Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Really looking forward to this week on the Daily Show.

Great start!

(Could have chosen a sexier title, though - like, "Gun Control Works - Whoop De Doo")

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Whoop-dee-fuckin-doo

Excellent!

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by lurgee.

Apparently Howard was not happy about this and felt that Oliver was disrespectful. Do your research Howard!

Also, I went on the march against the gun ban when it was introduced. The laws in my state of Victoria were largely in line with the reforms but there were several new ones that were and are inconsistent. For instance, you can not have a pump action shot-gun but you can have a pump action centre-fire rifle. Admitedly I was only 17 at the time and mostly went to take photos for my uni degree. However, the laws became nationwide and bought Tasmania, the place where the massacre that prompted the ban, in to line with what the rest of the nation deemed acceptable. While I don't think there is a 100% correlation between the ban and the lack of subsequent massacres the gun laws were sensible and could easily be adopted anywhere else in the world where rationality prevails over dogmatism.

Kofi, you've got something there with that closer: "Tasmania: Where rationality prevails over dogmatism."
Can't hurt to suggest it as new motto to the Tourism Industry Council Tasmania


Oh, and guns are only good for killing and only approved professionals should be aloud to look at them or use them- Professionals like police, security personnel, and those recognized as enlisted military. I'm too irresponsible to wipe my own ass much less make any decisions regarding my personal safety and happiness and the world is such a scary place I can't walk outside for fear of mass shootings.

Thank god the system will tell me what to do and how to do it and what i can do it with. Thank you, broken and terminal system, you make personable responsibility so easy!! It's like I didn't have to think critically AT ALL!!

The cognitive dissonance at 4:02

as a person coming from a militarized country, where each and every person will end up holding a weapon and practicing with it, there's no way around it - Guns are for killing. I'm very glad some people here (ehm ehm @chingalera) are extremely responsible and mature about the weapons they hold... too bad others hold weapons as well...

Genius.

I currently own no guns but live in a home with several. Guns are for killing if they are used for killing.

Postage stamps are for availing oneself of the services of a postal concern.....OR for philatelic insects to collect, trade, admire, store, pass down to future adepts, etc. etc. etc.

No THING has only ONE purpose, ever. So no. Guns are not for killing exclusively.

Everyone trained and owning a gun works where it works-Switzerland and Israel are doing ok, huh? In Svalbard Norway it's mandatory!

Phenomenally produced and edited.

Did they disarm the cops in Australia?

Might be a bit too late for the US. The longer the people do nothing, the worse their average education will get, the more "real freedoms" will be removed. Soon you'll have no court system and have to be present ID everywhere you go. At least you'll have your guns to kill yourselves.

I really want to know how they got that interview in the first place.

Did he really say 'whoop-de-fucking-do' in an interview of John Howard? Or did they edit that in afterwards? I'm not surprised if Howard found that disrespectful.

What about competition shooters? I'm pretty sure their guns aren't for killing anything.

Nope, or security guards, PSO's, hunters, clay target shooters, or anyone else with a reason to own a firearm.

I don't think police are generally armed in New Zealand, and they never used to be in the UK, and it didn't seem to affect their ability to do their jobs. In either case they could call on armed colleagues where required, they just didn't carry a firearm all the time.

That said though, Australian police have always been armed.

They have to have a gun to protect the citizenry from all the things wanting to kill them in Australia. Especially drop bears, although handguns would likely just piss them off.

Many of the things here which want to kill us are either protected species, not suitable targets for a handgun, or both. I think you would probably get a $2000 fine for even patting a drop bear, as well as risking your hand being bitten off.

The police will sometimes put down an animal which is threatening people, but I don't think it's a large part of their job. I seem to recall some mention of large quantities of paperwork being required if a shot is ever fired, too...

Yes, but they restricted the types of firearms for all of those groups in nonsensical ways.

Example: IPSC shooters can only own up to a .38 caliber handgun. Anything larger is not allowed - even though larger calibers are what most IPSC shooters world-wide use (it has to do its scoring system). But if you do Steel Target Shooting or Western Re-enactments you can have up to a .45 caliber.

If you buy a .22 rimfire rifle it is classed as a Category A rifle, but if you buy a .17 rimfire it jumps into the more dangerous Category B category (because they forgot to specify other rimfire calibers in the legislation).

They made .22lr semi-automatic rifles Category C and D firearms (very restricted dangerous firearms), effectively banning them - even though a .22lr high velocity round only has as much energy as a fast ball in cricket.

You can have a .308 pump action rifle with a 30 round magazine, but you can't own over a 10 round magazine for your much, much less powerful handgun.

Interestingly, firearm owners in Australia are the most law abiding group of people in the nation. Everyone with a serious criminal offence is automatically barred from owning firearms and other criminal offences are considered on a case by case basis (e.g. you did have an assault charge from when you were 18 years old - you'll be waiting 5 to 10 years before they let you own a firearm - if ever). If you commit a serious offence while owning a firearm, expect a knock on the door to take them away.

Remember, slaves aren't allowed to own firearms. Guess that makes Australia a slave state.

the problem is...everyone thinks they're responsible gun owners when we know that is impossible.

Everyone thinks they're good and the other guy is at fault. when reality is quite different.

2nd Amendment is not sacrosanct, Nutter.

Redundant.

It is a common fantasy that gun bans make society safer. In 2002 -- five years after enacting its gun ban -- the Australian Bureau of Criminology acknowledged there is no correlation between gun control and the use of firearms in violent crime. In fact, the percent of murders committed with a firearm was the highest it had ever been in 2006 (16.3 percent), says the D.C. Examiner.

Even Australia's Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research acknowledges that the gun ban had no significant impact on the amount of gun-involved crime...

Moreover, Australia and the United States -- where no gun-ban exists -- both experienced similar decreases in murder rates:

* Between 1995 and 2007, Australia saw a 31.9 percent decrease; without a gun ban, America's rate dropped 31.7 percent.
* During the same time period, all other violent crime indices increased in Australia: assault rose 49.2 percent and robbery 6.2 percent.
* Sexual assault -- Australia's equivalent term for rape -- increased 29.9 percent.
* Overall, Australia's violent crime rate rose 42.2 percent.
* At the same time, U.S. violent crime decreased 31.8 percent: rape dropped 19.2 percent; robbery decreased 33.2 percent; aggravated assault dropped 32.2 percent.
* Australian women are now raped over three times as often as American women.
More...

@jimnms, if you can't find a webpage on the internets that agrees with your preconception, you're not really trying. So because a right wing think tank cherry picks some data to pretend that more guns does not equal more death from guns, it does not make you right.

Here's a response suggesting your source is funded by the Koch brothers: http://cameronreilly.com/2012/12/17/guns-in-australia/

The exact same thinking applies to your selection which has equally cherry picked data.

I'm sure that was your point - right?

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.

@jimnms, so in your own words, violent crime stayed the same, but mass shootings disappeared.

If that was the only outcome of gun control, wouldn't it be worth it?
Or is your response simply "whoop-de-fucking-doo"

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Woo-hoo! I'm #1! USA! USA! Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oy! Oy! Oy!

Maybe you should read that again. I'll summarize it for you in case you didn't understand or even bother to read all of it. After Australia's gun ban:

* The violent crime rate has increased 55 percent.
* Sexual assault has increased 51%.
* The homicide rate increased peaking in 2002 until it began to decline at the same rate it was declining pre gun ban.

And those are not my own words, those are the statistics provided by the Australian Institute of Criminology.

@jimnms - so what? Sexual assault has increased? What's your point? Why would restricting access to weapons stop sexual assault? How often are they committed with guns?

If all the stats you have lifted from one site actually related to guns, you'd be advancing the discussion. Sadly, they don't.

You might expect the rate of mass shootings to decline once semi-automatics became more restricted. Maybe for suicides with guns and homicides with guns. This is what has happened. No one expected rape to go away.

I think you're just being silly, you silly.

All those statistics were following the same trends pre gun ban. So at worst , the gun ban merely failed to slow the crime rate increase, but it still stopped mass shootings.

So no gun control: same crime rate plus mass shootings
Gun control: same crime rate, no mass shootings.

Call me crazy but I'd say one is better than the other.

@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."

Are you not noticing that after the gun ban that there is a 55% increase in violent crime (and the murder rate increased for several years). See my reply to kymbos above. I was typing it when you posted this.

I love how gun control proponents love to point to Australia as "proof" that gun control works. Hey, here's some proof that it doesn't work! Washington D.C. has some of the strictest gun control in the country. It also has the highest violent crime and murder rates in the country and guns are involved in the majority of those crimes.

Some fun facts:
1) Criminals don't care about gun laws and already obtain guns illegally.
2) Guns are a very effective deterrent against criminals (hence the reason why mass shootings almost always occur in the places where people are least likely to carry guns).
3) Banning guns won't make them disappear, just as banning alcohol didn't make it disappear and banning drugs hasn't made them disappear either.

As for murder sprees (which comprise a tiny portion of overall violent crime and murder), less access to guns wouldn't make them disappear. If someone really wants to kill a bunch of people, they'll figure out a way. The Seattle bombings are proof of that.

I'm not sure you really understand the concept of a trend.

The figure were increasing before the gun laws. They increased AT THE SAME RATE after.

And @Jerykk, no-one is talking about banning guns. We're just suggesting that maybe there should be some reasonable controls on who should own them and how you should buy them.

And did you mean Boston? Can't find anything on google about Seattle bombings?

Seriously what is the issue here? Why are people so desperate to hang onto all kinds of firearms?

No-one is even vaguely suggesting that if you want to hunt or target shoot you shouldn't be able to.

There has never been and almost certainly never will be a dictatorship prevented by gun owning citizens in the modern age. Hell, you could argue that you've already failed in that regard in the US (not your government, the banks).

So that leaves what? Self defence? That just doesn't wash. This is not hollywood. You're not Clint or Arnold. There's ample evidence to suggest that gun owners are 4 times more likely to die by firearm (often with their own gun).

Meanwhile, the rest of the civilised world has reasonable gun legislation, and we just don't worry about it. I honestly do no understand what is so fucked up about american society that you feel you need guns.

Australia did ban certain sorts of firearms and heavily restricted others. And as you may already know, the drop in firearms crime started well before 1996 and has continued to drop at a fairly linear rate. Additionally the rate of firearm ownership has readily increased to be greater than pre 1996. Basically there is no correlation between the two (legal sporting firearm ownership and crime) in Australia and several peer reviewed studies have shown as much. More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia

Because of our legislation, Australian sport shooters don't get the firearms they need to compete in firearm sports properly (against local or international opponents). The Australian government continues to treat sporting firearm owners (there are no self defense firearm owners in Australia) as if they are some sort of criminal group hell bent on shooting up Australia - when all evidence points to the contrary. Only recently was legislation finally enacted to properly penalise people who own and use illegal firearms.

The legislation on who should own firearms and how they should be stored works well.

American society isn't fucked up because you don't understand why they want their firearms.

Fuck it, this is a waste of my time. Keep your heavily-armed, paranoid, dystopic nightmare.

Though I do feel bad for the sane, intelligent Americans I know, I'm just glad I don't live in a country where I need to worry about such things.

Actually I think it's not a waste of your (or my) time. The right laws need to be in place, balancing the needs of those who are responsible enough to own and use firearms and taking into account the mandatory safety of the populace, whilst acknowledging that we need to make sure guns stay well out of the hands of people who would use it for crime.

Meanwhile, yes sometimes it sucks. In America the "2nd amendment at any cost" mentality is not good. In Australia the "all firearms are evil" mentality is not good. They have blinkers on.

And this is why it's a waste of my time. Did you even bother to look up Australia's gun laws? There is no "all firearms are evil" mentality. There is simply a recognition that firearms are dangerous and perhaps a measure of control over who uses them and how they are used is appropriate.

Read his comment from further up the page. Also, he lives here too.

Sadly, it appears *dead.

Invocations (dead) cannot be called by phyman because phyman is not privileged - sorry.

The Australian Victims of Gun Control - John Oliver Part 2 has been added as a related post - related requested by dag on that post.

*dead indeed

This video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by radx.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Fixed with the official CC embed annnnd ... *blocked. So lame that a video about Australia would be blocked for Australian viewers.

Fuck you Comedy Central, you've won this battle - if not the war.

This video has been flagged as having an embed that is Region Blocked to not function in certain geographical locations - declared blocked by dag.

As has already been pointed out, I live in Australia, but that's besides the point. I have extensively researched our firearm laws and their history. Have you?

Perhaps I didn't phrase my words well enough - I was making a generalisation about how firearms are in fact treated in Australia. I've publicly stated in this thread that the laws pertaining to who owns firearms works well.

After reading your last comment I now agree with you, it's a waste of your time if only for the fact that you display a high level of wanton ignorance in regards to communication on this topic.

Yeah, I have. I'm not the idiot who said the Australian attitude is "all firearms are evil".

I lived in Aussie for two years and even in that short time I could easily see that your sweeping generalisation was way off the mark. While there I saw a considered, thoughtful approach to what place firearms play in society. But hey, feel free to denigrate your country men as simplistic liberal fools.

You might think that I "display a high level of wanton ignorance" but really, that just marks your argument as kinda desperate. But as I said, I have far better things to do with my time than argue with you.

You have you say! That's great, and I hope you had a great time in Australia.

So have you read at least one of the states firearm's acts from beginning to end? Which one? (I wrote "extensively researched")

I'm not an idiot for expressing my words in a way you don't seem to understand. And I wasn't way off the mark - I'm very close to it.

Perhaps you should try owning firearms while living in Australia - then we'll see what your opinion is.

Why would I denigrate my countrymen? I haven't yet and I'm not about to start.

You do display willful ignorance in your communication. You've basically just doubled up on it. My noting of your ignorance has no bearing on my argument. I'm sure you won't reply since you "have far better things to do with my time than argue with you". Feel free to though, I'm happy to discuss this topic, a topic which is a pet interest of mine.

@dag your original sift was part 1:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-18-2013/gun-control-whoop-de-doo

But it got fixed with part 3:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-25-2013/australia---gun-control-s-aftermath

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