In the presidential listening session where students expressed their emotions to President Donald Trump about the Parkland school mass murder, one of the students made a comment about school shootings and Australia. Sam Zeif in video from the presidential listening session, February 21, 2018: “In Australia there was a shooting at a school in 1999.” . . .

I’m reminded of the scene from Animal House where Bluto exclaims “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” and a listener replies “Forget it, he’s rolling.” But Zeif has much more wrong than Bluto did about Pearl Harbor.

Australia did not have any rampage school shootings before 1996, when they implemented their extreme gun ownership and use scheme.

Zeif then claims that the Australian parliament then “stopped it,” and that there have been zero students shot in Australia since their extreme restrictions on gun ownership and use were implemented.

In fact, the closest Australia has had in a rampage school shooting was in 2002, six years after the gun restrictions were put into effect. The events took place at Monash University, not a grade or high school. That shooter did not use a rifle. he used six pistols.

The Australian parliament responded by passing even more restrictions on gun ownership and use.

The next closest Australian mass murder took place in 2000, four years after the extreme restrictions on gun ownership and use were put in place. That mass murder did not involve guns. The murderer used arson to murder 15 international backpackers in Childers, Queensland, in the Childers Backpackers Hostel fire.

Emotional diatribes that have little to no fact behind them are useful to stir up support in an audience. They are terrible ways to formulate policy.

©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.  Gun Watch

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32 COMMENTS

  1. Australian gun policy didn’t have anything to do with school shootings, just a few instances of mass shootings and a British history of gun politics. So comparing the US to Australia just isn’t comparable, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia are more apt, the US is a unicorn. My wife is an Aussie, so I’ve gotten the history about 300 times.

    Here’s the general history
    In 1984 at the Milperra massacre, or the Hoddle Street massacre in 1987 and at Queen Street, in 1991 at Strathfield. But the precipitating action was the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996, after which the National Firearms Agreement of 1996 restricted and required registration, then after the Monash University shooting in 2002 when the National Firearm Trafficking Policy Agreement and National Handgun Control Agreement.

    • B-Rad
      The never mentioned detail about the Monash university shooting is that he was refused a handgun license. Had mental history.

      His father was able to get it for him using some form of diplomatic immunity as he worked at Chinese embassy from memory.

      So a mentally unstable person is given a gun and he shoots someone. Government bans more firearms. Conspiracy theory time??

    • the only 100% certain “mass shooting” in Australia was the Milpeara bikie shoot-out in the early 1980s;
      all the rest have huge question marks hanging over them especially the highly contentious Port Arthur massacre in April 1996 in Tasmania which, basically, precipitated the dis-arming of Australia ;
      the 1987 Hoddle street massacre may have been genuine or it may not have been or they may have over-inflated the fatalities;
      its hard to say because there was no actual trial-by-jury to examine all the evidence;
      there was only a guilty plea;
      the Queen street and Strathfield ‘massacres’ may not have even occurred and there is evidence of involvement by police special branch/intelligence agencies;
      the Monash University shooting in 2002 is equally problematic;
      it may have occurred like they said but, then again, it may not have occurred;
      there was also involvement from some very shady “psychiatrists” who had, also, been involved in cooking up and falsifying evidence in the Port Arthur massacre;
      see here

      to conclude: only the Milpeara bikie shoot-out passes “the sniff test” because that was the only one which went through the entire gamut of the Australian legal process from committal hearing/arraignment to Coronial Inquest to Supreme Court of NSW trial to appeal(s) to the High Court of Australia;
      it is the only incident where all of the evidence was comprehensively and meticulously tested by rigorous X-examination on OATH subject to the full penalties for perjury

  2. Good for Australia, I’m glad their so successful. What’s the population, are the demographics as diverse ? Let’s not just bring up Australia as an example, let’s use some other countries as well, how about North Korea, what’s their story on school shootings. How about Somalia, there’s a country to aspire to be like, what’s their school shooting record. Kum Twat Burma now there’s a good school shootings record. Syria is doing a remarkable job of preventing school shooting, no schools, no shootings. America can’t seem to get it right…. Enuff about Australia already

      • If memory serves correct, every swinging dick in that town came out with AK’s, PKM’s, and RPG’s…. Do a google image search and you can easilly pick out the Alpha/Vympel troopers and the cops; the ordinary looking guys with belt fed machine guns are russian locals who pulled it out of the closet to get in the scrape when their wives and kids got held hostage. Word is the local cops had a harder time holding back the armed crowd from storming the place than they did dealing with the terrorists….. the theory is that: if having an AK-47 and having an .22 pistol are the same crime, then why not have DSHK if youre going to break the law to have a gun?

        • Exactly. Any rifles I own that get banned will become full auto immediately – at that point, why not? And any magazine restrictions will result in edc’ing HUGE calibers – .50 GI, .50AE, .50 Beowulf, etc.

  3. I’m an Australian citizen. I moved to the USA. I like it here, and wouldn’t move back to Australia.

    It pisses me off when i hear people from there talking about gun laws here.

    Australians should mind their own business when it comes to laws in the USA. They have little to no concept of what it means to be free. They very little to no understanding of the history of the USA. They have no vested interest in this country.

    They are indoctrinated about how “Australia is the lucky country” and very few stop to question if that is actually true or not.

    /rant

    • thirty-odd years ago, Australia was the lucky country and a great place to live;
      probably: the best country in the world with the highest standard of living;
      following the highly suspect “Port Arthur massacre”, how-ever, every-thing started to go down-hill;
      many Aussies consider that the Premiership of John Winston Howard pretty much wrecked Australia;
      although it remains a better place to live than many countries, it is no longer as good a place to live as it used to be

  4. If you do a little math using the starting figures from 1999, there are closer to between 500 and 600 million “guns” not the 300 to 350 million. How they gonna get them? Mandatory buyback like Australia? Make the rest instant felons? How’s that working for NY and Conn?

    As an Army Vet I would ask other Vets, what would happen to the commander who passed down the order about going door to door? The lefties think if they started that just one or maybe a few instances that went wrong would seal the deal against gun owners and the public would be outraged. But they don’t think very well. The Revolution would begin. They will never rid the world of the bad evil guns.

    They think they are Xerxes, with an army of nations behind them. Yet the Spartans made them bleed. Delayed enough for the rest of Greece to rise and stand against them. Xerxes wanted revenge for his father’s defeat at Marathon. How’d that work?

    They always bring up the Army, Air Force, Marines, yet forget that they are us. Just from hunting licences, there are 6 million. Their Utopian hoplophibic dreams will never be reality. Can’t un-invent guns.

    If they argue if it saves 1 child’s life. Then hit them with end planned parenthood and outlaw abortion, that would save millions of lives.

  5. Our schools have been hardened since the mid-to-late 1990s. Once waist high fences are now 8-10 feet high with spikes on top and anti-climbing measures installed. And the impetus for this was kidnappings in post-divorce custody disputes. Not spree killers.

    Our mass shooting incidents were mostly domestic incidents until the late 1980s. Then Hoddle Street and Queen Street. Strathfield was done by Wade Frankum, a neo-Nazi loser who blamed everyone else for his failures. Martin Bryant (Port Arthur) was a developmentally challenged person who idolized the Hungerford and Dunblane killers and tried to beat their score.

    With US schools being easily accessed gun free zones, you might as well install a billboard that states “Get your victims here! No risk! Police may be here in 15 minutes!”

      • I don’t subscribe to conspiracy to what can be explained by laziness and stupidity.

        When you had the department heads of Tasmania’s police, health, and community services on ABC radio saying Martin Bryant wasn’t “their problem” but the responsibility of the two departments. It was at this point the coronial inquest was quashed because it was going to be very embarrassing (as in career ending embarrassing) to both state and federal liberal MPs.

        • to be frank, the official “explanation” for the Port Arthur incident is, quite simply, not tenable;
          i refer you to my previous comment and the various ‘links’ therein;

        • to be frank, the official “explanation” for the Port Arthur incident is, quite simply, not tenable;
          i refer you to my previous comment on this and the ‘links’ therein;

  6. Southern

    Maybe schools are hardened in Sydney but all schools in Queensland I go past still just have 3 foot fence.

    Off topic if your up here your can take your children to range at 11 here

    • My son has been going to the range with me since he was 3.

      He’s now 9, almost 10, and looking forward to turning 12 for his juniors permit. In the meanwhile he has been learning about firearms, safety protocols, and likes to assist with scoring and safety officer duties. He sees it as his job to tell other children the safety rules.

      Instead of jumping straight into service rifle competition, he want to start from the absolute beginning with an air rifle and a .22 rimfire. And the work up to a .223 Ruger Scout he had input on.

        • Score 1 for Queensland. But we work within the rules we have.

          While he can’t compete now my son is patient and willing to learn other aspects of the sport.

      • John
        One of the things we got in Australia with 1996 gun laws was minimum age to shoot.
        Federal Government tried for 18 and lost. Most states went with 12 and some went lower or higher. Mine tried for 9 and got overruled eventually it became 11.

  7. the democrats are lying liars that lie

    its all they do

    theyre all children of the father of lies

    we see it in their fruits

    its how we know them

  9. In the presidential listening session, to the President’s right, a few people down on the front row, was a student (the one with the Maynard G. Krebs goatee) – the one who couldn’t believe he could go and just buy one of these “weapons of war” – who said “I just saw today where a kid with an EXPIRED ID was able to go and buy an assault rifle in 5 minutes!” ohnoes. The story behind that was a well-known hoax that was exposed a few months ago, and where our ill-informed student read it was in a de-bunkless tweet by CNN’s Chris Cuomo, who knew it was a lie and posted it anyway the very day of the listening session. I’d like to see Cuomo blame THIS one on his extra chromosome…

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