TTAG reader KirkfromBrisbane posted the following comment underneath Gun Hero of the Day: Philip Smith of National African American Gun Association:
I’d rather be a free-thinker and deal with being called a “troll” than some sheep who continues to spout debunked hogwash that more guns equals less crime. I love the way yanks conflate being allowed to tool-up with military-style weaponry (because of a partial mis-reading of an amendment) with the concept of ‘freedom’. From anywhere else on the planet watching on, it’s just an amusing, slightly-sad concept . . .
Here in Australia, we have the ‘freedom’ to go about our business secure in the knowledge that Australia has one of the lowest gun-related mortality rates in the whole world, and secure in the knowledge that every second person we interact with WON’T be tooled-up to the eyeballs with some ridiculous concealed handgun and/or other ridiculous weaponry designed exclusively to kill humans.
Meanwhile in the good ol’ US of A, you have the ‘freedom’ to be killed in record numbers by the very pointless weaponry that many of you dude’s worship.
Schools should be for teaching kids, not massacring them. Universities should be for teaching young adults, not massacring them. City streets should be for walking down with confidence, not cringing in.
The proof is in the statistics. Australia’s gun-related death statistics are over an order of MAGNITUDE better than the USA. And that is not a one-off. Its been maintained for decades.
So, I’ll take Australia, thanks. Just sayin.
I might be a ‘sitting duck’, but it doesn’t matter here, cause no-one here has the guns to shoot at me anyway. Thats the cool thing.
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Ever heard of it? Independently voted the Worlds most livable city, 5 years in a row. Including this year. Somehow we’ve managed that without mass-ownership of personal handguns. Adelaide, another Australian city. Also in the top 5. Sydney and Perth are in the top 10. Brisbane is in the top 20. Google it.
And who knows – maybe being able to ‘sit around’ without much risk of being shot at has something to do with it?
USA cities?….not so much. Ah well….chin up. With your shooting-death statistics, I guess the USA still has a vague ‘shot’ at topping the ‘Worlds most die-able cities’ list…..Who looks ‘ignorant’ now?
FLAME DELETED
I’m sure he feels safe, knowing that the Chicoms will respect his intellectual stance.
The Indonesia Mohammadans likely will come visit before the Chicoms.
Hey KirkfromBrisbane, are you anywhere near Redlands City, Queensland? Just a bit southeast of you, I believe. You know, where some criminals recently held up a store by using a repeating rifle cut-down to handgun dimensions? Details below, in case you “missed” it:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3424030/Watch-shocking-moment-Queensland-shop-owner-defends-store-lighter-fly-spray.html?ito=embedded
And a security photo of the “handgun” they used (a cut-down rifle, concealable and RE-designed to kill people), left lying on the counter as they cleaned-out the money:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/01/30/11/30B843F800000578-0-image-a-6_1454153684744.jpg
I suppose that somehow, this could never happen to you, though, right? It ALWAYS happens to someone else, never to the self-righteous know-it-alls like you who really deserve (and might benefit from) an up-close-and-personal demonstration of just exactly how useless your gun control laws are.
The difference between a more-powerful-than-normal handgun and a rifle/shotgun, is 5 minutes of work with a hacksaw. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that, but strangely enough, it regularly escapes the attention of those who propose handgun bans as a way to control crime or so-called “gun violence”.
The proof is right there in front of your eyes; all you have to do is open them.
Yeah, I didn’t think you would.
A usual, he only cares about people who are killed with guns in a country where he doesn’t live. It must bother him to know that Americans have the Second Ammendemnt while they do not.
Why else would he be so obsessed with what happens here?
Yeah, but he realizes that we don’t read our amendment right, too. It must be wonderful to have no guns around (you hope) when you are an insufferable ass. Otherwise, you might have to watch your mouth, or watch it leave your face. YOUR reading of your gun confiscation order was mistaken, it really meant that the government was going to replace all guns with new ones on a 2 for one basis. Get busy on fixing that, mmkay?
FLAME DELETED
I wonder if he ever heard of WWII. The Japanese were well on their way to teach “Aussie” about planting rice. If he is so against us “Yankees” having guns, why is he on the website. Hmmmmm
Also a bit of history, guess who is on their 5 dollar bill? Right, the queen of England. Do you know why she is not on our money? Right, because of guns. As you said why where the Japanese headed to Australia and not America? Right, guns.
As a history teacher (and Australian) I have to call you out on that one!
We still have the Queen because were able to evolve and write our own constitution without the need to fight anyone. Besides – we like her. ; )
The Japanese were heading to Australia because there are a distinct lack of islands to hop along if they headed west. Simple geography (oh, and the oil, rubber and other resources were south of Japan too).
I give you marsupial an F in history. Australia’s constitution was written by an occupying empire.
and if anything you have reduced privacy, criminal defense and other rights from what the British wrote for a former penal colony.
Australia is an example of gun control making things WORSE.
Since the early 1990s Australia’s murder rate fell 31.2%. The average developed democracy decline, a baseline, was a 40% drop in murder! US murder fell 65% as the US relaxed gun laws overall.
On suicide there was NO DECLINE at all, just a shift to other means
I wonder if the comment was something about not giving a rats behind about what someone from the worlds largest penal colony thinks? Yeah that whole gun confiscation thing worked out well for those folks at the coffee shop.
If your govt should turn on you…long shot or another invade you where would you be???
Our guns are not only to used against would be terrorist civilians but against all threats domestic and abroad. You may not have more gun fatalities but if you compare other statistics I wonder how you would come out? maybe our country is still in a little style of the Old West but we are still the most prosperous nation in the world. gun laws inside we do know how to defend ourselves against any and all threats and I will take that anytime over a gunless society!
He is just smug in his ignorance. He conflates correlation to causation, when there hasn’t been any significant change because of the massive Australian gun confiscation, other than making certain kinds of guns harder to get. All over the World, the results have been pretty much the same. The most common occurrence is for crime and homicide rates to rise, not stay the same or fall.
It you could take away the guns here in the United States, the results would likely be a gradual rise in crime rates. Fortunately, the idea of taking away the guns is a non-starter.
And yet you have the monarch of another country on your currency. We made the trade-off 240 years ago.
Second Amendment aside, at this point we have so many guns in the hands of criminals that it makes sense for us to have guns too.
Isn’t it great when foreigners who have never been within 100 miles of the border to your country tell you how to live your lives?
Yeah, kinda like the way people who know *nothing* about guns decide to pass legislation about something they know nothing about… 🙂
I prefer that as opposed to the 1000’s of foreigners inside my own country telling me how to live.
Oh the irony of an Aussie telling us what’s wrong with America.
Yup…seems like an “amusing, slightly-sad concept”.
As an Australian who now lives in the land of the free.
This guy has no idea what he is talking about. Feel free to pay no attention to him like the world does to Austrlia in general.
They are insignificant, and deluded about both their worth and condition.
Paul Hogan and Bindi Irwin aside, totally agree.
What are the Australian stats on rape? Robbery? Assault? Murder? I actually don’t know, just asking…
I just looked up homicide rate and it sits around 1.1 versus our 3.8. It really doesn’t matter though. The idea that our availability of guns is the cause of our homicide rate is like saying we could reduce childhood obesity by reducing spoon production. Guns do not cause violence. Period. If I give a good person a gun, he doesn’t start randomly shooting people or robbing banks.
Anybody see the Steve Harvey show yesterday? The audience was filled with loved ones of “gun violence” victims telling their horrible stories. Yeah that sucks but the point was to influence mass opinion into fearing guns. Infringing legislation to follow.
At one point Steve (I used to like him) said “in my day, we handled things hand to hand”. That is the stupidest argument for disarmament have ever heard. All violence should be deterred. Just because you got knocked the fuck out then had your body dragged to the side of the road for a good old-fashioned curb stomping, doesn’t make one form of thuggery any more honorable. The problem is hate and evil. Gangs promote hate and evil. Wayward boys (and girls) are recruited into gangs easily with no family structure to help prevent it.
Society needs to stop stigmatizing fatherhood and husbandry and stop praising unwed mothers. Lets get real here if we truly want to reduce violence. In the mean time, I carry a peace-maker.
Gun control, the theory that 110lb. women have the “right” to fistfight with 210lb. rapists.
That’s a huge pet peeve of my wife’s: gushing praise of single moms. It’s one thing if a husband dies in combat or on the job, or from some surprise disease or freak accident. No one can control that.
What she takes offense at are women who never marry the father or maybe don’t even know who he is, plus women who bear children from obviously unsuitable men who aren’t going to stick around. These women who put themselves into easily forseeable single motherhood are depriving their kids of a solid male role model, inflicting on society many of them who turn out to be criminals, and then claiming a halo for their supposed sacrifice.
We need to quit stigmatizing fatherhood, renew stigmatizing single motherhood, and most of all quit subsidizing via welfare the whole sordid affair.
You can keep praising unwed mothers if you’ll just stop paying them with my money. Accidental pregnancies are bad enough, but I believe (I don’t have a “study”, tho) that there are WAY too many deliberate pregnancies in order to collect more free money from an out-of-control government.
Vhyrus,
Compare the homicide rate of the state of Vermont to Australia — they are basically identical. And yet anyone age 16 or older in Vermont can legally carry a handgun in public, concealed or openly, without any license or vetting from the State. That alone clearly illustrates that firearm availability has nothing to do with the homicide rate of a state or country.
We don’t have a firearm problem in the United States. We have a violent criminal gang problem in the United States.
We also have a problem with politicians who benefit from the chaos that violent criminal gangs create. (The more chaos, the more relevant people think their local politicians are.)
Isn’t that how it works, though? If there isn’t really a problem, a politician will MAKE a problem just so they can say “We can solve this problem. Vote for me!”
Leeland Yee is a prime example of this.
At least there is a big ocean between us and them. Lost in all this good feeling is how they treated the aboriginal people who would have had a different say if they were properly armed.
Now, now, TTAG. Posting a comment like this as an article is really cruel to the poor fellow. He can’t help himself, and now we make fun of him. Like posting a video of the guy walking into a telephone pole or traffic while staring at his phone. Sure it’s funny and we know he is so focused on FUD he does not see daylight. Let’s go after the electeds and influencers; they know better and still violate our natural rights. Don’t give the pulpit to a commenter who is clearly uninformed. That target is too easy.
But it’s still fun. And it is nice to see there are people that stupid who do NOT live in the US, too.
Poor slave boy. When will people understand that they are other violence statistics, and not just “gun deaths”?
“Oooh I’m an Aussie and we don’t ever worry about being shot, but statistically I have a better chance of getting mugged, beaten, and raped than you do of being shot in America.”
I can’t adjust my font size big enough to express how much derp these people have.
Not true. Remove the inner city gang violence from the equation and the US is safer than australia in every respect. Including gun violence.
This is the part that annoys me. They always want to say, “We have less guns than you so we have less gun violence.” Duh. How about being just a little it honest for once and include ALL criminal violence statistics?
And good point about separating Liberal/Progressive controlled urban centers from the statistical mix. What happens to there talking points if we remove the 20,000 suicides and the gang-related shootings from the total? I suspect that approximately 1:4 ration between our countries changes dramatically.
So some random foreigner gets to come up with a different answer to what the plain logical text of MY constitution says than what MY supreme court came up with and I am supposed to care? Your foolish, draconian gun laws reduced crime by nothing whatsoever and increased rape by a lot. Go lick the boots of your masters, I will read MY constitution and tell you what it says
Yup. The rape rate in Australia competes with Sweden for the highest overall for 1st world countries. But to be honest, Australia is only half of swedens rape rate which competes for highest overall of any country.
Record numbers? Listen, I know things are a lot different with you Commonwealthers who still have unelected European monarchs on your currency, but since you confiscated the scariest 1/3 of all the guns in your country, your murder rate has gone down by around 30%. good job! I mean not so impressive considering you’re in an entire continent with the population of *one* of our larger states, but you take what you can get.
In the same timeframe ours has gone down by 50%, and we did it without deciding that our citizens can’t be trusted with a small measure of power and self-determination.
Cheers, mate.
Nice. Very nice.
POHM
Dear KirkFromBrisbane,
I will gladly tell you who looks ignorant now. You do. When a gunman attacked the coffee shop in Sydney in 2014, do you think the people there felt as smug and condescending as you? I wonder what they would have traded for one of those “ridiculous” concealed weapons. So far, the only tool in this conversation is you.
Warmest regards,
A free idividual
As a Kiwi FLAME DELETED
FLAME DELETED
Just another POME at heart. (Poor Old Mother England)
Ironically, if it weren’t for the Colonists armed revolution against the British authority, Australia’s (and Canada’s) request for more political autonomy several years later would have been tolerated far less.
But whatever, this guy is a troll. And yes I have been to Australia before, great place to visit, but generally more expensive, critters are more freakish and the crime rate is not lower than many parts of the U.S., despite their lack of the right to bear arms. Not to mention, this troll doesn’t mention that shootings weren’t that common in Australia even prior to their firearm roundup, so trying to link any low firearms crimes in Australia afterwards is meaningless. But give google a few seconds and you still find firearm crimes done there.
This is a problem sheep like this guy have that you mentioned. They fail to look at their before and after for their stricter gun laws. Their murder rate didn’t change. So if guns drive murder, you removed 1/3 of them from circulation, and your murder rate remained the same, wouldn’t that mean that the driver for murder is something else and not the tool used?
Could it be that homicide rates, like suicide rates, are not dependent on means? Would that indicate that the will to murder another Human is within the Killer, and doesn’t have anything to do with the object used to commit the homicide. Careful, you might be on the verge of making a lot of Leftists really angry with you, Sixpack70.
Hey Kirk, you’re not a troll, you’re just an ignoramus. Commenting on life and beliefs in a country which you don’t live in and probably have never visited only goes to prove your ignorance. I don’t comment on Australia even though I’ve been there. Show us the same courtesy and just go away.
Of course he says nothing of the rise in Muslim rape gangs in OZ. Or the fact the violent crime with weapons other than firearms is high in OZ. Or that the suicide rate is just as high as it was before the mass gun confiscation.
Time will tell if immigration policy and the inability to stop all gun smuggling will cause the crime rate and gun violence rate to increase to levels beyond those of ours in the USA.
Good luck…
FLAME DELETED
Is it just me, or is the US the world’s favorite punching bag riiiiiiiiight up to the point where they come, hat in hand, asking for help?
And if we’re going to cherry-pick statistics, perhaps you’d be interested to discuss the post-ban 1996-2001 spike in burglaries or 1999-2010 rise in sexual assaults? Or better yet, perhaps we could discuss how the gun-free utopia that is Australia has some of the highest rates of rape in the world (yes, higher than the US)?
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/02/12/australia-struggles-high-rate-sexual-assault-against-women-study
It’s jealousy. They think they should be as important as the USA, but they are not. Australians for the most part really do believe they are the “lucky country” and everybody else in the world should accept how fantasic they are.
It’s kind of pathetic.
I also think part of Australia’s problem is that America gave them a lot of attention for a couple years back in the 1980’s. They foolishly expected that to continue, but we moved on to shinier things after a year or two. “Crocodile Dundee” was fun, but come on, that little fad wasn’t going to last forever. I don’t see people walking around in parachute pants and leather jackets with a hundred zippers anymore, either.
This comic comes to mind:
http://satwcomic.com/stop-your-meddling
The antis will accept 10 rapes if it prevents just 1 shooting.
I am so stealing that!
A “man” actually said to me that he and his girlfriend (didn’t ask her) would accept her being raped if it would cause all guns to leave the world.
Time to say “Well, come along then, darlin’, back to my place and we’ll see if that works.!”
Must have been one of those ‘Modern Men’ the New York Times was talking about.
Do the antis realize that senseless tirades like this just makes people of the gun want to go out and buy another evil black assault rifle, some high capacity clipazines, and a few thousand rounds of green tip……….Because We Can!
Yeah, but our chance of being shot is less than your chance of being stolen by a dingo!
So, how many homicides in-totem, comparatively (Firearm involved and otherwise, combined)? Oh, and quantify that with populous density.
Yeah,”Mate”, that’s what I thought. STFU.
That’s a horriable picture. It’s anti-gunporn. I could almost cry over that one. A mountain of history/family history flushed away over “feelings”. In celebration of my RIGHTS I’m going to order another Pistol upper for my AR today.
All I can say is – From my cold dead hands.
There was a reason when we, the Yanks in the Navy, pulled into an Aussie port the women flocked to the port in numbers so high it was common to have a guy fling multiple Cracker Jack hats (covers, for those that were actually in the Navy) with his name written on them, only to go through the women that picked them up and find one to his liking.
On another note, saying you have a “low gun death” number doesn’t mean at all you have a “low violent crime” number genius. It means you have found solace in your choosing feeling good over prevention of crimes that can forever change one’s life. Get raped, beaten, stabbed, etc. and when it is done with a weapon other than a gun you just changed from one tool to another, thus showing what tools you actually are.
+1 been there, done that. What a great port of call. Somebody told us that the ratio was 7:1 women to men and that the men were unsavory.
I was told by an Aussie woman that *all* Aussie men are “unsavory” (not her word). They seek out and date each other, ignoring women even if they are married to them, are off to drink and dance with other men while wifey stays home with the babies. Sounds unbelievable, but this guy sure seems to be arrogant and disinterested in the truth, certain of his correctness though he is completely wrong, I’m thinking maybe their men have a gene missing, or something.
I dont expect any Aussie (or any other foreign national) to understand our 2nd Amendment. The US is just as (if not more) safe than any other country. If you exclude the urban gang related homosides, the US has a lower murder rate than that of Australia as a whole. Not to mention that Australia has a higher rate of rape than gun mad USofA. Out of all the civilized 1st world countries. australia ranks 2nd. Behind only Sweden with its rampant migrant rape. So while it is true, that you have a greater chance of being shot when you go into the poor inner city of most US metropolitan areas. females have a much higher chance of being raped due to being disarmed in Australia
Instead of all the rah-rah-‘murica bullshit, how about acknowledging that he is correct to some extent, and then put forth the following facts:
1. There are areas of the US with lower violent crime than Melbourne.
2. Australia has a FAR FAR stricter immigration law, and being a country that borders no other, it is far easier for them to restrict who comes in — and commits crime. (you have to be financially secure to immigrate to Oz. Plus, you cannot be obese. They have socialized medicine and do not want people with pre-existing fatal health issues).
3. Australia’s suicide rate went up after they confiscated guns, not down. The suicide-by-gun rate went to zero, but as researchers have found, people just started overdosing and hanging themselves.
4. Violent crime went up, not down.
5. Homicide rates went down slightly, but not at the rate of the removal of gun-homicides. In other words, a significant number of gun-homicides were replaced by other methods. Gun homicides DID go down to nearly zero, but OVERALL homicide did not drop that much.
6. Almost all gun crime in the US is committed by an individual who has a pre-existing police record. Gun laws do not affect them. Confiscation laws do not affect them. Compare illegal drug laws.
7. According to the FBI, homicide is about 90% male, and among those males, about 60% are young black males — black males make up 6% of the US population. Almost all of those murders are related to criminal activity such as drugs or gangs. Deal with the underlying issues for males (white or black) and you deal with a huge amount of violence.
Source: https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_3_murder_offenders_by_age_sex_and_race_2014.xls
8. There are multiple places in the US with lower violent crime rates than Melbourne which are “awash” in guns. The US has a “violence problem” not a “gun problem.” Removing the guns may affect that some, but won’t remove it or change it significantly.
9. For comparison, what is the historical range of murder rates (all methods)? How has that changed since confiscation. In the UK, the murder rate 100 years ago was 1 per 100k. Now it is 1.2 per 100k. It peaked at around 2 per 100k. Banning guns hasn’t accomplished much if people are still murdering at the EXACT SAME RATE.
…and doesn’t address the root cause. Guns are not the “problem” of violence. Violence (with guns or otherwise) is a symptom of the problem. Guns are not necessarily the solution, but the removal of guns is not the solution either.
Banning guns hasn’t changed much in the UK huh? Just like it didn’t change much in Australia? It’s done to those idiots the same thing it would do here, if we let it that is… Make law abiding citizens less safe!
The U.S. Has one of the lowest violent crime rates outside of certain cities that happen to be made up or certain racial groups.
It’s also interesting that this Australian leave out New Zealand with their lower crime rate than AU. I wouldn’t fit into his agenda.
He left out New Zealand for the same reason we leave Canada out. What does New Zealand have to do with Australia? NZ is its own sovereign country.
You missed the point. He cherry picked the US and made incorrect statements.
He left out New Zealand which is very similar to AU but has a lot more guns and a lower crime rate.
So yes, NZ is a sovereign country, just like the US
Both have similar origins as nations yet followed different paths. Having been to both places I’d say it’s a valid comparison
Exactly right.
Why is the “gun-related mortality rate” more important than violent crime of all kinds? But before answering that check out the statistics for crimes prevented by civilians with guns. According to the research requested by Obama’s administration there are 500,000-2,000,000 defensive gun uses in America each year. Compare that to the 10,000 or so homicides (about 8000 of which are already prohibited persons killing prohibited persons). With both of those pieces of information now freshly in the front of your mind as yourself what portion of those other 500,000 should have died because they did not have the appropriate tools to protect themselves.
I will admit that certainly not all of them would have ended up in a violent death. Many of them were simply chasing a burglar out of their home at night. So lets go REALLY low end and say only 1% of those defensive uses actually saved a life. That’s still 5000 lives SAVED by guns. Take those away and you have almost doubled the number of people killed by people who already are not allowed to have guns. You know. The ones that won’t turn them in when required to.
In the most lopsidedly limited estimates using only 1% of the lowest end of actually researched data . . . removing guns from the hands of law abiding citizens (because those are the only ones who would consider turning them in) would double the homicide rate. Not to mention other violent crimes like rape when there is a near 100% chance the victim is helpless. No my friend. In America the simple fact is that guns SAVE farm more innocent lives each year than they take.
The problem is cultural and no amount of deflection from that fact changes the truth of it. Intentionally ignoring it to spend energy and resources pursuing objects contributes to the problem. Removing the guns (your fix) makes more helpless victims. Fixing the culture makes less bad guys. So which is it you would wish upon American citizens, more victims or less crime? If your country doesn’t have the social issues that the USA has then enjoy that and go on living. But shame on you or anybody who would ignore our problems and leave the good people here at the mercy of the lawless.
Kirk,
You’re entitled to your opinion (my possibly mistaken reading of an amendment), which is one we hear all the time in the US — “my freedom to feel safe trumps your freedom to defend yourself with arms.” You also seem to think it’s guns that are the problem. If you read most of the articles on this site, you’ll see that while the US is home to a shameful number of violent attacks using guns, the significant majority are committed by people who are legally prohibited from owning or using firearms. Those of us who own guns legally (and quite a few of us own a number of guns that would astound you) are the most law abiding Americans you’ll find. In fact, we own guns because we enjoy order and the rule of law; you could say the guns are a signifier of our appreciation of a civil society. Despite what you and progressives may think, our weapons are not the precipitants of violence, but deterrents against it. Guns are not the problem. Gun owners are not the problem. Crime, gangs, disdain for the law — those are the problem. It is a tired truth that “gun crime” is highest in cities that have Australian-style gun restrictions. As for the high profile shootings that take place away from our poor, urban centers (and therefore become the clarion calls for gun control), even I was surprised to learn they are still not significantly common. Even so, they are horrible. It is quite possible that had any of these murderers found it difficult or impossible to attain a gun, their killing sprees may have been thwarted or diminished. So, you say, why don’t you DO SOMETHING? Because of the 500,000 to 3 million defensive gun uses in the US each year. Yes, we have a problem, and the problem is crime, evil, sin. Still, we have a relatively safe and secure society, also with quite a few “best cities,” whatever that means. The US is a center of innovation and creativity, much like Harry Lime’s Italy, as opposed to your Switzerland. Many Americans choose, like you, to be “a sitting duck,” and that’s their choice — I have never had to use my gun in defense, and neither will most Americans. I’m happy you’re a patriotic Australian. I’m a patriotic American, and that means I want a peaceful existence, like you, and the means to keep it peaceful, up to and including firearms, which my plain and unmistaken reading of our Bill of Rights protects.
Very, very well said. I reckon we can delete all of the other comments on this article, and just leave this one, because it’s the perfect response.
One of the serious problems when anyone in the Commonwealth countries compare their homicide rate to our homicide rate is the actual methodology used to determine what is a homicide or murder.
Here in the US, a dead person is determined to be the victim of a murder by competent medical authority, i.e. a coroner or medical examiner. You know, “a non self inflicted gunshot wound is a murder now go find who did it”.
But, in those socialist strongholds commonly known as the British Commonwealth, a murder is not a murder until someone is arrested, charged and then convicted of murder. Only then is it included in the homicide rates. Right now, at least 60% of Australian ‘sudden death investigations” go unsolved so even though the victim died of a gun shot wound, it’s not included in the murder rate.
I hear that a lot, and I would love to see specific citations that prove such.
That’s fair, he can share his perspective.
My perspective is that a mature responsible adult provides his own food, shelter, warmth and self-defense; then the next step is to provide that protection for his community and country, with force of arms if needed. This had been the definition of a free man versus peasant, peon and slave for all of recorded history.
Except for Switzerland, we are the only major country that comes close to this ideal, and that ideal is growing in leaps and bounds in the explosive growth of the carrying of firearms in public by law abiding citizens.
Most of the rest of the world, over six billion people, including those in Australia, by embracing this denial of their basic rights and responsibilities of being free citizens, are existing in the depths of servitude and virtual slavery.
Australia has a higher violent crime rate than the U.S and that drastically went up after their gun control laws went into effect, they also do not have the horrendous gang problem that we do that accounts for 80% of gun related homicides. I don’t see why its better to be attacked with fist or a knife instead of a gun.
I don’t care what any of you think, I like Kirk from Brisbane. He is always good for a laugh, has the most colorful way of saying things that really don’t make any sense, and keeps coming back no matter how mean anyone is to him.
He is wrong in almost everything he says, but I still like him anyway.
What a hater. Bet he wishes he could fondle one of my 12 ak’s, finger my ar’s, and caress my beautiful pistols. Or feel the history coursing through my mil surps. But he cant, because he is a slave. Sucks for him.
I doubt “KirkfromBrisbane” even bothered to read any of the responses to his “comment”. If he did, they didn’t change his mind. He may even have printed them to show his Aussie Tyrannist cronies, who nodded in agreement with his comment, then all agreed with him over the responses, “See? Those Yanks are all a bunch of savages who only want to maim and kill. Good job, Mate!”. Anyway have fun feeding this Troll, if you will. I think that ignoring him will take all the “fun” out of it for him, but likely he doesn’t give a Wallaby’s turd what you say in rebuttal to him.
Sorry to be a wet blanket, but just had to say this.
I disagree. Not that our responses will change Kirk’s mind, he’s completely brainwashed, a “true” believer. But it is the many people that come to this site that don’t post but will read the responses that will be effected. It is those on the fence that are checking out the “other side” that will be shown “The Truth about Guns”.
It was this type of forum that helped to cement my eye opening experience of the attempted mugging, and the realization that being defenseless would not keep me safe form becoming prey to a predator.
And eighteen years later of carrying a firearm, both CC and OC; I can say that I am a true believer in the freedom represented by the 2nd Amendment.
Those are good points, ThomasR. Thank-you.
Look at his comments here:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2016/02/daniel-zimmerman/breaking-two-students-shot-killed-at-glendale-az-high-school/#comment-2493555
Bunch of lies and opinions – not even a single fact.
And I have to point out, about your 18 years, how unusual (unknown?) it is for a person who has gone to the trouble and expense of getting to the point of legally carrying, to become convinced that was a bad idea, and set aside his arms and licenses, facing the world unarmed again. I doubt it happens, short of committing some offense and being forbidden arms. OTOH, thousands of people decide to gun up every day, gun stores are full, ranges are full, classes for training and for licensing are full. More armed people on the street every day, and what is happening to violent crime? It is taking less and less time for individuals to discover they have been lied to. I’d bet that Hillary is going to shut her pie hole about her plans for the servant class’ gun ownership, or that issue alone is going to sink her candidacy. Even the Dem faithful can see quite clearly that she (and the party) are lying to them on the subject, if they open their eyes just half-way.
How about we empty out our prisons and mass migrate our “urban” populations to Australia? Then we can see what gentle little lambs they all turn into in the supposed absence of guns.
Until someone can show me proof of a gun animating itself and going on a spree, I’ll continue to blame criminals for their own crimes and keep my guns to defend against those criminals.
Well, the best thing for both of us is that you can live happily in your country, and I can live happily in mine. So how about I don’t tell you what your country should be like and you don’t tell me how I should live over here where I’m perfectly happy as is.
So..I take it Australia doesn’t have a big problem with street gangs? Drugs? Boatloads of illegal immigrants (who often bring gangs and drugs with them)? Good for them.
WE HAVE THOSE PROBLEMS. And they aren’t going to go away any time soon. And getting rid of law-abiding citizens’ arms isn’t going to solve the problem EITHER.
FLAME DELETED
Finally!
I knew I could do it if I tried hard enough. 🙂
I meant what I said though.
So now being a free thinker involves regurgitating csvg talking points while being sheeple involves checking the actual statistics ourselves and independently of others, even those who agree with you?
Newspeak is hard.
It is not wise to try to correct flawed thinking with statistics. It is no different than trying to teach a pig to sing. All you do is waste your time and annoy the pig.
Wanna get Kirk to unscrew his head from his rectum, take him to a shooting range and educate him. Then have him walk down any street thoroughly infested with gang activity while unarmed and see how he’s feeling. If he’s like most people he’ll feel three things in this order. The first will be the thrill of learning that these tools have right and wrong uses which are entirely user dependent. The second will be fear. The third will be sudden unrelenting desire, either for an escape route replete with armored car or for a pistol (possibly both but that’s kinda complex thinking for someone scared poopless).
You can’t really compare Australia, a country of about 23 Million which is 93% white to any region in the United States, save maybe the ‘flyover states’ and leaving out the coastal states. There are more people in southern California alone. Plus, the USA was founded by badass ass-kicking empire-building imperialists, while the Aussies were a bunch of criminals nobody wanted. Take 90% of the population out of the USA and crime would drop as well, but nobody is suggesting we do that.
Take blacks out of the equation and our crime ridden cities would be near crime free utopias.
Let’s see, petulant, insulting, hypocritical? Yup. Homie is checking all the troll boxes.
Nice, try, though.
The people in Australia and Great Britain are obsessed with our freedom to own guns when it has no effect on their lives whatsoever. Why is that?
Because it contrasts with their lack of freedom. That is the underlying reason why they want us to be in the same situation they are in. Then they won’t be faced with the reality of the position their government put them in.
Otherwise, why would they care so much about what happens here in America?
Misery loves company.
Additionally, what is left out of the equation when discussing gun crimes in America is that non-Whites, and blacks more specifically, commit around 98% of gun crimes in America. Gun control laws largely affect law abiding White people as blacks simply ignore the law and do whatever they want to and the courts show leniency. There is a catch and release program that allows them to commit the same crimes over and over until either they kill someone or someone kills them.
We are expected to lose our freedom because a large percentage of blacks have little regard for human life, lack impulse control and glorify violence.
He makes it sound like gun violence is everywhere in the US. I’ve lived here all my life (43 years) and never seen a shooting. Maybe I need to move to one of the high-population gun control utopias.
Yeah, I’ve spent around 60 of my years inside the US, and I can’t remember ever seeing a person with a loaded gun in his hand that was not engaged in target practice. Only times I’ve seen guns fired in anger were outside the US, in the course of a couple wars.
I’ve been to Australia multiple times as it’s a great country with friendly and awesome people, Kirk the Outback Warrior for American Social Justice, notwithstanding.
Now, I hate to bring up the elephant in the room – who am I kidding, no I don’t – but, there were a WHOLE LOT of yuppie a$$ looking white people in Australia with very few minorites, sans the handful of Aboriginals I saw hanging around the casino, last time I was there.
So, since the Outback Social Justice Warrior, Kirk, shows such concern with American criminality and culture, I vote that we, as Americans, ship over some of the Urban America gang culture (MS13, Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, Mexican Mofia, etc.)
It is our duty to bring multiculturalism to, Kirk, and the Austrialian people. There are too many honkies in Australia, let’s things up in the land down under – try a little social experiment.
The age of safe island utopias ended over a decade ago. The old man is living in the past. There are more tons of undocumented illicit product and people hitting the shores of Aus in a giving year than there is food. It’s only a matter of time before Kirk and people like him are directly affected.
The age of globalization doesn’t care one bit what the laws of any nation say. What they can’t import they’ll manufacture. It’s pretty regular now to find garage weapons manufacturing operations in Aus. Shootings as well as violent crime have been moving on up steadily for a while now not just in Aus but in the UK and Canada as well.
National borders are an obsolete construct. Global communications/transactions are instantaneous and anonymous. Millions of people are migrating wherever they want to without vetting. It’s well past time for people like Kirk to put away these childish notions.
Wasn’t Australia started as a penal colony for England? That would make all Australians prohibited persons. 🙂
Started as a penal colony, still a penal colony.
FLAME DELETED
The funny thing is that this guy wasted a lot of time writing this smug little bit of pearl clutching, but could have saved us all a ton of time and just sent you:
“DURR I’M TOO DUMB TO UNDERSTAND THAT AUSTRALIA’S HOMICIDE RATE WAS A FRACTION OF THE US’S EVEN PRIOR TO 1996 WHEN THE TWO COUNTRIES GUN LAWS WERE PRETTY SIMILAR! I’M ALSO TOO DUMB TO UNDERSTAND THE SLIGHT DECREASE IN AUSTRALIA’S OVERALL HOMICIDE RATES SINCE THE 96 LAWS ARE SIMPLY A CONTINUATION OF A DECREASING TREND THAT PREDATES THEM BY A COUPLE DECADES! WHAT ARE SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS???? K BYE LOL”
While their schools and unis may so far have been free of “massacres,” it doesn’t sound like they teach any more than ours do. As long as there exists situations where someone could be better off with a gun, than without one, their availability is a positive. That there may also be ways of using them that have negative results, have no bearing at all on the matter. Just don’t use them that way. Simple. I’m sure someone could cook up some “statistic” showing Australians would be “better off” along some random metric, if they were prohibited from drinking as much beer as they do, and from spending so much time outside collecting skin cancer. So what? It’s not as if that renders the freedom to leave your house and have a beer, some sort of horrible transgression.
I’ve always found it fine that other countries have different laws and values than us. Why is OP so concerned about us? We are a more individualistic country with a strong emphasis on property rights, so we find the idea of the govt stealing our shit like you experienced more abhorrent then the possibility of getting shot by a street hoodlum.
http://ageofshitlords.com/australian-shitposters-are-ruining-the-internet/
Kirk, is this you?
He starts out by calling us mindless sheep, while at the same time saying we should be defenseless. Sheep=defenseless. Armed=\=sheep
I read this and think, Armed people are citizens while disarmed ones are subjects. Is that not what the populace of Australia is, Subjects.True freedom requires true sacrifice, dedication, and commitment..Go talk about something else, you obviously do not know what we have.
Your views are not held by all Australians. And definitely not this one. Your diatribes are appear to closely match those of the Greens party.
The biggest (and possibly only) success of the post Port Arthur gun laws was the tightening of the licensing and safe storage requirements. It was hoped that the shooting sports would eventually die out through attrition. What has actually happened is more people are now willing to comply with the requirements which has upset the Greens because, while not disobeying the law, people are not doing what they wish.
“Go FLAME DELETED yourself.”
– America (1776)
FLAME DELETED
I’ll just point out (as others have) that here in America, numbers absolutely prove that guns do not cause murder, mayhem, or crime. During the same 25 years in which the number of guns in civilian ownership has increased to the highest level in history, the rate of violent crime has decreased by more than 40%.
As for Australia…meh.
What you all have done with your country is your business, and I’d be much obliged if you (and some of our dumber politicians) would quit trying to force Australia’s choices on my country. In return, I’ll do my best to remind America’s politicians to keep their noses out of the rest of the world’s business. To each his own. What do you think? Deal?
Bloody hell their is another Kirk from Brisbane on here. I hope no one I know thinks I wrote that nonsense.
See not all Australians are that fucking arrogant to think they know the US Bill of Rights better then the US Supreme court. But with the way the media carries on over here alot do. They also believe the NRA is Satan incarnate because the media regulary tells them so.
Of course those of us who dont have their heads so far up their ass might have read John Lott’s More Guns Less Crime and having all most finished a degree in Economics actually understand his excellent econometric analysise
Anyway. Another Kirk from Brisbane here. Telling this Kirk dont sully my good name. If anyone at my clubs think I wrote this im going to be pissed.
You read More Guns, Less Crime? Hats off to you brother. I don’t have enough math to balance my checkbook. People still have checkbooks, right?
Apparently, then :”KirkfromBrisbane” used “Kirk from Brisbane’s” TTAG name to post its Troll Rant, and is likely to use anyone else’s TTAG label whenever it wants to. So it can pose as an imposture and the software used here does not prevent that. Great!
Kirk from Brisbane, I am guessing there will be an obvious difference in what you might post than what KirkfromBrisbane posts and it is doing this as much to bedevil the TTAG Community as to bedevil you. As you well know most anti-gun websites monitor and delete or ban any posts that disagree with their propaganda, or disable comments altogether. On TTAG Freedom of Speech is not infringed, but often has to be endured when the abusive, vulgar, deliberately spurious Trolls drop-in. That is why I usually ignore them.
Where is Kirk by the way? Saw this post on my lunch break and was really looking forward to his comments on his comment.
All I have to say is “Vegemite.”
Australia is an isolated, homogenous, culture. Try living in Chicago’s melting pot and then tell us where we go wrong. Like the Eagles of Death Metal guy said, until nobody has guns everybody should. Tyrants and invaders and all of that.
They’re getting more ‘diversity’ even as they do their best to block themselves off from refugees.
What’s the point of an aussie spending time commenting on a pro-gun site like this ? I mean, WTH – ran out of sheep to take care of (for any meaning of “take care of”, of which I hear aussies have many)
In any case – I live in Apex, NC – “Apex named Money magazine’s No. 1 place to live in United States “. And in North Carolina, I think we have more guns than people. Probably a 4:1, if not more, ratio.
So what the heck was that about ?
Agreed- I live in Greenville and I think just about everybody has at least a gun, if not more, assuming they’re not with the college crowd (“I’m taking a sociology class, and the issue about guns…”). Frankly, if you’re not an American citizen, whatever you have to say about our Constitution, while entertaining at times, is irrelevant.
They don’t need guns knowing that we will we be there to save them (again) if they ever do. They also were given their independence, while our great-great… Grandfather’s stood up and took theirs from the most powerful country in the world.
Defintion of troll: In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion, often for their own amusement.
An intolerant free-thinker. Are you sure your intolerance allows you to freely think about it? I don’t think it does.
Kirk seems like a textbook sh!tposting troll. He lives in Australia. Posts in a US forum, about US issues, and explains how it is factual that Australia is heaven on earth because people have embraced their government banning people empowering devices – and… calls us sheep. Hilarious. Kirk, sheep have a shepherd and sheep dogs that look after them. They are not efficiently capable of defending themselves. Are you sure it is us that are sheep?
Do you, Kirk, have the freedom to tool-up with military style weaponry? No? I thought not. Maybe you should re-read the 2nd amendment – and the definition of “freedom” while you are at it.
Well. That’s fine. Laugh and then feel sad? about it at the same time. We don’t care what you do about it.
Good for you. Your opinion is noted. Just FYI, Australia has 1.1 homicides per 100k, US has 3.8/100k (drops every year while gun sales and gun ownership wildly proliferates everywhere). You guys always act like there is an amazing difference. We are talking about 2.7 people every 100,000. Furthermore, if we addressed just a few select major metropolitan areas, the US would be the same as Australia on this count.
Uh… no. We don’t have the freedom to kill people. That, sir, is against the law. Or maybe you need to check the definition of freedom again?
Don’t know what to tell you. There are some real sickos out there. Even in Queensland:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairns_child_killings
That said, I don’t think guns made them sickos either.
I laughed when you said “the proof is in the statistics.” Ok… so gun deaths go down and knife deaths and other methods go up? Those statistics don’t sound good to me. Over here in the US, to most, dying by knife isn’t better than dying by gun. Also – guns don’t “cause” homicides – ok? Do I need to prove this? I don’t need statistics for that. You have forsaken freedom for safety. Be honest about it. Your safety “may” be marginally increased, but at the cost of you not being responsible for your own safety. It is now out of your hands. You are a statistic, a metric, on a piece of paper. It doesn’t matter if you are one of those people who dies, as long as the number is less than the united states right?
Excellent. Everyone agrees this aspect is beneficial to everyone.
You are kidding right? There are 21 guns per 100 people in Australia – they rank 26th in the world for gun ownership. Even if there were no guns… is death by knife better?
I’ll pass. But to me, there isn’t a place in Australia I would prefer to live over a place in the US. Why? Because I like my guns, and also… The US doesn’t have this guy named “kirkfrombrisbane” living there. You see, for firearm enthusiasts, the United States is the place to be. I’m where I’m supposed to be. You are where you are supposed to be. Not sure why you are lecturing to us, that we need to give up our guns and move to Australia. Completely nonsensical.
I routinely sit around without much risk of someone trying to kill me also (Again – 1.1 vs 3.8 … divided by 100000… yes… 100000.) so – I don’t think that has much to do with it.
This is just troll excrement. Nothing to address here so – back on topic:
The above commenter has cherry picked shooting death statistics as something to minimize over the reduction of all other methods of death without identifying the root cause of the problem. Identifying and addressing the root cause of the problem is a solution to both make communities safer while simultaneously maintaining people’s freedom to own firearms. Guns don’t cause violence – identifying the underlying reason for the violence and addressing it – is the solution. All that said, I would say that if you live in Australia and want a gun that is on the list, you are pretty much screwed. Not a great deal of freedom in that area and for that reason, the US is the place to be for me.
As I have commented before I have no idea if “Kirk” really is from Australia or Brisbane!
The stats for Queensland where Brisbane is largest city and state capital is that there is around 200 000 licenced firearm owners out two million people. About five major ranges plus some smaller indoor ones and ten gun shops. One so new that I didn’t know it was there until my wife saw it on line last week. Plan to check it out tomorrow
As I have also commented before I don’t like our current laws ( cost me a Ruger 10/.22 ) but if you have NO felony convictions and want to own firearms you can be licenced for rifles from 11 and handguns from 18 Plus you can use under supervision at ranges before that.
Main media is mostly anti gun. Headlines a few weeks ago how 1 in 8 people where I live near Brisbane own firearms made it a dangerous place. Totally opposite in reality a large country town with almost zero crime. Not much different to place I worked at in Texas years ago. Local papers will show people winning shooting events etc. I’ve been on a few
Media also like to forget that the firearms used in 35 person massacre were stolen and first victim was the legal owner. A family friend of shooter. I can’t remember but I think stabbed
It also likes to leave out the other two massacres of 15 and 14 people by fire with $5 of petrol
Our laws cause a lot of hoops for honest people but still better than New Jersey etc about interstate travel. I can drive to any range or hunting area without worrying is this legal as each state now accepts the others licences – possibly the only good change from the new laws
Ok going to do more important things and get a few things out of storage as deer season starts March 1 and this year I can get to opening day
“As I have commented before I have no idea if “Kirk” really is from Australia or Brisbane!”
This KirkfromBrisbane person is NOT Australian.
He started posting here last year, starting with the name Argon the Antiquarian. He has since pretended to be another Australian once and a Norwegian citizen once; he may have used other aliases.
He is not Australian because he has been called before by other readers last year; they noticed he was using a non-Australian dialect while pretending to be one.
His first comment on this website seems to be number 26 here on this article:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2015/05/robert-farago/australian-gun-grab-goes-to-the-next-level/
Any argument that begins and ends with the assertion that you and your culture are inherently superior to someone elses’ ought to be ignored, no matter what it’s arguing for.
MEH. Another story about a gigantic country with a tiny population. Never been to Aussieland but kudos to RockOnHC. NOTHING they do applies to the land of the Free and Home of the Brave…USA 322000000 VS 24000000 population.
“The proof is in the statistics. Australia’s gun-related death statistics are over an order of MAGNITUDE better than the USA. And that is not a one-off. Its been maintained for decades.”
And your rape statistics, subject? How are those?
Oh, right, sky-high for an ‘industrialized nation.’
Struth! That guy’s a wanker of the highest order. And apparently is okay with rape.
Who looks ignorant now? The guy quoting cherry picked “gun murders” instead of properly considering all murders.
Australian version of our “modern man” it seems to me?
How does that tripple skinny caramel no whip latte taste mate?
Got to stay sassy so you can fit in your skinny jeans.
Good lord i can’t listening to someone who is elitist comment on our way of life.
I carried all day and no one got shot.
What’s that saying?
The sheep want to believe that the wolf won’t come but the sheepdog lives for that day. I’m a sheepdog.
I want to believe that Australia has more people with backbone than this person.
Load of crap.
The fallacious assumption here is that Australia is peaceful because guns are banned, when in fact Australia has had lower crime rates throughout its existence. It’s just a more peaceful country wity more docile people.
That has some advantages ane some disadvantages. You’d be hard pressed to say one is better than the other in total. Yes, the US because of its unique composition is more violent (to a barely meaningful degree) than other offshoots of British Colonialism with similar economic development. So what? Stay in Australia if you prefer it there.
First, I don’t give a flying rip about Australia. I wouldn’t be remotely offended if they returned the favor. Second, attach Mexico to any countries mostly unenforced border and the murder rate will double guns or not. Australia is an island, don’tcha know, and no person or thing gets in unless they want it to.
How to speak Australian. Wanker…..KirkfromBrisbane.
For every foreigner with an opinion against American gun rights, I’ve met at least 5 online that encourage and warn us not to give up ours. They are slowly trying to get theirs back. The anti gunners took miles of their rights and now they have to go an inch every decade or so to restore those rights. There are A LOT of great humans worldwide that understand the basic right of self defense.
Thinking about how the world is now not just in the US but in total, Australia is one of the easiest targets for terrorism along with other European countries. They have been hit and will continue to be untill they make a point that they arent a weak country. That Japanese general that said something about “a rifle behind every blade of grass” isnt a joke here even the scum of the US would take up arms if someone tried to take our country. Could they say the same for the cowardly population of the disarmed countries they live in, where they believe they are being protected by an all powerful goverment that clearly doesnt even care about them.
False logic.
Australia has less gun murders, but their murder rate didn’t go down after their ban. Same is true in every country that did what they did.
Mass killings can be done with a truck. Are they banned in Australia?
You could kill more in a crowd with a truck than an ar15.
Teenagers in Boston didn’t seem to have trouble killing a lot of people with a pressure cooker. They banned there?
So why aren’t there mass killings in Australia?
Because no one has had the will to do it. That’s all it takes.
“Who looks ‘ignorant’ now?”
That would be you.
Here’s the ignorant part: “deaths by guns,” considered out of context, is an artificial and ignorant metric.
For example, I understand Australia has quite a significant problem with iatrogenic (caused by doctors) deaths. The annual count of iatrogenic fatalities is hotly contested, but seems to range somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000, in a country where total annual deaths number only about 135,000. That’s on the order of 10% of all deaths in Australia being caused by doctors and hospitals (which, by the way, is WAY more than the percentage of deaths in the USA caused by gun-related homicide).
Here’s a solution: OUTLAW DOCTORS AND HOSPITALS. That will immediately cut the number of iatrogenic deaths to zero. Great success, right?
But wait, says the non-ignorant reader: this action will actually increase NON-iatrogenic deaths by at least an order of magnitude. Because doctors — like guns — not only COST lives, but SAVE lives — demonstrably more than they cost.
On the other hand, you HAVE solved the problem with the *artificial* metric of “iatrogenic deaths considered solely as costs while ignoring the context of benefits.”
So you’re going to go out and do that next, I hope.
As you may know, many Australians (and people from all around the world in general) think that your country (among others) is a role model that the U.S. should follow. However, two very important studies of your 1996 National Firearms Agreement completely disagree with this statement.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/buyback-has-no-effect-on-murder-rate/2006/10/23/1161455665717.html
A ten-year study, lead by Dr. Samara McPhedran and published in the British Journal of Criminology, found that the $500M AUD spent on the mass confiscation and destruction of previously-legal firearms had absolutely no effect whatsoever on homicide or suicide rates.
https://www.melbourneinstitute.com/downloads/working_paper_series/wp2008n17.pdf
Yet another five-year study, produced by Wang-Sheng Lee and Sandy Suardi from your University of Melbourne and published in the Melbourne Institute’s Working Paper series, confirmed Dr. McPhedran’s conclusions and no others.
Dr. McPhedran even testified to this fact before a recent Australian Senate Inquiry, which had looked into – among other things – banning semi-automatic handguns. Needless to say , gun control advocates were rightly and completely humiliated.
Before that same Senate Inquiry, Australian Federal Police Assistant Commissioner Julian Slater had freely admitted that not only do they have no clue what exactly what kinds of contraband were getting through, but they only know about what they somehow by some miracle manage to intercept. As I’m sure you may be well aware, and even if you’re not you will be now, Australia’s porous borders and low population density – coupled with deeply corrupt postal and customs services – make it a veritable smuggler’s paradise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjPEdEaS8eY
More analyses of U.S. domestic and Australian gun control laws have been done besides the brilliant work of Dr. McPhedran, and Wang-Sheng and Saudri, on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific. Their findings match those of the former researchers almost exactly.
http://www.smh.COM.AU/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/revealed-australias-suicide-epidemic-20090820-es3p.html
aph.GOV.AU/~/media/wopapub/senate/committee/clac_ctte/completed_inquiries/2008_10/suicide/submissions/sub42_pdf.ashx
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-31-criminal-target_N.htm
A Deputy Director from the Australian Institute of Criminology also testified before the Senate Inquiry, and explicitly stated that only 5 of the 48,000+ handguns in the Australian state of Victoria had been stolen. To complicate matters further, the AFP even admitted they had not even bothered to examine the AIC’s report on gun thefts at all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P3Etjp_WK0
After the Port Arthur shooting, there were also the Quakers Hill and Childer’s Palace arson attacks, the Black Saturday Bushfires – which were deliberately lit in case you needed a reminder – the Cairns Stabbings, the Lockhart Shooting, and the Monash University Shooting. The 1996 NFA didn’t stop the massacres from happening, but only changed the methods in which they are carried out. Especially not when many thousands of guns handed over to the government for destruction in 1996 were then illegally resold to criminals – many of which have still never been recovered, and have very likely been used in crimes since. Some were indeed recovered though, in the private collections of police officers.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/the-big-sting/2007/02/09/1170524303995.html?page=fullpage
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/ravenshoe-police-sergeant-resigns-after-discovery-of-surrendered-guns-in-his-private-collection/story-fnihsrf2-1226705185355
Guns are taken from Melbourne’s own ‘Red Zone’ every two days – all from “prohibited” persons – and by the thousands every single year — and that’s just one metropolitan area in one city.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/gun-found-every-two-days-in-melbournes-red-zone-20150618-ghrak9.html
Even police and military armories are broken into with mind-boggling regularity, to the tune of dozens of times – and that’s just in the state of Victoria and the port of Sydney.
http://www.skynews.com.au/news/local/melbourne/2015/05/12/vic-gun-thieves-eavesdrop-on-cops.html
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/archive/news/no-sign-of-stolen-rocket-launchers/story-e6frg6o6-1225787746734
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-30/navy-base-security-breach-larrakeyah-darwin/4400646
Isn’t it any wonder that only after the states of Victoria, Queensland, and Tasmania were excluded from all crime statistics reports by both the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Institute of Criminology from 2010 onwards there begins an appreciable drop in Australia’s violent crime rates across the board?
Indeed, wonders never cease. Especially when criminals receive hundreds of pistols at a time through the mail and several times every year, made especially easy by Australia’s institutionalized corruption of its Customs services – not to mention that of individual officials, as well.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/guns-imported-through-sylvania-waters-post-office-linked-to-crimes-in-sydney/story-fnpn118l-1227252669241
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/customs-staff-charged-over-alleged-drug-smuggling-ring/story-e6frg6nf-1226576397568
http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2015/03/24/cocaine-customs-cop-caught/
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3675337.htm
Even if criminals couldn’t receive their guns through the Sunday Post, they can just as easily make them or have them made-to-order. These aren’t those shoddy rusticles of zip-guns you’d expect to find in a jail cell, either, but finely machined MAC-11 sub-machine guns – complete with 32-round magazines and silencers.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/homemade-gun-factory-shutdown-by-police-in-sydneys-southwest-20140618-zsd4a.html
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/jeweller-angelos-koots-admits-to-making-submachine-guns-at-his-seven-hills-home-and-supplying-them-to-bikie-groups/story-fni0cx12-1226760983916
In conclusion, no, America would not benefit from Australia’s gun control laws. (Even Australia didn’t seem to benefit from them.) This is for a wide variety of reasons. Given the level of sophistication of the criminal enterprises that were created by Prohibition in the U.S., and now during the morbidly hilarious failure of the “War on (Some) Drugs” around the world, the only logical conclusion that can be drawn about a prohibition on guns – which is what you have by-and-large in Australia – is that equally large and sophisticated criminal enterprises will arise to fulfill the demand for guns. This can, as quite thoroughly demonstrated above if I do say so myself, can and will be accomplished in a number of ways: clandestine domestic manufacture, surreptitious importation from abroad, and widespread theft.
Australia is plagued by the first and the second. America is plagued by the second and third.
To give you an example of the futility of banning an item to which is attached very high demand, some 1.6 million pounds of marijuana was seized by the U.S. DEA in 2010 – and that’s only a very small percentage of what is believed to have made it across the border. It is reasonable to assume that the shear amount of arms, ammunition, and accoutrement that can occupy the same space as 800 tons of plant matter is quite sufficient to arm a significant portion of the U.S. criminal element.
These dreadful shortcomings demonstrate a basic and willful failure of Prohibitionists to understand or even acknowledge the market forces governing anything for which there is significant demand. It is the primary reason why central economic planning has only proved an unmitigated disaster everywhere it’s been tried. More basically, they fail to realize or consciously ignore the fact that when people want something, someone will get it for them. The harsher the ban, the higher the profit motive. The higher the profit motive, the more risks criminals will be willing to take to satisfy their market. There are deeper reasons for this failure than simply flat-out flunking ECON 101. Those who trade in prohibited goods are, by definition, criminals who are engaged in a criminal enterprise without the benefits of redress the courts or any other avenue of dispute resolution or of police protection. When an enterprise can’t: take out a loan, open a bank account, establish credit, file a lawsuit, or have police respond to an alarm, it becomes necessarily more violent to protect its financial and territorial interests and to affect resolutions over contractual disputes. Essentially, prohibition of highly desirable goods can only function to increase overall violence and disregard for the law as a basic factor of prohibition. One must accept this as a basic premise and then try to reconcile the increased violence and criminality coupled with the inevitable encroachment on individual liberty with any perceived utility of the prohibition.
As the world slowly comes to the realization that prohibition of drugs, with the focus now being primarily on marijuana and cannabis, has very little if any utility in the face of extremely high demand we begin to move away from banning it.
Considering that those who smuggle, steal, and manufacture weapons and their customers will obviously still be armed, the level of violence in the wake of an Australian-style prohibition would be unprecedented. Once one factors in the unique culture surrounding guns and civil rights in the U.S., the increasingly ubiquitous support for the Second Amendment and the right it protects, and American’s historical resistance to tyranny, the violence may very well escalate into that of armed insurrection.
http://rt.com/usa/269362-assault-guns-control-ny/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3115418/posts
Mass civil disobedience is already the order of the day, and police departments are already realizing the logistical absurdity of such an endeavor in actually enforcing registration or, Heaven forbid, a mass confiscation. In fact, many law enforcement officials have already announced their intentions to not enforce such laws at all.
http://www.policeone.com/chiefs-sheriffs/articles/6435415-NY-sheriffs-We-wont-enforce-gun-laws-magazine-limits/
http://www.newswithviews.com/NWV-News/news437.htm
http://www.examiner.com/article/conn-police-refuse-to-enforce-new-gun-laws
Also given that firearms are very durable items, with many examples lasting 500 years or more with proper care and maintenance, and that upwards of 363 million (as of 2013) are already thought to be present in the hands of up to 124 million Americans, it’s highly unlikely that any prohibition would succeed at all as confiscation must immediately follow – as it did in Australia – to realize any utility at all.
http://www.leg.state.co.us/Clics/Clics2013A/commsumm.nsf/b4a3962433b52fa787256e5f00670a71/c4b73dc817da609e87257b24005ef7f8/$FILE/13SenState0304AttachC.pdf
All this having been said, advocacy for prohibition of firearms can only be seen as either ill informed (as in being simply unaware of the consequences) or malicious (aware of the inevitable and invariable failure of the prohibition and the increased criminality and violence and potential to destabilize society and government and possibly to result in violent revolution). It’s either one or the other. There is NO third option.
Pick one.
You’ll pardon me if I don’t care about the twaddle of a non- resident who is incapable of rational discussion without ad hominem attacks. By the way aside from the wonders of forced disarmament Australia legal system also has the abomination known as section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act a law that can be used to strip someone of their free speech rights FOR LIFE if the offend the wrong people.
I think the Bard sums up my opinion of our Aussie hoplophobe
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
“What good does it do me, after all,” Tocqueville asks, “if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life?”
Since TTAG reposted a comment from the Aussie troll, I shall repost my original response to said troll:
See son, what you fail to comprehend here is that there are actually three Americas.
One America, where I live and where many other People of the Gun live, is fairly free, rural, and not densely populated. It is known derisively as “Flyover Country”. This America is largely crime free. What crime we do have is of the “pulled over with weed or other petty drug” or the “petty theft that goes along with having tweekers and stoners around” variety. There has been one single solitary murder in my county in the 36 years I’ve lived here, and it was committed by an escaped convict passing through (he killed the county sheriff that happened to stop him for speeding). EVERYONE is armed. MOST have a permit to carry a handgun concealed on their person everywhere they go. Those that do not have a CCW do have guns at home. There have been zero (0) accidental shootings in my county since I’ve lived here. NONE. Most folks die of old age or car/farm accidents.
The second America is less rural, more densely populated, and sometimes slightly intermingled with the third America (which I’ll get to in a minute). Life there is highly regulated, but because the regulations closely match the preferences of most of the inhabitants there, nobody seems to notice all the rules (unless or until they inadvertently break one, then God help them). It is also very affluent, and peopled with urban professionals who make a lot of money at their jobs (doctors, lawyers, programmers in silicon valley, actors in hollywood, stock brokers in new york city, and the socialites and ancillary people who orbit those kinds of people, etc). They’ve never touched a gun in their lives, or known anyone who has, because guns are largely illegal there. They almost never experience crime, though they read about it in their newspapers and watch its aftermath on the TV every day. They live inside secure buildings with door men and security guards, or inside gated subdivisions with guards at the gates and cops patrolling the streets. They generally feel sorry for the people who live in the third America, but are also deathly afraid of them (mostly for good reason, since the only time they’re likely to encounter one is when being robbed or assaulted). They also generally look down their nose at people like me who live in the rural America described above, believing themselves to be better and smarter people than the rubes that live in flyover country. Most folks there die of old age or car accidents. A few get killed by folks from the third America while being robbed or car jacked, but not many. People from this America feel oddly at home in Europe or Australia, and wonder why.
The last America (and I use that term loosely here) is densely packed, urban, broken/dysfunctional, poor, and mostly black or latino (depending on where it’s located, as blacks and latinos do not mix well for some reason, so they self segregate). Crime there is a way of life. Almost no one works for a living, those that do are stolen from habitually. Gang membership is the future for 70%-80% of boys born there, and some non-trivial percentage of girls too. Prostitution gets the lion’s share of the girls who don’t join a gang or make a profession of having kids. Everything is illegal there, from painting your own house, to pumping your own gas, or trying to start a business without bribing someone at city hall (not to mention paying off the local gangs). Guns and drugs are everywhere there, even though both are illegal in the extreme. People are shot every day, people die from being shot every single week, and generally speaking, nobody is willing to help the cops catch those who do the shooting. The ones that are caught spend a cursory amount of time in prison, and then are released to continue their life of crime until they are either caught again, or killed. Places like inner city Chicago, Baltimore, or LA are examples of this third America. Even though guns are as illegal in these places as they are in your beloved Australia, more people will die in each of these cities each year than soldiers were killed on a yearly basis in either Afghanistan or Iraq during the wars there.
This third America is were almost all of the United States’ “gun crime” comes from, and guns are ALREADY ILLEGAL there.
Gun control has failed in these places, just like drug prohibition has failed, just like trying to suppress the sex trade has failed. This third America is largely lawless, and likely will remain so without drastic measures being taken (which I do not consider myself qualified to enumerate, much less recommend).
If you take out the inner city areas of the largest democrat controlled cities, suddenly the US crime and “gun violence” rate matches yours in Australia and much of western Europe.
America doesn’t have a gun problem, America has an inner city culture of lawlessness problem. I’m not convinced that these places are lawless because they are populated by blacks and latinos, but it cannot be denied that black and latino gang members make up the vast majority of violent criminals in the US.
You speak about the US like it’s one giant homogeneous nation, but unlike Australia, the US is not 92% white. With diversity comes friction and strife, simple as that.
The US is also vastly larger than Australia, both spatially and in terms of population. You have 22M souls onboard, while we have nearly 350M, many of whom do not like each other much.
Bottom line, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
What works in Australia (though I’d argue that your gun control schemes are not working all that well down under either) will not work in the US.
If you find that you don’t like our laws, I would invite you to stay in Australia and never darken our collective doorstep.
Also, if you want me to follow the laws YOU like, you’re gonna have to come here and MAKE me.
Simple as that.
If you think you can force us to do as you will, give it a try.
So tired of comparing these little (population wise) countries to US. Australia has less people than Texas
Quite right. The population of the U.S. is nearly 15 times that of Australia. That, and the U.S. has a storied history of kicking out the British empire, as opposed to Australia’s embracing it. It also goes without saying, or it should, that most of the modern advancements in firearms happened here, which were then copied all around the world. If we need any help with tactical boomerangs, we’ll give you a bell. Ta-da.
Australia didn’t have any more violent crime before their gun ban than they do now. The levels have remained about the same. Meanwhile violent crime in the US has dropped about 50% over the same time frame, while increasing gun ownership. The choice Kirk is offering is a false one. Aussies gave up their gun rights for nothing.
” . . .Aussies gave up their gun rights for nothing.”
Liar. They got a warm-n-cozy false sense of security. Which is important if your primary fear was being shot by a law abiding citizen.
Just to let Americans now, I as an Australian who is a Gun enthusiast and future gun owner, believe in and fully support the 2nd Amendment. Maybe one day i could possibly move to America but before then, I encourage the resistance Americans are putting up against those that would take away their rights.
Live long, free and enjoy your rights
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