been none). Similar restrictions in the UK after their big shootings had similar near eradication of mass shootings.
The restrictions basically meant a complete ban on
* All self loading rifles
* All self loading shotguns
* All pump action shotguns
Now in addition to that people had to demonstrate actual need for weapons that they owned. That meant you had to prove you had a occupational need, were an active member of a shooting club, or you were an active hunter - and had proof of access to hunting land.
Gun licensing was divided into five different categories, which each had different requirements, but all required a pile of mandatory training.
Most countries other than the US have a pile of rules requiring safety+security of gun and ammunition storage, but afaict that doesn't have any impact mass shootings (and I don't see why it would?), it seems mostly to be responsible for the far lower rates of accidental child/child-involved death in non-US countries. I say this as someone who apparently pulled a rifle on my mum as a 4yo, before NZ had real weapon security rules, so I could easily have been an orphan due to NZ's lack of gun security laws at that point.
"murders and suicides plummeted"
But they didn't. At least not homicides. Homicides didn't plummet until early 2000s.
# of homicides by year (I'm not exactly sure how a year is counted, for example first year is 1989-1990, 1990-1991, etc:
307,324,313,332,323,327,303,299,328,305,310,351,299,289,248,283
It really falls off after the 283, but the 1995-97 numbers are right around 300.
Yeah, less than the previous years, but not by a lot (and as the article pointed out, there was already a downward trend)
After 1996 the number of homicides committed with a firearm went down, but the actual number of homicides didn't.
So, who gets to have guns then if they are confiscated from citizens? Only the elite and powerful? Those that have the money to hire police / special security personnel to protect them?
What’s stopping these crazy people from using other means possibly even more destructive if guns are somehow eliminated? Do we ban cars, trucks, fuel, fertilizers, chemicals, and poisonous household products as well?
There is a constitutional right to have guns in the US and a very conservative supreme court, so I doubt a draconian ban will have legs in the US anyway.
> Do we ban cars, trucks, fuel, fertilizers, chemicals, and poisonous household products as well?
Cars and trucks need licensing, large purchases of fertilizers are tracked (esp. post Oklahoma City), as are large purchases of fuel and chemicals (thanks meth epidemic and Breaking Bad).
The licensing and tracking of firearms in the US is… spotty.
Perhaps if some of the same measures were implemented it would help the situation. Massachusetts may be a good place to start:
> So, who gets to have guns then if they are confiscated from citizens? Only the elite and powerful?
I'm an Australian. The answer is anyone who wants to if you aren't on one of the usual lists (the same sort of lists US has). I know one person with 40 guns at home.
But ... there are rules. You have to have training, the sort of training you can typically only achieve by joining a gun club. You have to be registered. You have to have an approved gun safe. I think there is a regulation about storing the ammo separately. Nothing over the top, certainly nothing more burdensome than a car owner faces. Because it's not difficult we have our share of Olympic firearms champions, we have political parties called "The hunters and fishers party". It a wild guess, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Australia has the same proportion of people who enjoy hunting with guns as the US does. All this is allowed, and our Olympic shooters are celebrated, just like all other sports people.
> What’s stopping these crazy people from using other means possibly even more destructive if guns are somehow eliminated? Do we ban cars, trucks, fuel, fertilizers, chemicals, and poisonous household products as well?
I don't know what stops them from finding other ways to kill themselves (suicide) and or others. But the statistics are pretty clear. They don't do it.
Which does make you wonder about the difference between the homicide rates in the US and the rest of the world. If there is one clear difference in attitude, it's this: owning a gun for personal protection is not considered good form any Western country other than the USA. And that unsurprisingly means people don't shoot each other as often, which translates to fewer gun homicides. For example USA gun ownership: 120/100 people [0]. Australia gun ownership: 30/100. So maybe 4 times any many guns in the USA. But gun homicides: 4.12/100 in the USA, 0.18 in Australia. 22 times higher.
To state the obvious: if the goal of "owning a gun for personal protection" is to keep you safer, it ain't working. In fact it's a disaster - the cure is far worse than the disease. The civil society in west is usually very good at digesting that sort of information, and acting on it. (They don't always act on it by banning or restricting gun ownership - Australia certainly didn't.) The fact the the USA's civil society hasn't managed that makes us think you yankees are a little odd.
> For example USA gun ownership: 120/100 people [0]. Australia gun ownership: 30/100. So maybe 4 times any many guns in the USA. But gun homicides: 4.12/100 in the USA, 0.18 in Australia. 22 times higher
> The fact the the USA's civil society hasn't managed that makes us think you yankees are a little odd.
First, your stat on US homicide is off by a factor of 1,000. It should read 4.12/100,000.
This is going to be controversial, but the facts are the facts. Gun homicides in the US are vastly skewed toward a single group of people in urban areas. 34.9 gun homicide victims per 100,000 people are blacks. 1.5 gun homicide victims per 100,000 people are whites. Blacks are 23.3 times higher than whites to be victims of a gun homicide. Furthermore, the black victims lived in large urban areas and were shot by other blacks around 90% of the time.
Now, some articles suggest that most guns are owned by white men, but I do not share the same trust in the estimate of guns that you may. How are these estimates arrived at? Anyway, assuming that one accepts the premise that most guns are owned by white men in rural America and that proliferation of guns is the main cause of gun homicides, why aren’t most gun homicides committed in rural areas by white men? Do you see the problem? Or are Australians a little odd?
The issue appears to not be due to high numbers of guns. It appears to be highly concentrated in urban black communities. So why is this not discussed by the media and mostly Democratic politicians, especially when it ravages blacks in urban communities that are governed by politicians that are Democrats? Probably for the same reason that my response which is based on cold hard statistics will be flagged or voted down. The oddity of the US is not the people, but the pathetic politicians that are more concerned about a political talking point than finding the root cause of the issue.
> So why is this not discussed by the media and mostly Democratic politicians, especially when it ravages blacks in urban communities that are governed by politicians that are Democrats?
One of the "facts are the facts" things you seem to have missed is gun related deaths are highest (by far) in the Republican states. I don't whether that means it's a Republican or Democrat issue. I'm not from the USA I don't know the politics that well, but from a distance, it does look like it's mainly Republicans who say things like "the answer to the gun problem is more people wearing guns".
As for black vs white. There is a kernel of truth there - there is more violence in black communities, about double the death rates from what I can tell. But blacks only constitute 13% of the USA population. If you remove them the USA gun rates are still far higher than rest of the world - and that statistical difference is caused by the 80% white population, not the blacks.
And that's just homicides. Most gun related deaths are suicides, which are also obscenely high in the USA. When it comes to suicides, the figures are reversed - whites have over double the rates of blacks. That means when you include all gun related deaths, the whites actually worse rates than the blacks.
> more concerned about a political talking point than finding the root cause of the issue.
That is a downright weird observation. It was _you_ who introduced the Republican / Democrat divide here as a talking point, not some politician. It was you who brought in the largely irrelevant race issue, rather looking for a root cause. If you looking change the discussion into an honest one that might address the issue (assuming you want it addressed), then I'd start with the person in the mirror. If you can change him, you can probably convince anyone.
Finland is 3rd or 4th in gun ownership per capita after the US and Yemen - depending on whether you count the assault rifles the Swiss people store in their homes for military purposes.
We have had 3 school shootings ever. Total number of dead: 6. Last one was in 2008.
All guns in Finland are semi-automatic at most and clip/magazine size is limited for rifles and shotguns. Nobody _needs_ a full-auto weapon.
Over here can't get a gun unless you are a member of a gun club that'll vouch for you. You need to get a license from the police and a doctor's note. Until then you can use a clubs weapons on their premises under their supervision.
And when you finally get your gun, it MUST be stored in a regulated, locked, cabinet. Ammo in a separate, locked, fireproof cabinet. If someone finds out you're storing them on your mantle with the ammo right next to it you can wave your licenses and guns good bye.
"The Elite and Powerful" don't own guns, it's mostly just regular people who hunt or have a gun-related hobby like IPSC.
It's really easy to kill a dozen people with a full-auto assault rifle, much harder with a bolt-lock hunting rifle with a 4 round magazine. It's even harder to do it with a knife. And even harder to have the pre-planning to start building reliable bombs out of raw materials.
Oh and for the "crazy people", we have healthcare, people are actually taken care of. Prisons are for rehabilitation, not for punishment.
See response below on how high gun ownership is not the reason behind gun violence in the US.
Rehabilitation and not punishment is a noble goal for those imprisoned and I agree that the US has a poor track record for taking care of its citizens. In fact, the focus on gun ownership as the core reason for gun violence is yet another example of how US citizens are being mislead by politicians. Finland is a good example of a country that has high gun ownership with a low incidence of gun homicides; if you exclude several urban areas in the US, it would be the same here.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 174 ms ] threadhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Austral...
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmington_shooting
For example, New Zealand didn't pass such a law, but had the same reduction. The first world actually saw a massive homicide reduction during the same period. Some hypotheses include reduction of lead in the environment for ~prev 15-20 years, resulting in less violent people. Econ lit is full of references on all this stuff.
If you do stuff like try to correlate overall homicide rate among OECD countries (or even US states, or all countries) with gun ownership rates, you get a slightly negative correlation. If you expect less guns means less homicides, this should surprise you.
Lots of other countries also have passed similar laws - some saw increases in violence, some didn't. Picking one where violence went up and concluding laws don't work is as incorrect as picking Australia.
Yes, they bloody well did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_(Prohibited_Firearms,_Mag...
Cherry-picking and failure to do basic research aren't good for discussion. Not when others do it - an accusation you've slung in multiple branches of this thread - and not when you do it. Please do your part to keep this from deteriorating even further.
Yes, they passed one in 2019.
They didn't pass one in 1990s and they saw the same violence reduction that pretty much all first world countries saw from then till now. So attributing changes in Australia to a 1996 law without noticing the evidence for the same reduction elsewhere without such laws is still the same erroneous logic.
>Cherry-picking and failure to do basic research aren't good for discussion.
Maybe if you read what I wrote "For example, New Zealand didn't pass such a law, but had the same reduction. " and understood that to mean what it says - there was a reduction over that time without such a law. Passing one 20+ years after the fact does not change that those reductions were seen around the world, including New Zealand.
If they pass more next year it doesn't invalidate that without such a law they saw reductions. If they remove all laws in a decade it doesn't change the fact that without such a law they saw reductions. If the world ends it doesn't change the fact that without such a law they saw reductions.
See the difference?
>Please do your part to keep this from deteriorating even further.
Indeed.
Wow, those goalposts sure moved a long way! We were talking about the Osmington shooting in 2018, so 2019 is totally relevant. Also, New Zealand did pass an amendment to the Arms Act in 1992, in response to the Aramoana massacre. So even if you did want to restrict this to that narrower time range you're still very very wrong. You cherry-picked the numbers for reduction in deaths (without citation) and claimed it was unrelated to any law change only because you failed to do the basic research which would have shown that there was such a change after all. That's exactly the dishonesty you project onto others.
According to the guidelines, we're supposed to be curious, and not merely polemical. If you're not willing to learn the facts on your own, maybe at least engage people in actual dialogue instead of always attacking them for having reached different conclusions based on those facts.
Read the thread your replying into. Here's the descending comments:
1. Topic: Australia confiscated 650k guns. Murder and suicides plummeted. This was 1996
2. Death plummets in the decades following 1996.
3. There were more mass shootings in Australia before the 1996 law than after.
4. List with shootings since 1996.
5. List doesn't compare to the shooting in 1996.
6. Question on evidence about effectiveness of such buybacks, asking about the buyback from Australia working.....
7. Me: It doesn't necessarily work. Similarly to Australia since 1996, other countries saw similar reductions in murder, even without passing such a law. New Zealand for example saw this reduction without passing such a law (around the same time clearly implied, since we were talking about reduction in crime from around 1996....)
8. You: derailed by ignoring the thread and pointing out New Zealand passed a law in 2019, well after the crime drop.
You are really the only one in this thread confused about how to demonstrate if such laws work by looking at the evidence.
>We were talking about the Osmington shooting in 2018
Um no, we were not. It was mentioned in a comment about items on a list. The nest comment went back to asking about effectiveness of laws like the 1996 law, and the one after that clearly went back to discussing evidence for or against such laws by using other places, again from 1996. No one else jumped back to it except you much later...
>Also, New Zealand did pass an amendment to the Arms Act in 1992
Yep, and tell me exactly how many and which guns this removed? Oh, none? So they didn't remove any guns.... And how is this evidence in a thread asking about gun buyback law effectiveness? The summaries of the law even state that it did not change much, because like the US Assault Weapons Ban, it was based on scary looking things instead of important things like lethality.
But it didn't remove guns, and apparently didn't change much at all.
Since you seem unable to note the discussion is about homicide rates dropping pretty consistently despite local laws, here is New Zealand's homicide rate over the entire period in question [1]. Which laws caused this? Is there clear jumps?
Now do the same for pretty much any first world country, note the same reductions, note the variety of laws passed or not, and pretty soon you notice the laws do not seem to be the driving force in homicide reduction.
But go ahead and keep losing the thread and moving the goal posts.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NZL/new-zealand/murder...
What a convenient assumption ... but a false one. There was no headline-making gun buyback, but changes in classification and licensing requirements led to guns not being purchasable or leaving the system in the normal course of events. And when did this happen? Oh look, big drops in 1992 (right after Aramoana) and 2009 (after more amendments). All easy to find BTW.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_New_Zealand
The fact is that New Zealand has repeatedly tightened gun laws, and repeatedly seen corresponding drops in gun homicides. Let's not forget gun suicides and (mostly preventable) accidents, either. Reducing gun deaths is an ongoing process, but it's pretty obvious which approaches work and which don't. "Good guy with a gun" has failed the empirical test quite spectacularly, because - as we just saw in Uvalde - the "good guys" are often pretty bad. Overall, the people who love guns the most are disproportionately likely to be risk-naive (if not actively risk-seeking) and prone to escalation of conflict. Like some people on the internet.
The mental health issue we should be dealing with is not just individual violent ideation, but socially reinforced infatuation with tools that do have legitimate and safe uses but also have significant downsides when not properly regulated.
The data I just posted shows a 22% increase in 1992, 38% down in 1993, 35% up in 1994, 32% down in 1995, 12% up in 1996, 23% up in 1997, .....
There was drops before 1992 also, e.g. 16% down in 1991. Maybe the laws were not the magic cause of all this?
Know what trendlines are? Time smoothed analysis?
>and 2009
Data shows up 30% in 2009. I just posted the data.
I guess you ignore trendlines, right? Can I point to the large years of increase and simply claim the laws completely failed? You only seem able to point to successes and ignore failures.....
>The fact is that New Zealand has repeatedly tightened gun laws, and repeatedly seen corresponding drops in gun homicides.
The fact is also that the US saw fewer laws and had a much bigger drop [1] in homicide rates during the same period.... Is this evidence New Zealand's laws reduced the drop they would have gotten without any laws? This is the kind of voodoo you're chasing.
The fact is, as I've now written many times, is lots of countries saw the same drops without such laws. The question was do such laws cause the reductions, or are there other causes. Since cross country data shows these drops without such laws, that is strong evidence that the laws are not responsible for the drops. Criminology rese3atrch points more likely to reduction of lead in the environment being the cause.
If you really want to learn - lead paint was banned in New Zealand in 1979, gas phased out starting in 1986.... Australia stopped most lead paint use in 1970, and slowly banned it completely. US banned paint in 1978, This repeats all over the first world......
Want to see a source? [2]. Go ahead and keep beating the dead horse, and ignore that there is a really plausible, well-researched explanation for these drops, and it's not the one you keep implying is the reason.
You keep picking small pieces of data, ignoring counter facts, missing the overall trend, and ignoring the evidence I cite. Your "about" comment on your profile seems apt. I'm done.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murd...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Effect_on_crime...
> Know what trendlines are?
The trend line is from 1.86 in 1990 to 0.74 in 2017, as successively more restrictive laws were enacted. Apparently I'm not the one who needs to learn how to read a chart.
> lead paint was banned in New Zealand in 1979, gas phased out starting in 1986
And what were the effects on gun deaths in New Zealand? Why don't you cite those? Oh, I think we know. Those arguments are both post hoc and red herrings. You can add those to your collection, along with cherry picking and goalpost moving. Yes, you're done all right. Positively toasty.
How much of that can be attributed to the phasing out of lead paint? [0] Or easier access to abortions? [1]
[0] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lead-poisoning-linked-to-_b_3...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalized_abortion_and_crime_e...
This is easily checked from Australian news, govt stats, and research papers covering the issue.
The buyback program didn't have much, if any, effect on the rate of decline.
> One of the most significant provisions of the NFA was a flat-out ban on certain kinds of guns, such as automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. But there were already a number of such guns in circulation in Australia, and the NFA required getting them off the streets.
Oh, so it only affected those types of guns that can kill people?
Note during the same timeframe, Australia saw the same decline in non-gun homicides as it did in gun homicides. Maybe there were bigger factors (lead removal from common goods for one) at play?
Note that New Zealand saw the same declines, despite no such gun laws, and the US saw the same declines, despite massive increases in guns owned, all during the same period. Most of the world saw this, and it's much more attributable to removing so much lead from society, resulting in less at risk people, than it was to laws.
Technically true but per [0], the proportion of households with guns dropped from 20% to 6.2% and the number of licensed gun owners has dropped from 14.27% to 3.41%.
So yes, there are more guns but there are fewer people with guns.
[0]: https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/australia (looks like a random site but it's actually run by the University of Sydney)
Also the 6.2% is from 2005, and you picked (I think) the 20% from 1979. Why not pick the date nearest the law (1997) and 2020 for your numbers? Didn't like them?
In reality, it's best to look at academic literature on such topics, since there are nuances this low level stuff misses. A good report is from the Univ of Melbourne, 2008, which concludes:
"there is little evidence to suggest that it [NFA] had any significant effects on firearm homicides and suicides. In addition, there does not appear to be any substitution effects, specifically that reduced access to firearms may have let those bent on committing homicide or suicide to use alternative methods. Although gun buybacks appear to be a logical and sensible policy that helps to placate the public's fears, the evidence so far suggests that in the Australian context, the high expenditure incurred to fund the 1996 gun buyback has not translated into any tangible reductions in terms of firearms deaths."
People ignore the cost to Aus taxpayers to buy all those guns, money that could have been used for other things if, as these researchers claim, it had no effect on homicides.
[1] https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/australi...
Your summary seems incredibly dishonest.
That said, you do raise some valid points, even if they're wrapped in false accusations.
The gun ownership rate isn't relevant to my point. My point was that while the number of guns (i.e. gun ownership rate) has increased, the number of people owning those guns has decreased.
I "selected" (more noticed and found surprising) the subcategory of people with licenses because it was one of the the only available statistics indicating the number of people who owned guns (rather than the number of guns owned). This number is supported by the statistics for number of households with firearms.
The dates were laziness. I couldn't remember the year the NFA was introduced and couldn't be bothered, so I took the earliest datapoint and the latest datapoint.
Regarding the number of illicit firearms, I honestly just didn't think about it.
Taking this feedback into account, let's do as you suggest and look at the statistics in 1997, when the law was introduced, and 2020, the latest data we have available. First we'll look at the number of registered firearms compared to the number of license-holders, to get an idea of the trends in the legal world, then we'll look at illegal firearms.
In 1997, 6.52 of every 100 people was licensed to own a firearm. In the same year, there were 13.58 registered firearms per 100 people. This indicates that the average firearm license holder owned 2.1 firearms.
In 2020, 3.41 of every 100 people was licensed to own a firearm. In the same year, there were 13.81 registered firearms per 100 people. This indicates that the average firearm license holder owned 4.0 firearms.
So as you can see, despite all your objections, my point still holds: the number of firearms has increased but the number of people who own them has decreased. Gun ownership has consolidated.
But you brought up illicit firearm ownership. What if there's an enormous number of people who own guns without a license? Well that would be an illicit or unregistered firearm. The statistics point to a pretty constant number of 260k illicit or unregistered firearms, with the data covering 2006-2016. The number of licensed firearm owners fell from 1.2M in 1997 to 868k in 2020, so even if we assume every illicit firearm represents one person who bought or retained an illegal firearm in 1998 and kept it until now, we _still_ have fewer firearm owners than we did in 1997 and my point still holds.
Regarding the University of Melbourne report, it's not relevant to my point. The UoM report discusses gun deaths and gun violence. My point was only regarding the number of people who own guns.
So yes, I was lazy. I was not dishonest, I did not cherrypick and it's quite rude of you to throw around accusations like that.
https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/australia-more-guns-n...
> One of the most significant provisions of the NFA was a flat-out ban on certain kinds of guns, such as automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. But there were already a number of such guns in circulation in Australia, and the NFA required getting them off the streets.
There have been no mass killings without automatic weapons (they're kind of necessary).
That said I agree this article is bad, and the authors should feel bad, they've clearly gone in with the goal of making the story "and the guns all went away"
[edit: sorry, I just saw who I replied to, and that was unintentional - I in no intent meant to be stalking or anything, many apologies]
Do you have any numbers on this? As far as I know Australia had almost no automatic weapons prior to this buyback.
>There have been no mass killings without automatic weapons (they're kind of necessary).
This is just not true. Automatic weapons are very rarely (never?) used in mass killings. I think you are confusing semiautomatic (pull the trigger and one bullet is fired) and automatic (pull the trigger and bullets continue to shoot).
Sorry for being petulant but I’m tired of people defending americas failed response to gun violence with claims that gun control does nothing, when literally every other country that said enough was enough, introduced strict gun control and had immediate reduction, even complete cessation, in mass killings.
Yes gun control doesn’t solve all problems, but that’s like saying seatbelts are pointless because they don’t save you if you die when the handbrake fails and the car crushes you into a wall.
There are almost no automatic weapons in circulation in the US and most people have never seen one in real life. Perhaps you mean semi-automatic? If so, that describes most guns other than revolvers and most shotguns.
>There have been no mass killings without automatic weapons (they're kind of necessary).
The truth is literally the exact opposite of this. There hasn't been a mass shooting with an automatic weapon in decades. The closest we have seen was the Las Vegas shooter who basically modified his semi-auto's with a bump stock which is illegal to buy now.
Also, the deadliest school shooting in US history was done by a student at Virginia Tech named Seung-Hui Cho and all he had was two handguns.
The only thing that matters is the ability to fire sufficiently quickly to kill lots of kids.
I understand that for many Americans, the ability to play weekend warrior[1] takes priority over the risk of dozens of dead kids, but it does seem that the majority of even Americans prefer alive kids to dead ones.
[1] noting of course that weekend warriors are generally unwilling to actually do anything that puts them in danger to defend the country, they just want to shoot things.
See above (emphasis added).
https://www.gotocourt.com.au/legal-news/suspend-parliament/
As with eliminating gun violence, there are plenty of solutions to drunk driving that don't involve eliminating alcohol from the equation, but they require that politicians and their constituents have the political will to try them.
What your saying is funny and sounds good, but is not contributing meaningfully to the conversation of how to solve these problems that need solving.
This is something most countries do for repeat drunk drivers. Ban them from driving, anyways. Most people do not have a problem with such a targeted law.
It's conceivable that a law banning repeat drunk drivers from consuming alcohol might have positive effects as well.
Gov could just cover your insane Uber fees and would probably end up saving money.
> The service, known as “daiko” in Japan, gives inebriated people a lift home, along with their vehicles, after a night on the town.
* https://www.stripes.com/news/dial-a-driver-service-helps-us-...
It's a liberal voter delusion that the 2% of US guns in the hands of the military and police can be used to take away the 98% of guns owned by people who want to keep them. And it is a voter delusion, because the Democratic party wouldn't even be able to get the votes within its own party if there were a chance in hell of it passing, and they know it. It's just a wedge issue. It's effective because the upper-middle class liberal base can imagine themselves being affected by a mass shooting, so they care about it.
Mass shootings are a media boon, because they know that they don't have to do any work for the next week, just dust off all of the timeless partisan nonsense that they published during the last one. Right now a bunch of right-wing outlets are doing the same thing, and gun sales are about to go up.
If your buy back program offers a higher rate than the market (black or otherwise). Then the buyback program will suck up the guns.
Aren't there still a lot of unregistered guns in the rural areas? I had a friend who lived over there and said that was fairly common.
What takes the boggle to the next level is suggesting that greater gun control measures in the US are impossible when they actually were the law within my lifetime.
The USA is the largest manufacturer of guns in the world. And the domestic market is important to their business. In Australia we don't manufacture guns, so it's easy for us to say no more gun imports.
If people in the US want their guns, then whatever. But can we at least apply some degree of responsibility? It should not be easier to buy a gun than get drivers license. And make it difficult to get weapons which can cause outsized damage. We must acknowledge that all guns are not created equal. Some guns can kill more in a shorter period than others. If the lethality of a weapon doesn't matter then why can't we go buy tomahawk missiles or a tactical nuke. Personally I'd like an M1 Abrams Tank for self defense.
It's frustrating how small and simple of a step this could be but how unlikely a small, vocal, and politically active minority of American's are to it.
Have week been watching the same government for the last 6 years?
Survey data says otherwise:
> 1. Four-in-ten U.S. adults say they live in a household with a gun, including 30% who say they personally own one, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2021.
* https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/09/13/key-facts-a...
So only 30% of people own guns, but if a family member was the one asked for the survey then we have 40% of households. <50% either way, so a minority.
Further:
> 5. Roughly half of Americans (53%) favor stricter gun laws, a decline since 2019, according to the Center’s April 2021 survey. Smaller shares say these laws are about right (32%) or should be less strict (14%). The share of Americans who say gun laws should be stricter has decreased from 60% in September 2019. Current opinions are in line with what they were in March 2017.
For better or worse, people who don’t own guns and have no intention of getting a gun soon still don’t want to limit gun owners or limit their opportunity to own guns themselves.
Yes, gun control is the “easy” solution to gun crime but instead we have chosen the hard and painful solution because the easy way offends our core values. That’s an okay decision to make in a democracy, and different democracies can choose different ways. It’s not crazy.
Furthermore gun laws are getting stricter all the time, just simply to the point where it matches counties like the UK.
Well: "Only in Texas: Lubbock jeweler offers free gun with engagement ring purchase"
* https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texas/2016/10/25/only-in-tex...
Can I get a driving license with an engagement ring? Perhaps I can get a driver's license, instead of a toy, in a box of Cracker Jack® candy?
And not just Texas, Iowa:
* https://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/shotgun-wedding-buy-en...
Edit: Also, see New Hampshire (aka "New England's Texas"):
> In New Hampshire, the process for buying a gun is easy — easier than getting a driver’s license.
> You go to a gun store, you show your ID, and if you pass a background check that looks at your criminal record and some of your mental health history, you can walk out with a firearm. No training required. No registration of the gun. In the great majority of cases, not even a waiting period.
> Still sound arduous? Well, there’s a workaround: Private sellers — say, a family member or someone online — can sell you a gun without any background check at all.
* https://www.vox.com/2018/11/13/17658028/massachusetts-gun-co...
> You go to a gun store, you show your ID, and if you pass a background check that looks at your criminal record and some of your mental health history...
I'm not sure how that shows getting a gun is easier than getting a driver's license. The ID in the sentence is generally your driver's license, and even if it's not, the process for getting a different kind of ID is roughly the same difficulty as getting a driver's license. If you grew up outside of a major city, you were also likely pipelined through the driver's license process while in high school.
Then on top of that there is a background check.
Why not? Cars claim more lives and are inherently more dangerous due to kinetic energy vs potential energy - essentially you're more likely to kill someone with your car than your gun because it takes active attention and constant decisions to control the kinetic energy of your vehicle. Frankly, we should be focusing on improving testing for drivers licenses to save lives. We are abysmal compared to most other developed nations.
Purchasing firearms is already regulated to varying degrees based on state. What restrictions are you proposing?
"If the lethality of a weapon doesn't matter"
It's about where to draw the line of the lethality of weapons allowed. Under the current laws there are a variety of restrictions/laws, but essentially non-automatic centerfire arms 50 cal and under is where that line is drawn. That could be redrawn again, but there would need to be discussion about where the new line would be and why.
And the real reason I wanted to comment but got caught up in those other replies... didn't the buyback miss a lot of weapons? I heard from a friend who lived over there for a while that many in the rural areas ignored the buy back and illegal guns are fairly common if you know where to look.
There are much larger targets then, like tobacco. But human lives are not just about statistics, it’s not as “easy” as optimizing a program where touching anything other than the hot loop is pretty much meaningless. Guns have a huge psychological effect - the quite large number of school shootings, while may not be that significant from a purely statistical view in number of deaths, are a constant stress factor for every children and parent (which by the way may itself have plenty of negative effects). Frankly, it is ridiculous that there is a market opening for bullet-proof backpacks viewing it from Europe.
Nonetheless, I have to agree that the USA’s gun problem can’t be solved easily due to the insane amount of already circulating guns. But their amount should be decreased over a long period and then the issue might be ripe for a solution somewhere down the road.
As Bruce Schneier:
> Security is both a feeling and a reality, and they’re different. You can feel secure even though you’re not, and you can be secure even though you don’t feel it. There are two different concepts mapped onto the same word—the English language isn’t working very well for us here—and it can be hard to know which one we’re talking about when we use the word.
* https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/the_feeling_a...
* https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/the_psycholog...
* https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/neighborhood_...
No law is perfect. Yeah there are some unregistered guns. But i assure you that a "lot of guns" to an Aussie is very different from a "lot of guns" to an American.
If people actually proposed laws that did that, we could have a real discussion about that. But instead, we get bills that are about outlawing guns that look scary. That's pointless. The pro-gun people (rightly, IMO) refuse to accept limitations that won't serve the stated purpose.
Three factors contribute to "outsized damage": mass of the bullet and load of the cartridge/shell, which mostly determines the total kinetic energy (colloquially called "stopping power") delivered to the target; rate of fire; and distance to target.
Assuming we agree that sport shooting and hunting are legitimate purposes for the use of firearms:
- The "stopping power" on the bullets sold really cannot be reduced. Large game targets such as deer and wild boar require much higher stopping power than are required to stop a human.
- Distance to target: since this is situational there really isn't much that legislation will help.
- Rate of fire: firearms are _made_ as single-action (bolt/lever/switch), semi-auto, and burst-fire/full-auto, with the latter only available to the military (and maybe SWAT units.) Most rifles and shotguns used for hunting are single-action. Pistols are usually semi-auto, which has legitimate sport-/trick-shooting purposes as well as being useful for scaring off smaller predators while out hunting (wolf, wildcat, maybe bear, etc.) If I recall correctly full-auto weapons are already illegal.
That leaves semi-auto rifles. I'm a little skeptical on the utility of semi-auto rifles for hunting, but larger game might require several quick shots with the right stopping power to bring down (again, wild boar fit this.) Maybe there is a little legislation that can happen here to limit the availability of semi-auto AR-15s to target/sport shooters or specific hunters, but it's hard to imagine carving out legislation specifically for that.
But when it comes down to it, there's not really a great way to prevent a quiet, lone-wolf type killer. A shotgun and pistol in close quarters will do as much or greater damage than a pair of AR-15s, and both shotgun and pistol have legitimate uses.
What I personally think is a better solution is to write legislation that adds responsibility to gun ownership. Firearms should be locked in a secure safe when not in use and access to the safe should be closely monitored by the owner of those firearms. Immediate action should be taken by the owner to report any unauthorized access, or access by an authorized person who is suspected to be suffering some mental health issues, to the police. Failure to secure firearms or to report unauthorized access in a timely fashion when said firearms are used to commit a crime should result in the firearm owner being at least partly culpable for those crimes.
Owner culpability won't solve all mass shootings, but it should start to eliminate some of the culture of callous disregard for human safety that some families seem to exhibit when it comes to handling firearms.
RAND found safe storage / child-access prevention (CAP) laws reduce violent crime, suicide, unintentional injuries and deaths:
* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/child-acce...
The NRA is against CAP laws:
* https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/texas-lawmakers-approv...
RAND found that stand-your-ground laws increase violent crime:
* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/stand-your...
The NRA is for such laws:
* https://www.nraila.org/articles/20201230/nra-backed-stand-yo...
Background checks and domestic violence prohibitions are also effective:
* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/background...
* https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/domestic-v...
NRA:
* https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/08/trump-nra-background...
* https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/03/17/d...
Gun show loophole:
* https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2020/01/13/ov...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_show_loophole
Laws that studies have been found to be effective at reducing gun violence are blocked at every turn from what I can see.
All records are kept ON PAPER. The gun lobby has successfully lobbied that electronic records with easy searching would somehow infringe on people's rights.
https://www.npr.org/2013/05/20/185530763/the-low-tech-way-gu...
https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/1264/2...
The intent did not include any dork with a grudge.
Edit: I respected and still respect the gentlemen who taught me gun use and gun safety when I was a teenager. They understood their duties to their country - several of them had served in WW2 and had a sober perspective - and I have no doubt that men like them would and could help to put an end to our ongoing horrors.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/246
This is annoying as it's so bad, that it provides evidence that "gun control reporting is misleading".
My understanding, and other commenters seem to agree, the gun buyback program didn't reduce gun ownership, and it also can't be tied to the reduction in casualties as those numbers were already tracking down before the buyback.
More accurate reporting would instead focus on the restrictions on types of guns that were legally permitted, and how those restrictions impacted the repeat of sprees (there have been none). Similar restrictions in the UK after their big shootings had similar near eradication of mass shootings.
The restrictions basically meant a complete ban on
* All self loading rifles
* All self loading shotguns
* All pump action shotguns
Now in addition to that people had to demonstrate actual need for weapons that they owned. That meant you had to prove you had a occupational need, were an active member of a shooting club, or you were an active hunter - and had proof of access to hunting land.
Gun licensing was divided into five different categories, which each had different requirements, but all required a pile of mandatory training.
Most countries other than the US have a pile of rules requiring safety+security of gun and ammunition storage, but afaict that doesn't have any impact mass shootings (and I don't see why it would?), it seems mostly to be responsible for the far lower rates of accidental child/child-involved death in non-US countries. I say this as someone who apparently pulled a rifle on my mum as a 4yo, before NZ had real weapon security rules, so I could easily have been an orphan due to NZ's lack of gun security laws at that point.
Data from https://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide
What’s stopping these crazy people from using other means possibly even more destructive if guns are somehow eliminated? Do we ban cars, trucks, fuel, fertilizers, chemicals, and poisonous household products as well?
There is a constitutional right to have guns in the US and a very conservative supreme court, so I doubt a draconian ban will have legs in the US anyway.
Cars and trucks need licensing, large purchases of fertilizers are tracked (esp. post Oklahoma City), as are large purchases of fuel and chemicals (thanks meth epidemic and Breaking Bad).
The licensing and tracking of firearms in the US is… spotty.
Perhaps if some of the same measures were implemented it would help the situation. Massachusetts may be a good place to start:
* https://www.vox.com/2018/11/13/17658028/massachusetts-gun-co...
I'm an Australian. The answer is anyone who wants to if you aren't on one of the usual lists (the same sort of lists US has). I know one person with 40 guns at home.
But ... there are rules. You have to have training, the sort of training you can typically only achieve by joining a gun club. You have to be registered. You have to have an approved gun safe. I think there is a regulation about storing the ammo separately. Nothing over the top, certainly nothing more burdensome than a car owner faces. Because it's not difficult we have our share of Olympic firearms champions, we have political parties called "The hunters and fishers party". It a wild guess, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if Australia has the same proportion of people who enjoy hunting with guns as the US does. All this is allowed, and our Olympic shooters are celebrated, just like all other sports people.
> What’s stopping these crazy people from using other means possibly even more destructive if guns are somehow eliminated? Do we ban cars, trucks, fuel, fertilizers, chemicals, and poisonous household products as well?
I don't know what stops them from finding other ways to kill themselves (suicide) and or others. But the statistics are pretty clear. They don't do it.
Which does make you wonder about the difference between the homicide rates in the US and the rest of the world. If there is one clear difference in attitude, it's this: owning a gun for personal protection is not considered good form any Western country other than the USA. And that unsurprisingly means people don't shoot each other as often, which translates to fewer gun homicides. For example USA gun ownership: 120/100 people [0]. Australia gun ownership: 30/100. So maybe 4 times any many guns in the USA. But gun homicides: 4.12/100 in the USA, 0.18 in Australia. 22 times higher.
To state the obvious: if the goal of "owning a gun for personal protection" is to keep you safer, it ain't working. In fact it's a disaster - the cure is far worse than the disease. The civil society in west is usually very good at digesting that sort of information, and acting on it. (They don't always act on it by banning or restricting gun ownership - Australia certainly didn't.) The fact the the USA's civil society hasn't managed that makes us think you yankees are a little odd.
[0] https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-gun-policy-global-compar...
> The fact the the USA's civil society hasn't managed that makes us think you yankees are a little odd.
First, your stat on US homicide is off by a factor of 1,000. It should read 4.12/100,000.
This is going to be controversial, but the facts are the facts. Gun homicides in the US are vastly skewed toward a single group of people in urban areas. 34.9 gun homicide victims per 100,000 people are blacks. 1.5 gun homicide victims per 100,000 people are whites. Blacks are 23.3 times higher than whites to be victims of a gun homicide. Furthermore, the black victims lived in large urban areas and were shot by other blacks around 90% of the time.
Now, some articles suggest that most guns are owned by white men, but I do not share the same trust in the estimate of guns that you may. How are these estimates arrived at? Anyway, assuming that one accepts the premise that most guns are owned by white men in rural America and that proliferation of guns is the main cause of gun homicides, why aren’t most gun homicides committed in rural areas by white men? Do you see the problem? Or are Australians a little odd?
The issue appears to not be due to high numbers of guns. It appears to be highly concentrated in urban black communities. So why is this not discussed by the media and mostly Democratic politicians, especially when it ravages blacks in urban communities that are governed by politicians that are Democrats? Probably for the same reason that my response which is based on cold hard statistics will be flagged or voted down. The oddity of the US is not the people, but the pathetic politicians that are more concerned about a political talking point than finding the root cause of the issue.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7042a6.htm
One of the "facts are the facts" things you seem to have missed is gun related deaths are highest (by far) in the Republican states. I don't whether that means it's a Republican or Democrat issue. I'm not from the USA I don't know the politics that well, but from a distance, it does look like it's mainly Republicans who say things like "the answer to the gun problem is more people wearing guns".
As for black vs white. There is a kernel of truth there - there is more violence in black communities, about double the death rates from what I can tell. But blacks only constitute 13% of the USA population. If you remove them the USA gun rates are still far higher than rest of the world - and that statistical difference is caused by the 80% white population, not the blacks.
And that's just homicides. Most gun related deaths are suicides, which are also obscenely high in the USA. When it comes to suicides, the figures are reversed - whites have over double the rates of blacks. That means when you include all gun related deaths, the whites actually worse rates than the blacks.
> more concerned about a political talking point than finding the root cause of the issue.
That is a downright weird observation. It was _you_ who introduced the Republican / Democrat divide here as a talking point, not some politician. It was you who brought in the largely irrelevant race issue, rather looking for a root cause. If you looking change the discussion into an honest one that might address the issue (assuming you want it addressed), then I'd start with the person in the mirror. If you can change him, you can probably convince anyone.
We have had 3 school shootings ever. Total number of dead: 6. Last one was in 2008.
All guns in Finland are semi-automatic at most and clip/magazine size is limited for rifles and shotguns. Nobody _needs_ a full-auto weapon.
Over here can't get a gun unless you are a member of a gun club that'll vouch for you. You need to get a license from the police and a doctor's note. Until then you can use a clubs weapons on their premises under their supervision.
And when you finally get your gun, it MUST be stored in a regulated, locked, cabinet. Ammo in a separate, locked, fireproof cabinet. If someone finds out you're storing them on your mantle with the ammo right next to it you can wave your licenses and guns good bye.
"The Elite and Powerful" don't own guns, it's mostly just regular people who hunt or have a gun-related hobby like IPSC.
It's really easy to kill a dozen people with a full-auto assault rifle, much harder with a bolt-lock hunting rifle with a 4 round magazine. It's even harder to do it with a knife. And even harder to have the pre-planning to start building reliable bombs out of raw materials.
Oh and for the "crazy people", we have healthcare, people are actually taken care of. Prisons are for rehabilitation, not for punishment.
Rehabilitation and not punishment is a noble goal for those imprisoned and I agree that the US has a poor track record for taking care of its citizens. In fact, the focus on gun ownership as the core reason for gun violence is yet another example of how US citizens are being mislead by politicians. Finland is a good example of a country that has high gun ownership with a low incidence of gun homicides; if you exclude several urban areas in the US, it would be the same here.