Myth: Gun control in Australia is curbing crime
GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES - Australian Homicides before and after Port Arthur Masacre and Gun Ban BuybackFact: Homicides were falling before the Australian firearm ban, matching a global downward trend in most industrialized countries. However, non-firearm homicides are relatively stable in Australia.
Fact: Crime has been rising since enacting a sweeping ban on private gun ownership. In the first two years after Australian gun-owners were forced to surrender 640,381 personal firearms, government statistics showed a dramatic increase in criminal activity. 33 In 2001-2002, homicides were up another 20%. 34
From the inception of firearm confiscation to March 27, 2000, the numbers are:
•Firearm-related murders were up 19%
•Armed robberies were up 69%
•Home invasions were up 21%
The sad part is that in the 15 years before the national gun confiscation:
•Firearm-related homicides dropped nearly 66%
•Firearm-related deaths fell 50%
Fact: Gun crimes have been rising throughout Australia since guns were banned. In Sydney alone, robbery rates with guns rose 160% in 2001, more than in the previous year. 35
Fact: A ten year Australian study has concluded that firearm confiscation had no effect on crime rates. 36 A separate report also concluded that Australia’s 1996 gun control laws “found [no] evidence for an impact of the laws on the pre-existing decline in firearm homicides” 37 and yet another report from Australia for a similar time period indicates the same lack of decline in firearm homicides. 38
Fact: Despite having much stricter gun control than New Zealand (including a near ban on handguns) firearm homicides in both countries track one another over 25 years, indicating that gun control is not a control variable. 39
Myth: Japan has strict gun control and a less violent society
Fact: In Japan, the total murder rate is almost 1 per 100,000. In the U.S., there are about 3.2 murders per 100,000 people each year by weapons other than firearms. 40 This means that even if firearms in the U.S. could be eliminated, the U.S. would still have three times the murder rate of the Japanese.
Myth: Gun bans elsewhere work
Fact: Though illegal, side-street gun makers thrive in the Philippines, primarily hand crafting exact replicas of submachine guns, which are often the simplest type of gun to manufacture. Estimates are that almost half of all guns in the Philippines are illegal. 41
Fact: Chinese police destroyed 113 illegal gun factories and shops in a three-month crackdown in 2006. Police seized 2,445 tons of explosives, 4.81 million detonators and 117,000 guns. 42
Myth: The United States has the highest violence rate because of lax gun control
GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES - Homicide Rates for Top Ten Countries Plus United StatesFact: The top 100 countries for homicide do not include the U.S. 43 The top ten countries all have near or total firearm bans.
Myth: The U.S. has the highest rate of firearm deaths among 25 high-income countries
Fact: 60% of American “gun deaths” are suicides 44 and the U.S. has a suicide rate 11% higher 45 than international averages. This accounts for most of the difference.
Fact: The U.S. has a violent crime rate lower than 12 of seventeen industrialized countries 46 due in large part to the 2.5 million annual defense gun uses. 47
Myth: The United States is the source of 90% of drug syndicate guns in Mexico
Fact: This is an often misquoted data point from the BATFE, who said 90% of the firearms that have been interdicted in transport to Mexico or recovered in Mexico came from the United States. Thus the 90% number includes only the firearms American and Mexican police stop in transport. 48
Fact: The original 90% number was derived from the number of firearms successfully traced, not the total number of firearms criminally used. For 2007-2008, Mexican officials recovered approximately 29,000 firearms from crime scenes and asked for BATFE traces of 11,000. Of those, the BATFE could trace roughly 6,000 of which 5,114 were confirmed to have come from the United States. Thus, 83% of the crime guns recovered in Mexico have not been or cannot be traced to America and the real number is most likely 17%. 49
Fact: Mexican drug syndicates can buy guns anywhere. For the relatively under-powered civilian rifles coming from the United States, drug runners would pay between 300% and 400% above the market price. Thus they can and are buying guns around the world. 50
Fact: Mexican drug cartels – with $40 billion in annual revenues – have military armament that includes hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions, antitank rockets and assault rifles smuggled in from Central American countries. 51 These are infantry weapons bought from around the world and not civilian rifles from the United States.
Myth: Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States
Fact: The Mexican attorney general’s office reports seizing a total of 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008, or about 14,500 weapons a year. And that is all types of weapons, regardless of country of origin. 52 Had they actually seized approximately 2,000 weapons per day, the total number of seized guns would be closer to 1,460,000.
Myth: Thousands of guns go into Mexico from the U.S. every day
Fact: In Senate Committee testimony, the BAFTE said the number was likely at worst to be in the “hundreds”. 53 As evidenced above, for 2007 and 2008, the average for all firearms seizures was closer to 40 per day (29,000 guns/730 days), and only a fraction of these came from the USA by any means.
Notes:
1.Violence, Guns and Drugs: A Cross-Country Analysis, Jeffery A. Miron, Department of Economics, Boston University, University of Chicago Press Journal of Law & Economics, October 2001 ↩
2.Scotland tops list of world’s most violent countries, The Times, September 19, 2005 ↩
3.Minutes of Evidence, Colin Greenwood, Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, January 29, 2003 ↩
4.Firearm ownership, Small Arms Survey 2007; Crime, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime – compiled by The Guardian, Gun homicides and gun ownership listed by country ↩
5.In Switzerland, handguns are obtainable once a person obtains a simple police permit which is valid for six months. Federal law over weapons, weapon accessories and ammunition (weapon law, WG), Federal Assembly of the Swiss Confederation, May 2007 ↩
6.Carol Kalish, International Crime Rates, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report (Washington: Department of Justice, May 1988). 1984 data for Switzerland, and the 1983 data for England and Wales. ↩
7.Army rifles remain racked at home, Swiss Defense Ministry statement, May 15, 2004 ↩
8.Chocolates for guns? Brazil targets gun violence, Rubem César Fernandes, executive secretary of Viva Rio, a nongovernmental agency that studies urban crime, Christian Science Monitor, August 10, 1999 ↩
9.Homicide trends in the United States, U.S. data: Bureau of Justice Statistics, September, 2004. Brazil data: Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2005. ↩
10.Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, at 360 ↩
11.Juristat: Crime Statistics in Canada, 2004 and FBI Uniform Crime Statistics online ↩
12.Canadian Firearms Legislation and Effects on Homicide 1974 to 2008, Caillin Langmann, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, September 30, 2011 ↩
13.Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries, Dutch Ministry of Justice, 2001 ↩
14.A Comparison of Violent and Firearm Crime Rates in the Canadian Prairie Provinces and Four U.S. Border States, 1961-2003, Parliamentary Research Branch of the Library of Parliament, March 7, 2005 ↩
15.National Report by Finland, United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs ↩
16.Pekka-Eric Auvinen shooting in Tuusula, Finland on November 8, 2007 ↩
17.Weapons sell for just £50 as suspects and victims grow ever younger, The Times, August 24, 2007 ↩
18.The most violent country in Europe: Britain is also worse than South Africa and U.S., Daily Mail, July 3, 2009, citing a joint report of the European Commission and United Nations ↩
19.YouGov survey of 2,156 residents in Sept 2007 ↩
20.British Home Office, reported by BBC news, July 12, 2002 ↩
21.Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997, at 359 ↩
22.Minutes of Evidence, Colin Greenwood, Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs, January 29, 2003 ↩
23.Fear in Britain, Gallant, Hills, Kopel, Independence Institute, July 18, 2000 ↩
24.Crime Figures a Sham, Say Police, Daily Telegraph, April 1, 1996 ↩
25.Reported in The Guardian, September 3, 2000 ↩
26.42 killed by handguns last year, The Times, January 10, 2001, reporting on statistics supplied by the British Home Office ↩
27.Illegal Firearms in the UK, Centre for Defense Studies at King’s College in London, July 2001 ↩
28.Illegal Firearms in the UK, Centre for Defense Studies at King’s College in London, July 2001 ↩
29.Crime and Society in England 1750-1900, Clive Emsley, 1987, at 36 ↩
30.Where Kids and Guns Do Mix, Stephen P. Halbrook, Wall Street Journal, June 1999 ↩
31.Where Kids and Guns Do Mix, Stephen P. Halbrook, Wall Street Journal, June 1999 ↩
32.Associated News Media, April 30, 2001 ↩
33.Crime and Justice – Crimes Recorded by Police, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000 ↩
34.Report #46: Homicide in Australia, 2001-2002, Australian Institute of Criminology, April 2003 ↩
35.Costa targets armed robbers, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 4, 2002 ↩
36.Gun Laws and Sudden Death: Did the Australian Firearms Legislation of 1996 Make a Difference?, Dr. Jeanine Baker and Dr. Samara McPhedran, British Journal of Criminology, November 2006. ↩
37.Austrian firearms: data require cautious approach, S. McPhedran, S. McPhedran, and J. Baker, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2007, 191:562 ↩
38.Australian firearms legislation and unintentional firearm deaths a theoretical explanation for the absence of decline following the 1996 gun laws Public Health, Samara McPhedran, Jeanine Baker, Public Health, Volume 122, Issue 3 ↩
39.Firearm Homicide in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand: What Can We Learn From Long- Term International Comparisons?, Samara McPhedran, Jeanine Baker, and Pooja Singh, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, March 16, 2010 ↩
40.Japan data: 1996 Demographic Yearbook, United Nations, 1998; US data: FBI Uniform Crime Statistics, 1996. ↩
41.Filipino gunsmiths are making a killing, Taipei Times, May 7, 2005 ↩
42.China Radio International Online, September 7, 2006 ↩
43.SOURCE: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2010 ↩
44.Center for Disease Control WISQARS Fatal Injury Data is the National Vital Statistics System for 2010 ↩
45.World Health Organization, mortality database as of November 2006 ↩
46.Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries, Dutch Ministry of Justice, 2001 ↩
47.Targeting Guns, Gary Kleck, Aldine Transaction, 1997 ↩
48.Mexico’s Massive Illegal weapons coming from China and the U.S., American Chronicle, March 14, 2009 ↩
49.The Myth of 90 Percent, Fox News, April 2, 2009, BATFE data distilled by William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott ↩
50.Southwest Border Region–Drug Transportation and Homeland Security Issues, National Drug Intelligence Center, October 2007 ↩
51.Drug cartels’ new weaponry means war, Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2009 ↩
52.The Myth of 90 Percent, William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott, Fox News, April 2, 2009 ↩
53.Senate Committee Judiciary, William Hoover, Assistant Director, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms, March 17, 2009 ↩
I am with Joey , as I stated earlier those who have their viewpoints on matters such as this will most likely never change it . So the above post will be my last contribution on this topic.
, for an intelligent banter on this subject from folks here in the USA. I must admit that I still say gun control does nothing, will not, could not ever. Should we go over the top socialist and kill all mentally ill people? Who will set the line of who is most dangerous to society and who is not? This is a path humanity is going on and we are up against trials and tribulations in our future, history has shown us what can be done...let's look forward and make some smart choices!!
