frant said...
I just can't see what you are saying Mark. In the USA a person is 15 times more likely to be murdered with a firearm than in AUS. In the USA a person is 4 times more likely to top themselves using a firearm than in AUS. In the USA a person is 4 times more likely to be accidentally shot than is AUS. I think that Stamp is on the money.
I am saying our buyback did not work. (Proven by scientific statistical review.) It didn't reduce the murder rate, nor suicide. Ignore accidental for the USA as they don't have the stringent security requirements that we do.
I'm saying that the highest firearms-owning nation in the world doesn't even rate in the top 10 for violent crime per capita (yes murder is high, see below) but why are the countries with the toughest gun laws plagued with the highest victimisation of ordinary people?
As to murder rate
" For over twenty years it has been illegal for teens to buy guns and,
despite such gun control, the African-American
teenage male homicide rate
in Washington, DC is 227 per 100,000 -
20 times the US average![5] The US
group for whom legal gun ownership has the highest prevalence,
middle-aged white men, has a homicide rate of less than 7 per 100,000 -
about half of the US average.[6] (Mark's EDIT: that is the aussie group that own guns - normal middle class white males. We don't have gangs like the US)
If the "guns-cause-violence theory is correct why does Virginia, the
alleged "easy purchase source of all those illegal Washington, DC guns,
have a murder rate of 9.3 per 100,000, one-ninth of DC's overall homicide
rate of 80.6?[7 ]Why are homicide rates lowest in states with loose gun
control (North Dakota 1.1, Maine 1.2, South Dakota 1.7, Idaho 1.8, Iowa
2.0, Montana 2.6) and highest in states and the district with draconian
gun controls and bans (District of Columbia 80.6, New York 14.2,
California 12.7, Illinois 11.3, Maryland 11.7)?[7] The
"guns-cause-violence and "guns exacerbate violence theories founder.
Again, the causes of inner city violence are family disruption, media
violence, and abject poverty, not gun ownership. "
Suicide:
" Gun bans result in lower gun suicide rates, but a compensatory increase
in suicide from other accessible and lethal means of suicide (hanging,
leaping, auto exhaust, etc.). The net result of gun bans? No reduction in
total suicide rates.[3] People who are intent in killing themselves find
the means to do so. Are other means of suicide so much more politically
correct that we should focus on measures that decrease gun suicide, but
do nothing to reduce total suicide deaths? "
Interesting the australian research re: suicide after the gun buyback has the same results. The suicide rate has continued to increase, just with other methods.