About a year ago, I saw, posted around the factory, several copies of an article which claimed that violent crime increased dramatically after restrictive gun laws were enacted. The article contained no source references or author’s names, so I was skeptical right away. I made perfunctory searches on Snopes and The Straight Dope, but I found nothing close. Have you seen the article? I’m guessing it was generated by Chuck Heston’s Natural Rocketlauncher Association, but I could be wrong. Is any of it true?
The first we heard of it was when some lobby group aired a commercial featuring Australia in the US. To put it mildly, no-one had remarked on crime rates pre/post-gun law changes before that.
The Australian law change, following a mass murder at the former Tasmanian Penal colony of Port Arthur by a disturbed individual, was to ban centre-fire semi-automatic weapons (whatever they are, I’ve never held a gun). There was a small amount of dissent (about 85% agreed with the initiative of the conservative prime minister), a buy back scheme which was probably only partially successful, then nothing. Rabbits and foxes remain shot, crime changes as measured by reputable persons remain unknown, public most decidedly interested in other matters.
As far as I know, it is a non-issue apart from the attempt to make political capital by the NRA in your country. Although it was a Federal initiative, I do live in a different state (Victoria) to the one in which they filmed their commercial (Sth Aust), so maybe a Sth Australian Doper (there was one, an ambo) may have more information.
picmr
This came up in one of the interminable 2d Amendment threads many months ago. I found a couple of web sites that had figures for Australia. I don’t remember the sites and don’t have time to search them out again, at the moment.
The crime stats showed a slowly increasing number of violent crimes throughout Australia from the early 1970’s to the late 1990’s. In that steady trend, there were three years with spikes (none of which was explained). One of the three spikes (which was no higher than the other two spikes) happened to be in the year following the implementation of Australia’s more restrictive gun laws.
I addition, the state of New South Wales had several nasty crimes that sent their specific numbers out of sight (and added to the overall national spike) that were not directly tied to the absence or possession of guns.
From the way it looked last year, the NRA bought heavily into the old post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, attributing one year’s rise in crime, that was well within the normal range statistically, to the “disarming” of the Australian people.
If I get a chance to find those government sites again, it would be interesting to see whether the “crime wave” has continued. I don’t remember whether I saw the sites long enough ago that they may have added a new year to the long-range tally.
Australia, as with most ex British countries, already had strict gun laws. Basically, don’t trust the peasants with guns.
I believe that Australia passed their more restrictive gun laws, at a time crime was rising, but they were passed as “feel good” responses to some high profile incidents. As such they did not decrease crime, but they are not the cause of the increase. Crime was already increasing.
I’ve heard a similar comparison between England and the US. An article said that, despite very strict gun laws and contrary to what most Britons think, England has a higher crime rate than the US. Further, the article said that more crimes in England go unsolved than in the US. No cite was provided.
Violent crime did go up in Australia after the gun confiscation. But, there might not have been a connection, we will know more after several years. Overall, across the world, there seems to be NO correlation between restrictive gun laws & crime, ie both the NRA & HCI are wrong. It sems to be economy/culteral based nearly 100%
This is not to say banning guns is either a good or bad thing, just that it seems to have absolutely no effect on crime.
I don’t know where this individual got his stats, but:
I have not yet found the site on which I saw the 30+ year trends for Australian crime. I was able to find the following site for crime in New South Wales. The NRA’s boogeyman anti-gun law was passed in 1996 and their “horrifying” figures are generally collected for 1997. Note in this chart for New South Wales the trends beginning in 1995 and proceeding through 1999. Several categories show a general upward trend (beginning prior to 1997) and some categories bounce back and forth, demonstrating no specific trend. The NRA’s huge leap in crime against an undefended populace is simply so much hooey.
The assertion that crime in Australia is rising goes completely against repeated statements by both Ministers and senior Police that the statistics show crime to be declining. This has been a consistent argument in South Australia, and so far (despite a couple of horrific serial murder cases in the last year or so) one that has gone unchallenged by the Opposition polticial parties in this state. Maybe that’s because there are bigger issues at stake…
I have also recently heard the NRA’s “hijack” of Australian crime stat’s discussed recently in the media, in a manner that clearly demonstrated the misreprensentation of the facts by the NRA.
Although the most recent gun laws were passed at a time of political expediency and rare bipartisan unity, most of the community firmly supported the new restrictions. The NRA is just playing upon the ignorance of the Americian public about Australia and its people.
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- I got this one: one cite is “In The Absence of Guns”, the American Spectator, June 2000 Pp. 46-48.
Among the tidbits:
- I got this one: one cite is “In The Absence of Guns”, the American Spectator, June 2000 Pp. 46-48.
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- You can be charged with assault of you defend yourself against an attacker: “proportionate response” is what they call it. What it means, is that all you’re officially allowed to do is try to run away. The primary example given is a farmer that got life in prison for shooting a career burglar, perhaps an extreme case. Others with less dire consequences are given. The British justice system’s “rule” is that the victim should never resist, no matter what - and they prosecute according to that rule (this is also true to some extent in the US, but the implication is that they bring charges against the victim more often over there).
- Statistics given:
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- overall crime rate of England and Wales is 60% higher than in the US even though Britain has more police officers per capita paid higher wages, and using “showpiece” methods such as public surveillance cameras, - than any other country in the Western world.
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- Brits are 2.3 times as likely to be assaulted, and 3 times more likely to be violently assaulted, as US citizens. They are twice as likely to be mugged as US citizens; 2/3 will have their homes burglarized at least once during their lives.
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- And those burglaries are more dangerous: in the US, only 10% of burglaries are committed while anyone is in the home. In Britain, the figure is over 50%. -The reason here is hilarious: because of insurance-required alarm systems, burglars know the only time the (automatic) alarm system is turned off, is while you are home. How’s that for a warm fuzzy feeling?
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- Most crime in the US takes place in major population areas but crime is far more evenly distributed in Britain than in the US. A comparison of rural areas in Britain with Vermont shows that Vermont has vastly lower crime rates (even with fewer [lower-paid] police officers and no video cameras); the only thing Vermont residents have that Brits don’t/can’t is guns.
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ditto.
Violent crime in the US seems to be strongly related to the economy, drug war, race issues, alcohol abuse, income inequality, and a strongly consumeristic culture.
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- Doh! The American Spectator article I mentioned is on their website under the same title:
http://www.spectator.org
- Doh! The American Spectator article I mentioned is on their website under the same title:
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- I’ll get the hang of this web stuff yet.
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- The single unifying factor of violent crime in the US is non-retirement government welfare. - Idle hands . . . . - MC
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MC: What I read might have been a summary of the American Spectator article you quote. I found it online on one of the news services. However, I seem to remember a bit about more crimes in England going unsolved than in the US. Can anyone support/refute this claim?
BTW: I heard about the guy getting life in prison for shooting a burglar. Apparently, there was quite an uproar over this. In America, they generally would never charge the victim with a crime unless his/her actions were clearly unreasonable and excessive. For example, I remember hearing about a case where some guy caught a burglar in his home. The burglar surrendered when confronted, but then the guy and his son proceded to beat the burglar almost to death. All three men were arrested. That’s the kind of action required to get the victim arrested in most areas of the US.
Several posters have pointed out the general lack of clear correlations between the enactment of repressive gun laws and their effects on crime rates. With some notable exceptions, it’s true. But I have to point out that comparing the “lies” of NRA and HCI is a bit like comparing apples and rutabagas.
NRA, founded as a fraternal/educational association, and with a history dating back to 1871, entered the purely political side of the gun debate only in the past few decades, and then only out of necessity. HCI – and its sibling/sister/clone organizations – were founded relatively recently as purely political entities, with the sole purpose of promoting the enactment of restrictive gun laws.
In any case, Australia has failed to alleviate its growing crime problems by means of confiscatory gun laws. A long list of other countries has tried and failed in the same manner. That list has to include the U.S., where something in excess of 22,000 federal, state and local gun control laws have failed to make the tiniest dent in violent crime.
Here’s some more stats, from the Australian Bureau of Statistics; sadly, they don’t go any farther back than 1996, but virtually all categories of crime have risen from 1996-1998. Whatever’s needed to fix the Australian crime problem, gun control evidently ain’t it.
The 30-year site I noted earlier (that I still can’t find) had noted this general upward trend. The problem I had with the NRA propaganda was that when one of the three spike years where crime jumped a bit faster happened to be the first year after the gun restrictions, they immediately began proclaiming that the ban had resulted in more crime.
Looking at the fact that some crime that spiked in 1997 fell in 1998 and the fact that the overall growth rate has remained constant, the NRA ads and web sites are lies.
On the other hand, it is quite clear that the gun restrictions also did not halt the rise in crime, either.
(hijack)MC, I’m not familiar with the journal you cited (If it’s a journal - otherwise my ignorance is even more obvious. :)), but did they happen to give the definition used to classify “assault”, “violent assault”, and “mugging”? There was a study published a while ago (at least 4 years ago, and I don’t remember the citation, sorry) which had difficulty in comparing Canadian and American crime statistics because what counts as a ‘violent crime’ in Canada isn’t considered violent in America. The study I’m referring to (this problem may not exist in the one you cited, MC) compared American violent crime stats (aggravated assault, homicide, etc…) with Canadian stats that included assaults and battery charges as well.
One factor not referred to in the article is the homicide rates in the two countries - the UK leads the industrialized world in homicide rate along with Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Japan, and a few others, while the USA has one of the highest rates in the first world. The actual numbers given vary from study to study, but the rate is generally from 7-12x as high. That’s not a small difference by any means.
Yes, there are much more restrictive laws regarding violence in the UK. This is a part of the general ‘we’re not going to accept any excuses’ attitude towards violence, and part of the reason they have such a puny homicide rate. Their system isn’t perfect, just different. They would probably argue that having numerous ways to shed responsibility for killing someone (such as in Texas, for example) is foolish… perhaps, perhaps not. I’m not going to debate that.
Regarding the OP, looking at a rate spike as an indication for gun restriction not working is pretty short-sighted.
I myself tend to think there’s no direct link between gun laws and homicide rates, since homicide tends to be a cultural behavior based in a lot of factors. I do think that restrictive gun laws show a change in attitude towards a healthier perspective.
It’s a very heated debate, as everyone knows. Here are a couple of links that have information on the differing opinions.
http://www.cybersurf.co.uk/~johnny/dunblane/homemain.html
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcgvinco.html
This was addressed in another thread recently. Yes, the UK has a higher rate of crime, but this is restricted to crimes of property and assault. Rape and homicide rates in the UK are far lower than in the US. Gun crime in the UK is more restricted to particular “types” of crime - for example, much of London’s gun crime is restricted to the Yardie gangs. I’ll dig out a cite for this when I have the time (the British government site will help for those in a hurry - http://www.open.gov.uk.
Regarding the homeowner sentenced to life for shooting a burglar, Diceman, you might be interested in the background to the case. The burglar killed was a 16-year-old who was attempting to run away and was shot twice in the back; the homeowner was paranoid about security. He had booby-trapped his house, set up guard towers and barbed wire traps outside, boobytrapped the staircase and slepy fully clothed with a shotgun. He had publically announced that all Gypsies should be rounded up into camps and machine-gunned; he was regarded as a bit of nutter, basically. Yes, the burglar deserved punishment; but the homeowner went far too far in the court’s opinion.
FunkDaddy- when you said:
…did you mean the UK has one of the highest or one of the lowest? If it’s the former I’d be very interested to see the stats.
MC:
Rubbish. Alarm systems are not required by insurers.
In general the figures you supply sound bizarrely high - 2 out of 3 people will be burgled in their lifetime? Can you provide a link to those stats?
Naturally, I meant lowest. 
Sorry about that… when I meant leading, I meant leading as in ‘everyone wants to be in the same situation as’, not leading as in ‘highest’.
My mistake.