@kymbos The point should be obvious, the gun ban effected more than gun crime, and not in a good way. It may have stopped mass shootings (see below), but at what cost? The murder rate actually increased after the ban, and didn't fall below the pre-ban rate until 7 years later. The murder rate before the ban was already on a steady decline, and Australia now has more violent crime post gun ban.

Did the gun ban even stop mass shootings? Mass Shootings in Australia and New Zealand: A Descriptive Study of Incidence (PDF) concludes:

"The hypothesis that Australia’s prohibition of certain types of firearms explains the absence of mass shootings in that country since 1996 does not appear to be supported. Rather, it can be seen that both Australia and New Zealand, a country where the firearms banned in Australia (self-loading longarms and pump action shotguns) are still available for the purposes of target shooting and hunting, have now experienced very similar periods of time without the occurrence of a mass shooting event. At the time of writing, this period exceeds 13 years, for both countries. This is not consistent with the expectation that, if civilian access to certain types of firearms explained the occurrence of mass shootings in Australia (and conversely, if prohibiting such firearms explains the absence of mass shootings), then New Zealand (a country that still allows the ownership of such firearms) would have continued to experience mass shooting events.

This finding cannot be readily explained by differences in population size or pre-existing differences in the occurrence of mass shootings between the two countries – both of which were controlled for during the analyses. It is also important to note that in New Zealand, there have been no major changes to firearms legislation since 1992, when the requirement of photographic licences and ‘safe storage’ of firearms was implemented (in this regard, Australian and New Zealand legislation is similar). Prior to 1992, the last major change to firearms legislation in New Zealand occurred in 1983, when the requirement for mandatory registration of hunting and sporting longarms was removed. Thus, the absence of mass shootings in New Zealand over the past 13 years cannot be readily explained by any legislative changes implemented around the period 1996/1997."

The people behind the study may be biased, however it doesn't matter who published it as long as their sources check out, which the article I linked does cite the Australian Institute of Criminology. Your link is just as biased cherry picking out only gun related crime, ignoring the overall crime rate. Obviously if you ban guns then shootings will decrease, but if you look at the whole picture something will take its place. Here is the summary notes from the Australian Institute of Criminology on violent crime:

* Assaults continue to represent the majority of recorded violent crimes. The overall trend since 1996 has been upward, with an increase of 55 percent between 1996 and 2007.
* The trend in sexual assault has also followed a general increase. The highest numbers of victims of sexual assault and of assault were recorded in 2007.
* There were 282 victims of homicide in 2007: a 12 percent decrease from 2006 and the lowest number recorded in the past 12 years.
* Continuing the trend since 2004, robbery offences increased again in 2007, to 17,988.
* The number of recorded kidnappings fluctuates from year to year. From 1996 to 2004, kidnappings registered a general increase, but the number of victims of kidnapping has remained relatively steady following a decline in 2005.

Here is the summary of statistics on homicide by weapon type: "There has been a pronounced change in the type of weapons used in homicide since monitoring began. Firearm use has declined by more than half since 1989-90 as a proportion of homicide methods, and there has been an upward trend in the use of knives and sharp instruments, which in 2006-07 accounted for nearly half of all homicide victims."

There you go, straight from the source. Post NFA, violent crime is higher. While homicide initially went up, it fell back to a steady decline which was already in decline before the NFA.

Cool story, bro.
Stories like that have been posted all over for the last 15 years. The first one I read was like 1996 about the first anal sex while having diarrhea.

Concerning the wikipedia segment that reads "
The first footage of the Wilson's Bird-of-paradise ever to be filmed was recorded in 1996 by David Attenborough for the BBC documentary Attenborough in Paradise true story. He did so by dropping leaves on the forest floor, which irritated the bird into clearing them away. "




I went and found that footage and is thus :

I'm always amazed when public figures appear on this show and fed classic Daily Show lines like "Define zero again" or "You think I'm stupid?" and the person seems confused... when they agreed to the interview did they or their handlers if they have them, not research the show and note it is a comedy show? I could see the confusion if this was still the 1990s, but the show has been on since 1996, so I would think they would be wise to the format by now.

So do I with my 20" Sharp CRT TV from January 1996 and VCR from my dotcom days. Both are still kicking arse as of Thursday night.

This video contains disingenuous information. Those statistics are completely false.

@chingalera It's working a lot better than the current USA situation. Here's a few legitimate facts relating to the content in that video.

1. You can still buy guns (pistols, rifles, shotguns), just not the ridiculously unjustified mass human slaying variants.
2. It's better controlled with systems setup to decrease the chance of consistently unstable minds getting hold of guns of any type.
3. Gun homicides were increasing leading up to the gun control (1996), from that peak to now, it's about a 59% drop.
4. 1996-2006 about 65% drop in gun suicides.
5. Robberies involving guns dropped significantly.
6. There was no increase in home invasions.
7. In the 10 years leading up to the gun control there were 11 mass shootings.. since gun control went into affect, there have been 0.

Homicide weapon statistics (image): Guns vs Knives from 1989/90 to 2006/7
Quick answer: 50% drop for guns, 30% rise for knives
http://aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide/weapon.html

"A 2011 letter published in the British Medical Journal by Simon Chapman, a professor of public health from the University of Sydney, observed that the U.S. had 14.4 times the population of Australia but 141 times as as many deaths from firearms in 2008 as Australia and 238 times the rate of firearms-related homicide."
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2012/12/20/gun-control-searching-down-under-for-change-to-believe-in/
If the current ratio's are even remotely similar to this quote, then Americans can't say jack about the Australian statistics.

@charliem Good links mate.

Upvote for the 'Lies' tag.

Those figures are bogus. This video is a fucking total joke.
Ive got direct family members that have been in the police force since the early 70's....they are not shitkickers, so to speak.

Home intrustion in the period 1996 to 2006 had dropped in HALF (http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/0/B/6/%7B0B619F44-B18B-47B4-9B59-F87BA643CBAA%7Dfacts11.pdf)

In the period 1989 - 2010, gun related murders have MORE THAN HALVED.
http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/0/B/6/%7B0B619F44-B18B-47B4-9B59-F87BA643CBAA%7Dfacts11.pdf

FUCK the NRA, and FUCK this video. Nothing but propoganda.

I'm not going to comment on the other half of your comment, but will put my 2c in on this part.

Although Australian and U.S. culture might be similar in many ways, the way we regard gun ownership is quite different to what has been discussed here on the sift, so @chingalera certainly has a point re apples and oranges.

The knee-jerk legislation has been vindicated by the follow-up study widely mentioned... and I'm not going to say it has stopped shooting sprees, since there could easily be one tomorrow but it is very hard to argue that it hasn't at least reduced them, since they were quite common pre-1996 and unknown since.

Gun violence hasn't necessarily been reduced as much as gun control advocates might say, but one specific type has been greatly reduced - suicides. The study doesn't explain why though, which is something that would be very interesting to know if you were thinking of drafting legislation on the subject.

One other thing worth mentioning is that I don't think it would be possible to pass the Australian legislation in the U.S.

On the subject: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/hammer-attack-then-death-comes-to-spring-street-20121212-2b8h9.html

My progression was.....
Commodore 64 (1983),
Atari520ST (1987),
Atari 1040ST (1987), (Hard drive!)
IBM PC/AT (1988),
Macintosh 2 (1990),
80486 66DX2, (1992),
Pentium overdrive for the 486DX2 (1995),
Dual Pentium MMX 166 (1996) ,
Pentium-2 333mhz (1998), (Dual voodoo-2)
Pentium-3 800mhz (2000),
Pentium D 2.8gz ( 2006),
Core i7-920 ( 2009),
Core i7-970 (2011).

Lesser machines along the way... a Macintosh SE I cant place on the timeline. My biggest regret was sticking with the Pentium-3 for so long. Wasn't so interested though.

@enoch

The problem with the gun control debate is that both options are authoritarian. Which do you prefer, the government having the power to limit your access to guns, or individuals having the power to easily end your life at will? It's a lose/lose proposition from that POV.

After a gun enthusiast massacred 35 people in Australia in 1996, the government got serious about gun reform. They enacted strict gun control measures and gun homicides dropped 59% over the course of 10 years. In the decade before gun reform, they suffered 11 gun rampages; they have not suffered another gun rampage since.

In your opinion, what is the downside of only police and military having weapons? (for the sake of argument, let's assume that hunting weapons remain legal, because their main function is not to end human life.)

Source:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2012/1224/Could-the-US-learn-from-Australia-s-gun-control-laws

In 1996 I bought a 166 MHz MMX computer with 8 MB ram, 1.2 GB harddrive and Command & Conquer and Warcraft 2. It was glorious!

have to admit, I like the juggler analogy to RAM

It's funny that you say times have changed though. The fundamentals really haven't changed. the types of RAM and the types of storage, and the types of processors have changed, but you still need RAM, you still need storage, you still need a processor and they still interact in fundamentally the same way.

What's depressing though is that the average person's response to trying to learn some of those fundamentals is still the same as this woman's reactions in 1996. I am so familiar with the same kind of facial expressions on my users as that woman gave.

Sounds like they're headed in the direction Australia did in 1996, with a ban on semi-automatic rifles and all semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns. Though without a gun-buy back and destruction scheme, it would be pretty useless.

The Australian government raised $500m (through a one-off increase in the Medicare levy) for the scheme, which led to the destruction of 631,000 firearms (mostly semi-auto .22 rimfires, semi-automatic shotguns and pump-action shotguns).

Roughly 80% of Australians supported the action by the government; main opposers being sporting shooters and farmers.

Lol, as usual you're wrong. You've taken a piece of right wing propaganda and accepted it as fact. Never mind the fact that armed robberies involving firearms have steadily declined, or that gun suicides have declined. Ignore the fact that in the 18 years prior to the Port Arthur massacre there were 13 mass shootings and in the decade since 1996 there was one.

In fact, the Australian Federal Attorney even told the NRA to please stop mis-interpreting the facts.