*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by eric3579.

Not entirely cut and dry.
+ Gun suicide fell
+ Mass shootings fell.
- Gun homicide in general didn't fall

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#Measuring_the_effects_of_firearms_laws_in_Australia

"Some researchers have found a significant change in the rate of firearm suicides after the legislative changes. For example, Ozanne-Smith et al. (2004)[33] in the journal Injury Prevention found a reduction in firearm suicides in Victoria, however this study did not consider non-firearm suicide rates. Others have argued that alternative methods of suicide have been substituted. De Leo, Dwyer, Firman & Neulinger,[34] studied suicide methods in men from 1979 to 1998 and found a rise in hanging suicides that started slightly before the fall in gun suicides. As hanging suicides rose at about the same rate as gun suicides fell, it is possible that there was some substitution of suicide methods. It has been noted that drawing strong conclusions about possible impacts of gun laws on suicides is challenging, because a number of suicide prevention programs were implemented from the mid-1990s onwards, and non-firearm suicides also began falling.[35]

In 2005 the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn,[36] noted that the level of legal gun ownership in New South Wales increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had had little to no effect on violence. Professor Simon Chapman, former co-convenor of the Coalition for Gun Control, complained that his words "will henceforth be cited by every gun-lusting lobby group throughout the world in their perverse efforts to stall reforms that could save thousands of lives".[37] Weatherburn responded, "The fact is 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."[38]"

-scheherazade

It doesn't have to be cut and dry, black and white.

The argument has largely been morphed by the pro-gun advocates that "Gun control won't stop gun violence".

The flat truth of it is that gun control helps curb gun-related violence. It's not about eliminating it. It's about making reasonable efforts that yield measurable results. The counterargument should NOT be that it's not enough, that's just silly... and downright insulting to the victims.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/latenight/video/John-Howard-on-Gun-Cntrol

This video is not a duplicate of this video, but was incorrectly nominated as such by ChaosEngine.

You should never call something a dupe unless you have watched both videos in their entirety.

Are they the same? Time stamps are different by quite a bit. Maybe @dag will know as the other is his video.

Also i may have missed it but the thumbnail of the other video isnt(from what i can tell) in this video anywhere. That fact alone makes me think this is not a dupe. http://videosift.com/video/John-Howard-on-Gun-Cntrol#comment-1625812

-edit-
It's not a dupe. I fixed dags video with the proper one and they are different part 1

I think one is a subset of the other.... not sure as dags isn't currently loading for me

The other video is part two.
This is part three, pertaining to Australia's enactment of gun control and it's 20 year success of zero mass shootings.
Posted for it relevance to another pro-NRA video posted to the sift recently.

dupe duly retracted... carry on

*quality

This video has already declared quality - ignoring quality request by kulpims.

Except that's not the truth at all. Massachusetts passed strict gun control laws in 1998 and its crime rates (including gun-related crimes) have increased significantly since then. D.C. has the strictest gun laws in the country but also has (by far) the highest rate of gun-related crime. Conversely, Vermont has the lowest rate (about 59 times lower than D.C.) while also having extremely lax gun control laws.

So no, the issue isn't quite as clear cut as you seem to suggest. There is no consistent correlation between gun control and gun crime rates. Banning something doesn't make it magically disappear and considering the fact that the majority of guns used in crimes are already obtained illegally, gun control really only affects people who obey the law (i.e. not criminals). Guns already exist. Criminals already have guns. Criminals already sell and distribute guns illegally. Gun control laws are completely irrelevant to these people.

The irony in all this is that the people calling for gun control are often the same ones calling for the legalization of drugs. We all know how effective the ban on drugs has been. Why would you think that a ban on guns would be any different?

What we do know is that guns are a deterrent and an equalizer. It's the reason why 9 out of 10 mass shootings take place in schools or other places where people are least likely to be armed. It's the reason why a robber is less likely to rob someone he believes to be armed than someone he believes to be unarmed. Strict gun laws only bolster a criminal's confidence that he can get away unscathed because he's the only one with a gun.

Finally, are people seriously including suicide-by-firearm as a relevant statistic? If somebody wants to commit suicide, there a multiple ways they can go about it. Hanging, slit wrists, drug overdose, jumping out the window, etc. If a gun is unavailable, they'll just use another method.

I'm sorry, but if you're going to compare an entire country's uniform gun control laws to minor areas which you can clearly drive in any direction for a short time and circumvent gun laws for that region, then that isn't room for comparison.

If Mass, DC, and Vermont had border control and firearms restrictions like most ports of call and airports, then you'd have something to compare.

Until then I find specific regional statistics in the US laughable at best. If you want something, nearly anything, you can drive to get it, regardless if your home district disallows it. This is not an option in Australia, and not a comparison for valid argument.

Go ahead and let them take your guns. Someone who doesn't like you will still have one.

Do you really think individual states will ever have that degree of border control, if any? Let's be realistic here. And if border control hasn't been able to stop the flow of drugs from other countries, why do you think they'll be able to stop a flow of guns?

Kids used to take their rifles to school for Rifle Club. There were no mass shootings.

So it's not the weapon, it's the failure to teach values.

Part 1 has already been answered, if there's no border control, and no national regulation, it's fairly useless. If done nation wide, it could be effective.
The drug legalization point is a total red herring. People don't get addicted to guns, like the do to drugs. People rarely use drugs to rob others so they can buy guns, but the reverse does happen constantly. You can't grow guns in your back yard, or smuggle them in your asshole (well, I can't).
Most school shootings happen in schools because that's where the targets are, because the shooters are also school kids and the targets are their peers, and that's where you find them in a group, school. It's not about them being 'gun free zones' and so 'safe' to go shoot people there, or we would see more mass shootings in banks and amusement parks and other 'gun free zones'.
Yes, suicide by firearm is far easier and quicker than most other methods, meaning when you remove that method, suicide goes WAY down, because having just an extra minute to think about killing yourself often means you change your mind and don't do it. That especially goes for those 'crying for help' that really want to be caught and stopped. If a gun is not available, a HUGE percentage just don't go through with trying to kill themselves, and another large portion tries a method that either doesn't work or takes long enough to 'save' them.

Australia passed extremely, extremely strict gun control, the sort of which no one even dares suggest in the United States. That is, an almost prohibition on their ownership, including confiscation of guns that were already owned.

The gun control advocates in the United States have to take pains to say, "We do not want to take your guns away!" Whether or not this is true, they have to say the words because the alternative is a complete non-starter.

I'm all for sensible gun control laws, but pretending that what Australia implemented is anywhere close to what most propose in the US is crazy.

@mram wasn't arguing for border control in the states. (s)he was saying that gun control in a specific area is meaningless if you can trivially circumvent it by driving for half an hour.

To be honest, I really don't know what the solution is. I genuinely think the problem in the USA is not so much guns, but your attitude to them.

In the developed world, plenty of other countries have lots of guns, but only in the states does this cowboy attitude with guns prevail. I have plenty of friends with guns, but none of them have them for "home defense". The very idea that I'd need a gun to protect myself is alien to me. It's the 21st century, not the wild west.

Possibly the genie is out of the bottle in the US. The argument of "gun control just means that only criminals have guns" might well be true. But if that is the case, how is it that countries like Ireland or New Zealand where even the police force don't carry guns* have lower firearm homicide rates (~1/10th the rate of the US). Surely we should have been overrun by lawless gangs of armed criminals while the police stand helplessly by?

*NZ Police do have access to firearms, but they don't carry them as a rule.

Not exactly a near prohibition, more of a "demonstrate a need to own this firearm". Also, not quite a confiscation, more of a buyback... There are now more legal firearms in Australia than there were before the buyback. If you want to see strict firearm laws, look to Japan and not here.

Something this discussion has actually missed is that in the larger states the 1996 legislation didn't really change much - one of the more important parts of it was uniform laws across all states and territories.

A compulsory buyback is still... more of a confiscation, in my mind.

In the US, areas with a "demonstrate a need" law usually end up "only if you have connections," in practice. But regardless, I overstated, yes, but the point is that the restrictions listed here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#Firearms_categories

Are restrictions that 1) no one in the US would dare propose 2) would require a constitutional amendment or a new Supreme Court ruling. They are undoubtedly effective, but they just aren't going to happen in the US, and few people are trying to get them to happen. So pointing to Australia's success with those laws is not really indicative as to how proposals in the US will fare.

Australian firearm ownership is at 3-4%. You'd be crucified if you tried to get US ownership down to that level.

1) As I mentioned earlier, implementing border control for each state is never going to happen. As I also mentioned, border control has already been proven ineffective at stopping both drugs and illegal immigrants so why would guns be any different?

2) My drug analogy is perfectly valid. Drugs are banned yet they are still smuggled into the country. And no, people aren't growing cocaine or heroin in their backyard. And yes, smuggling a small packet of cocaine by hiding it in your ass is easier than smuggling a gun through the same means but guns don't have be smuggled intact. They can easily be disassembled and the individual parts smuggled separately. Many of these pieces would be small enough to hide in your ass. But this is all largely irrelevant because the bulk of drugs are not transported via anus.

3) The motivations of mass shooters is highly debatable. I'd argue that they want to feel empowered and the easiest way to do that is in schools which are undeniably the least likely places for people to be armed. If they tried to go on a shooting spree in a police station or military base or gun convention, they probably wouldn't get many kills. Instead, they'd be shot and killed by someone else and that's something no shooters seem to want (hence the reason why they always commit suicide after the spree instead of letting themselves be arrested or killed by the police). In fact, if you look at the history of school shootings in the U.S., many of the shooters were adults. The Sandy Hook shooter was 20 years old and he primarily targeted first-graders who obviously weren't his peers. When it comes to mass shootings, it's all about quantity and targeting people who can't defend themselves is the most effective way of achieving that.

4) Do you have any statistics to support your claim? I seriously doubt suicide rates plummeted in countries or states where guns were banned. Japan and South Korea both have extremely strict gun laws yet they also have some of the highest suicide rates in the world (South Korea is #3, Japan is #8, the U.S. is #33). If you weren't serious about killing yourself and just wanted attention, you wouldn't use a gun in the first place. You'd stand on the ledge of a building and wait for the news vans to appear. Like you said, guns are the quickest way to kill yourself so you wouldn't use them if you had any doubts or hesitations.

There are many parts of the U.S. that essentially are the wild west. Head out to Compton, Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, Baltimore or any other number of cities with high poverty rates and you'd be crazy not to carry a gun with you.

As for New Zealand gun crime rates, sure, they are lower than U.S. gun crime rates. But then, New Zealand's overall crime rate is five times lower to begin with. The disparity isn't limited to just gun crimes.

Like I said before, there's no clear correlation between gun control and crime rates. For every area that has strict gun laws and low crime, there's another area that has stricter gun laws and more crime. Conversely, there are areas with lax gun laws and lower crime rates than areas with strict gun laws. The data simply doesn't show any consistent trends other than the fact that poor areas have higher crime rates than prosperous areas.

The red P used to mean Newbie...

Now it seems to stand for Propaganda

New Zealand acts as a good test to show that Australia's firearm laws are not necessarily the reason for Australia's fall in firearm crime or mass shootings (apart from the nearly linear drop in crime starting a decade before the 1997 laws and the continued trend in a linear fashion afterwards showing it didn't work, in conjunction with a now higher rate of firearms ownership than 1997).

New Zealand did not change their firearm laws and you can consequentially own semi-auto rifles and other firearms banned from regular ownership here in Australia. Yet they have not had a mass shooting since 1997.

I'd point to our high wealth, high education, amazing health system, great mental health system (which really got going in the 90's), and our culture of not settling things by killing each other as important factors in the reduction of crime in Australia.

I think Australian police do not all need to carry firearms.

This chatter misses the main point.

Civil rights. The right to go about your own /consensual/ business with any number of other /consenting/ persons.

Rights to live your own life in peace, without bothering anyone else, and without being bothered.

Owning a gun harms no one. It's a personal matter. It has zero affect on anyone else.

Suicide is personal and consensual. It's nobody else's domain to judge. It's a simple property issue, about the most personal property that exists. Other people don't own your body. The clean-up crew was already paid for by the dead person's taxes (they aren't paid to sit around). Your family/friends, if they respected your wishes, they wouldn't criticize. God does not own you, and you don't have to worry about what he thinks.

Shooting NON CONSENTING individuals is a trespass onto those people, and it is wrong. These people should be punished accordingly, individually, for /their/ individual trespasses.

People at large should not be punished or have their rights taken away because of what someone else did. It's not their business.
That goes for guns, drugs, whatever else is strictly personal/consensual.



On a more specific note :
Having a gun does not necessitate killing.
Killing does not necessitate having a gun.
There is not a deterministic connection between killing and having guns.
For every example where 'gun control' and 'lower gun deaths' statistically aligned, there is another to show them not statistically aligned - precisely because one does not necessitate the other - and correlation is not causation.

I'm all for extremely hard punishment for killers - if it can be proven undeniably that they did it (high rez video / multiple close witnesses personally familiar with the killer / the like).
But I'm not interested in punishing anyone else for what they did.
(Just like I don't want to send drug users to jail because /someone else/ had a drug problem)

As far as I'm concerned, we have far too many laws that do not require any harm to be done to get your into trouble.

~5000 federal laws, thousands more per state, hundreds per county, hundreds per city, many with implementation guidelines defined by bureaucrats that outline multiple ways to violate each one.

It's a minefield. Everyone commits on average (according to some lawyer that wrote a book about it) around 3 felonies a day - when you do a complete review of their activities.
With 1 in 18 men in jail/on parole/in the system - do you really think we need to be sending more people to jail for having something and doing no harm with it?

How about focusing on the people doing harm - punishing in proportion to the harm done - but ignorant of what they used to do the harm.
What matters most is the suffering of the victims, not society's grimaces/preferances.

-scheherazade

Then let people own grenades, RPGs, flamethrowers, tanks...

Owning any of these are harmless after all... just like guns. It's not like their purpose or effect changes how we should regard them.

@harlequinn, you do realise that NZ actually has quite sensible gun laws? You can own semi-auto rifles and so on but to do so you need a firearms licence. This includes not only a police check, but the cops will actually come to your house and check that you have adequate storage provisions for your guns. On top of that

You will have difficulty being deemed 'fit and proper' to possess or use firearms if you have:

- a history of violence
- repeated involvement with drugs
- been irresponsible with alcohol
- a personal or social relationship with people deemed to be unsuitable to be given access to firearms
- indicated an intent to use a firearm for self-defence.

I think you missed the part about focusing on victims, punishing the guilty, and leaving everyone else alone.

I think you'll find that most people that kill others, are already doing something legally prohibited.
Focus on fixing/dealing-wtih those offending individuals.

I know people just want to "do something"... But leave me, my community, everyone else out of it, please. We didn't do it. Thanks.






side note :
Deadliest school killing in the U.S. was done without a gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

The alternative to a gun is not merely 'a stick'.
You should read about the lethality of hydrogen sulfide. (Mixing 2 common household cleaners that you probably have right now)
1 breath can hospitalize. The gas commonly kills whoever is exposed, whoever finds them, and 1st responders, and it raises no alarm.
I would /not/ say that's /less/ harm than a gun.
Now think for a second about how much more damage one of those school shooters could have done with a simple super soaker from wal-mart.

Btw, you're already prohibited from owning a gun if you have mental health issues.
Check out ATF form 4473, and the electronic background check (granted some states don't have good records in the check).

Gun control still has 2 flaws.
1) It doesn't get gangsters/criminals to turn in their guns (essentially the entire 'problem population')
2) It puts non-violent people who have prohibited arms in jail - having done no harm.

With 1/3 of a billion people, something extremely rare will seem common if it's constantly reported.
You would live many many many lifetimes before you ever meet someone who knows someone who was shot.
We live in the least violent era of human history.
I feel very safe.

Since you mention an AR15, here's a stat :
In the U.S., more people die each year falling out of bed (~450), than are killed by all rifles combined (including an ar15 with massive 'clip'). The danger isn't as large as people imagine.

-scheherazade

It may interest you to know that people do own those things, right this minute.

Know why it's not a problem? Because they are hellishly expensive, and only people with money afford them - and people with money are rarely involved in 'that kind of violence'.

-scheherazade

Leaving aside the idiocy of requesting that you get special exemption from a law....

What most people are talking about actually wouldn't affect you. This is what is so perplexing about US gun politics. Absolutely no-one is suggesting that you can't have guns. The only things that are being suggested are some reasonable restrictions on what type of guns you can own, and how you purchase them.

Ahh fuck it, I'm bored with this. Keep thinking that you're not an unpaid mouthpiece for the gun industry. Continue murdering each other and especially kids with gleeful abandon.

I'm just glad I don't live in your clusterfuck of a country.

There already are reasonable restrictions.

(I can't really ask to be exempt from laws that don't even exist. But I can ask for those new laws to not be written.)

Consider this.
Maybe /you/ are not special.
Maybe /you/ are not in this world to do with other people's lives how /you/ see fit.
Maybe /you/ should take the very advice you would give to violent offenders, and just leave people in peace.


Yes, this country has clusterfuckish problems.
But guns are not the cause.

We have a very high percentage of uneducated people. For example, my high school, in one of the nicest areas of the entire country, with the super easy U.S. curriculum, with the super relaxed and curved U.S. grading policy, 30% of kids that entered never graduated. And that's one of the better examples in the country.

The problem isn't even the education system. It's cultural. Kids show up to socialize, and smart kids get made fun of. Often they have no parental pressure to perform either. No amount of money can fix that kind of schooling, because it's not a schooling problem.

They don't just miss out on an education that helps them obtain gainful employment. The concepts of empathy and solidarity are essentially omitted.

There is a proverbial horde out there, many under strong financial pressures. Having the same consumer impulses that most people here have, they resort to augmenting their incomes with questionable activities.

The median *individual* income in the U.S. is around 26k / year. Half the population makes less than that... The cheapest unassisted rent in my area is ~800/month. Go to new york, and you could be paying 1600/month each with 3 other people for a rat hole. After water, electricity, food, fuel, you'd be wiped out. Any emergency (broken down car, medical expenses, whatever), and you are in the hole.

The nice areas you see on TV are a minority. Most of the country is a po-dunk shit hole, full of people that get desperate the moment things go bad. Which leads to restricted activities, and that tends to lead to violent encounters.

We have a very high percentage of arrested/jailed people.
When you're arrested, even if not convicted, you're not acceptable by a large proportion of jobs. The police even call your employer right away to let them know you've been arrested. You are essentially marked.

Like I said, 1 in 18 men are in the system. That's a LOT of people. Other than those on parole, they aren't working. Those that are working aren't making much money (on account of the undereducation and arrest record), and will likely be back in the system.

BTW, more than half of them are in jail for an activity that never even involved another person.
Most are there for harmless stuff.

Once these people do get out of jail, if they weren't already under financial pressure, they likely now are, and will stand a good chance at reinforcing the problem population.

(eg. Person with their life more or less in order goes to jail for having a bag of drugs, then they get out, can't get a job, and they need to resort to sketchy crap to make ends meet. Maybe get into violence, but often just return to jail.)

But, it's not by accident. Our jails are for-profit, with people in government making money from the jailing industry. Either by campaign contributions, lobbying, or by having financial stake in the companies.

The most self-serving thing the government can do, is keep the problem going, and tell people that they should rely on the government to fix it by getting tough. Then the govies make money on the jailing side, and they reinforce their public mandate.

The jailing companies themselves put inmates to work making cheap goods (ever bought a t-shirt that was made in the U.S.? It was probably inmate labor.), and then 'charge the inmates rent', effectively paying them a penny a day. Modern slavery.

All along the way, the taxpayers are paying the bills, and it's just a giant trough to feed from.

I hope you can imagine why I'm averse to making more ways to jail people that aren't being a problem.

It's also why I'm inclined to make drugs legal (pretty much try Portugal's approach). So as to bring that trade into the light, and end the gangster turf wars (which are a high proportion of the gun violence).

A lot of this could be fixed long-term by social engineering, using media to elevate the prestige of education and productivity. But we know that that is not going to happen when there is no money to be made on it.

-scheherazade

Yes, I did know that.

We have those same equal restrictions here in Australia.

The differences I am talking about is the availability in NZ of semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines, whilst Australia effectively banned them (only an incredibly small subset of the population can get them for work reasons).

The "fit and proper person" clause is in each Australian states' legislation as well. Except it is much stricter here. They can also deem you not fit and proper for having the wrong friends, being related to a criminal, or for just about any reason they want really.