Lies, damned lies, and phony statistics? Gun control again.

Okay, well then, one other thing about those claims about the UK. The trajectory of their crime rates is dramatically downward.

Homicide has fallen by 50% in the past decade as well.

So, if the absence of firearms is somehow causal in the violent crime rate in the UK, why are crime rates there going down so sharply?

Can’t give a link to this. The former Director of Mental Health for the State of Tennessee told me that a firearm in the home is more likely to be used against someone within the home than it is an intruder.

Also, if you are held up with someone with a gun, there are certainly other ways to handle the problem. Calming things down is the first step. I take great pride in getting the robber who held me up to give me my favorite purse back.

No - the fist fight in the pub is categorised as simple assault, not aggravated assault. So it doesn’t form part of the FBI statistics on violent crime that are used as the basis for US/UK comparisons. As AdamF said.

In fact, I did this exercise a while back: comparing US and UK violent crime on the basis of the only the US definition of violent crime.

The UK rate is half that of the US.

You might want to include this in your figuring:

Would Banning Firearms Reduce Murder And Suicide?

There has not been a mass shooting in Australia since the tougher gun laws were put in place in 1996.

Gun ownership in Australia has always been about utilitarian uses, these include sport shooting, farmers and to some extant target shooting. It has never had a right to bare arms, the idea is ridiculous to most Australians.

The results of the 1996 ban are hard to argue with. According to a Harvard University study, 13 gun massacres (in which four or more people died) occurred in the 18 years before the law was enacted. In the 17 years since there has been none. Zero, yes ZERO.

I would also point out that since 1997 your risk of being a victim of gun violence has been halved. Not a bad outcome IMO.

So you don’t think that we are all peace loving hippies, 8% of Australian homes own a gun, OK you guys are a lot higher at about 32% but we still have guns in our society they are just monitored and regulated a lot tougher, this includes type, storage etc as well.

The issue is not as black and white as guns though, well nothing is black and white outside politics. The issues of social division, race relations, drug economy, gangs etc are much worse in the USA than here. Would they be better if guns were not as freely available? Maybe but at least you would know that the young gang banger walking down the street would probably not be carrying a gun.

This is, frankly, a silly point. It’s like me claiming that a meteor hasn’t struck my house since I built my tin-foil meteor repeller. While technically correct, it tells us nothing of value since meteor strikes on my house and mass shootings in Australia both have always been exceedingly rare events.

Not really there were 13 mass shootings in the 18 years before the new laws and none since. So yes there were rare but to go from 13 in 18 years to zero in 17 seems a bit more than a coincidence?

I thought there was a multiple-victim shooting in the last 17 years … some college spat or something like that. Am I mis-remembering?

From the introduction:

There you go Comrade sisu, you are incontravertably a decrepit propogandist stooge with a Cold War mindset . Your weenie-liberal arguments have been shot down by inviolable social-political constructs that were cast in stone in the 1960s.

Ya mug galah.
:stuck_out_tongue: [d&r]

Monash University shooting in 2002 as well as Melbourne Central Business District shooting.

Also worth mentioning: since 1996, in Australia, 56 people died in 3 deliberately set fires. In the 18 years before 1996 I can’t find any such incidents. Could it be mass murderers switched tactics?

The gun laws were tweaked again after the Monash incident.

Without doing any serious research, the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983 that killed 75 people are one example of pre-1996 arson. I find the suggestion that frustrated would-be mass murderers are turning to arson because assault weapons are too hard to come by unlikely. These seem like vastly different ways to kill.

Mass murder as counted by FBI etc is 4+ killings. Monash was 2.

The fire deaths were not done by mass murderers in the classic sense. Lack of back burning, poorly maintained infrastructure and thrill seeking arsonists combined with more people living in the bush contributed to the toll.

The arsonists were generally people wanting to light a fire and then come in as the hero as a fire fighter.

Careful we know where you live…and this liberal has a gun or two.:smiley:

All legal, registered, stored correctly as per our laws.

Not bush fires. Childers Palace fire and Quakers Hill nursing home fire.

Point taken, but I would still argue that an arsonist is a very different beast to a gunman.

But see, if it’s a coincidence that those happened in the 17 years after 1996 and there were none in the 18 years before 1996, then why is it not a coincidence that there were mass shootings before and not after during the same periods?

Excellent point. I think it’s strong evidence that mass murderers who would have preferred to use a firearm have made the, frankly obvious, transition to arson instead.

Oh, except for the Downunder Hostel fire in 1989. And the Ocean View Lodge fire in 1993. And the City Heart hostel fire in 1996. And the Ghost Train Ride fire in Luna Park in 1979. It isn’t clear whether there was arson involved in the Rembrandt Hotel fire in 1981, or the Pacific Nursing Home fire in 1981, or the Palm Grove Hostel fire in 1991.

But, apart from a lack of any sort of sense that you actually checked whether or not what you were saying was true in any sense of the word true, you still have an excellent point.

I am not Australian, so I wouldn’t know. I looked at List of massacres in Australia - Wikipedia - none of those are listed there. From cursory googling, that’s probably because the Downunder Hostel fire was not certain to be arson. Ocean View Lodge fire didn’t have any fatalities. Ghost Train ride fire was not determined to be arson. etc.