Gun Digest Australian Article

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Polishrifleman

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Does anyone have a soft copy or link to the Readers Range portion of Gun Digest? There is a great write in from a "Australian Police Officer" in regards to the nation wide gun surrender from a year ago.

It cost the taxpayers $500 Million to try and collect 640,000 guns.
Homicide up 6.2%
Assaults up 9.6%
Armed Robbery up 44%:barf: I can't believe the bad guys kept the guns!

If someone has firm stats other than the op ed it is great ammo.
 
It sounds like the same one that has been bouncing around the internet for about the past ten years, which was largely nonsense when it first appeared and is now old nonsense. See snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.

What is true is that well over half a billion dollars was spent, much of it on the two "buybacks", together with all of the admin/infrastructure etc., and yet a decade later there's really no evidence that it did any good at all:rolleyes:. See for example http://www.c-l-a-s-s.net/Baker-McPhedran.htm for a link to a paper published in the British Journal Of Criminology essentially showing no effect on murder rates, which were already trending downward before all this, as well as a link to an op-ed in a major newspaper by Dr Don Weatherburn, head of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, to the same effect:

"It may come as a surprise to Simon Chapman (Letters, October 31) but, like him, I too strongly supported the introduction of tougher gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre.

The fact is, however, that the introduction of those laws did not result in any acceleration of the downward trend in gun homicide. They may have reduced the risk of mass shootings but we cannot be sure because no one has done the rigorous statistical work required to verify this possibility.

It is always unpleasant to acknowledge facts that are inconsistent with your own point of view. But I thought that was what distinguished science from popular prejudice."
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The Australian Institute of Criminology www.aic.gov.au is a good source of statistics and research papers. While some of the latter were, in the immediate aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre, a bit skewed in relation to firearms IMHO the more recent stuff has been pretty fair. It is certainly well recognised for example that the enormous majority of guns used in crime are unregistered and illegally owned (surprise, surprise, surprise...).
 
Homicide up 6.2%
Assaults up 9.6%
Armed Robbery up 44% I can't believe the bad guys kept the guns!


Are those the most recent numbers? Whats the date on those, 96 to 02? Other? Have the numbers dropped in the last few years ?
 
I posted the link to snopes, debunking this nonsense, I posted the link to a recent peer-reviewed report on the real effects of the buyback on homicide rates, and I posted the link to the source of the official figures including the "most recent numbers" and you have to ask "why?":rolleyes:
 
Because I didn't mention the gun buy back and there is more to crime and the effects of gun laws, etc then just the gun buy back, as I am sure you well know.

I asked a question about overall crime rates since the guns laws changed not what effect did the gun buy back have on crime/murder rates in isolation. Clearly, the gun buy back failed to alter crime rates as has been the experience all over the world, but media bites, not actual change in crime rates, is what they want.
 
It is always unpleasant to acknowledge facts that are inconsistent with your own point of view. But I thought that was what distinguished science from popular prejudice.
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An excellent quotation.

It applies to us as well - that "Ed Chenel" email has been forwarded to the point of absurdity. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is tiresome. I do wish we'd stop employing it.

In addition to Snopes, there's this easily verified piece.

It's our equivalent of the other side's "42 times more likely" or "35 children a day". It has displayed a tenacity that astounds me.

If the OP wants a cite, I can offer this from 1999:
http://www.nrawinningteam.com/auresult.html
 
Because I didn't mention the gun buy back and there is more to crime and the effects of gun laws, etc then just the gun buy back, as I am sure you well know.

I asked a question about overall crime rates since the guns laws changed not what effect did the gun buy back have on crime/murder rates in isolation. Clearly, the gun buy back failed to alter crime rates as has been the experience all over the world, but media bites, not actual change in crime rates, is what they want.
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The figures you quoted referred to alleged changes in selected crime categories post the first (longarms) buyback. The figures are however spurious. A further point you seem to have missed is that the changes to the gun laws and the buybacks occurred at the same time. However, to answer your initial questions, read post #2 again, and follow the links.
 
Seems murder is down as of 2005, but rape, robbery and kidnapping are way up
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No they aren't:


fig003.png

(rates per 100,000 people)

The one which is showing steady increase is assault. Rape, robbery and kidnapping are stable.

The important thing about all of this is that the changes in gun laws have not had any measurable effect. The better part of a billion dollars has been spent, and with ten years' data it is increasingly clear that it was money wasted.

BTW the changes to longarm laws under the National Firearms Agreement came into effect in about mid-1997, and the longarm buyback was completed in about September 1997.
 
I believe the UK turn-in and compensation scheme was completed 1998 with around 162,000 handguns at a cost of around 100 million pounds.

The part that's hard for a U.S. resident to get their arms around (at least it was for me) is that the UK handgun ban was enacted without the promise of any impact on street crime. Perhaps not surprising as the rate of ownership was vanishingly small.

With the handguns held by a maximum of 1 out of 300 people, it is perhaps understandable where a belief that sweeping them up (all legal ones being registered and their whereabouts known) would inhibit further Dunblane type occurances. No expectation was in place that garden variety criminal firearm use would decline.

With Brady and VPC constantly selling their wares tied at the wrist and ankles to crime control it's hard for us to picture how they could operate without doing so.

Daniel, I gather the Australian run-up to turn-in promised some degree of "normal" gun crime reduction in addition to feeling like Port Arthur was being addressed? Unlike the example in the northern hemisphere, the Aussies seem to have at least a small amount of surprise noting that crime figures were unaffected.

A fun exercise when debating an anti is to suggest that the cost for the UK handgun turn-in be extrapolated to reflect our supply pool of maybe 80 million handguns. The staggering number that results may then be compared to funding for whatever the anti holds dear. Of course, this takes two things: first an anti that's forthcoming enough to admit to wanting confiscation and second, noting that both turn-in schemes were compensated.

Given the fund raising activities of Brady and VPC I feel confident they aren't considering themselves to be in line for coughing up (a stone minimum of) 100 billion dollars.
 
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