Is it time for gun control in Washington?

You can’t make that claim unless you know what the stats would be without our strict gun controls.

Oh, and I fixed your last sentence for you.

 

The FACT that Aussie has NOT had a MASS shooting since Port Arthur appears to me that Mr Howard got it right.

No other stats,including car,motorbike,throwing folk off a cliff or using knives,hammers,'king electric chainsaws or anything else,have anything do do with FIREARM mass shootings.

 

Sorry edit.
Lindt Cafe.

 

Unless I’m mistaken, there was - I’m reluctant to use the word “only” - one person killed in that situation by the perpetrator.
The other casualties were victims of the crossfire.
Or, if you like, the “good guys with guns”.

So it hardly qualifies as a mass shooting.

 

From Australia Institute of Criminology:
Knife crime: Recent data on carriage and use
Lorana Bartels
ISSN:
0817-8542
Foreword | In this paper, an overview is presented of recent data on the carriage and use of knives. Analysis of the data indicated an increase in the use of knives as a proportion of all homicides, although the number of homicides remained relatively constant.

 

I was trying to put it in perspective,comparing to the second example I pasted,that included every mass shooting in the USA that shows dead and injured....from 1984.
I'm sure there are a few more in OZ but haven't gone ferreting around 'cos I'm watching the Blues programme on NITV

 

Too long, didn't read.


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Actually, the Lindt Cafe tragedy is relevant despite it not qualifying as a mass shooting.

The lunatic in that situation managed to keep 18 people hostage for a long time.
Because he had a gun.
Do you really think he would have managed that if he had a knife?
Or a vial of acid? Or the keys to a truck?

This makes it obvious how the power of a gun compares to virtually any other weapon.

 

No, different sources, one is simply the ABS data, the second is from an article on the Australian Institute of Criminology website.

 

What about a bomb ? Probably much more effective and easier to make than getting hold of a firearm.

 

Jeeeeeezus....a car,a motorbike,a can of Mortein,a bloke with a paperclip..... none of this is relevant to the subject at hand.

Doesn't matter how much you love guns,Mike,Tony,they were only ever designed for one reason......to kill something.
Aussie is quite obviously the leading country to have muzzled the overuse/abuse of these things.

 

*sigh*

Is a bomb legal? Even in the dopey U S and A, probably not.

Yet you mention a bomb as the only thing that is comparable in threat and destruction level to a gun.
Thanks for reinforcing my point.

 

I don't agree that Australia has had a history of overuse/abuse of firearms, if you look at the data going back many years the rate of firearm homicides has always been quite low and private ownership of handguns has always been very tightly controlled. The Howard buyback didn't achieve much, the number of firearms in Australia is now greater ( since 2016) than it was after the Howard buyback, yet the number of firearm related deaths per capita has fallen ( a trend started in the 1980's) .
If you want to take up a cause that saves lives have a look at the number of deaths attributed to medical negligence annualy in Australia ;
"In 1995, the landmark Quality in Australian Health Care Study found the rate of so-called adverse events was 16.6 per cent among hospital patients, accounting for around 18,000 deaths and 50,000 cases of permanent disability." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7476634.
That makes even the road toll ( 1000 ) look trivial by comparion yet the AMA continues to pontificate on firearms ( 300 -400 deaths per year ) when they should be having a close look at what their own members are up to.
Finally based on your logic we should also ban fishing rods and hooks because hey, they are only used to kill something -fish ?

 

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I'll explain.
You implied that he could have only done the siege with a firearm, and competely overlooked that it could have been done with a bomb ( or a replica , you wouldn't know it was real or not ) . In any case he only killed one hostage, which could have been done with a knife.

 

The so-called "gun lobby" is made up of people like me, who understand their rights and why we have them. Ask a Canadian about their freedom of speech.

As for my children or grandchildren, the odds of them ever facing the kinds of things the more than 250-million who died in the Twentieth Century at the hands of their own governments will be pretty slim (more than four times the number of soldiers who died in warfare during that same period). Properly take on the gang issue, and they won't have to worry much about violent crime, either.

 

The London stats are equal to or greater than in New York City. And if they'd be higher if they had guns (interestingly, London's shootings are also up), then what? Londoners are are lot more violent than those in the USA so thank God the government has the monopoly on guns there?

And no, I am not constructing a straw man. I am demonstrating that access to firearms isn't the issue. Japan has a significantly higher suicide rate than the US, yet Japanese citizens have zero access to firearms. It's a cultural issue, and the answer is not giving more power to government, it's fixing the issues and putting the violent criminals in jail.

As for Col. Cooper, a truth is a truth. Guns aren't convincing people to be violent criminals, violent criminals are using guns.

 

No, save for those who suffer from Hoplophobia, most anyone can see that a person so violent in nature as to turn to making a bomb in order to kill is not persuaded not to by some or other law.

 

The “gang issue” and mass shootings are two entirely separate things.

How many school massacres - where innocent children were mown down without a chance - have anything to do with gangs?

How many of these abominations have happened outside the US, compared to within the US?

And, how can you seriously pretend that the answers to those questions have nothing to do with your ludicrously lax gun laws?

Hiding behind wanky ancient texts sounds remarkably similar to what Muslim terrorists do...

 

And, of course, you completely overlook the fact that it WAS done with a firearm.
Why did he make that choice, instead of all the others?

And why do so many people in the U S and A make the same choice, if all the other options are as easy and effective?

 

619 words... if 619 words are too long to read, it is no wonder you would rather be a subject rather than a citizen.

 

I am confused as to what you're trying to say here... The Swiss don't go around killing people because they've been taught how to properly kill people?

 

A firearm is a force multiplier. That's why police carry them. Quite frankly, I think there should be a mandatory sentence of 25 years added on to any violent felont if said felony is committed with a firearm. And while violent crime is declining in the US, it is still a problem.

According to the FBI Criminal Justice Information Services Division, in 2011 in the US...

A violent crime occurred every 26.2 seconds.

A murder every 36 minutes.

A forcible rape every 6.3 minutes.

A robbery every 1.5 minutes.

An aggravated assault every 42 seconds.

There are some 33,000 gangs and 1.4 million gang members in the US in 2011

It is estimated that there are somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000 underage prostitutes in the US.

The average age of a sex trafficking victim in the US is 13.

It is estimated that over 80% of "legal" prostitutes in the US are trafficking victims.

Some 50% of those currently incarcerated in US prisons are in jail for violent offenses.

America has a crime problem, not a gun problem. You do not target the kind of car used by a speeder to stop speeding, you target the speeder. You do not target the kind of condom used by a rapist, you target the rapist. Instead of making the homicidal slightly less effective (seemingly the object of so-called "gun control" efforts), why not concentrate on getting him off the street entirely?