More on Guns in Oz

Some more useful info on Australia's gun ban

With new Prime Minister John Howard in the lead, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, banning all semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump-action shotguns and imposing a more restrictive licensing system on other firearms. The government also launched a forced buyback scheme to remove thousands of firearms from private hands. Between Oct. 1, 1996, and Sept. 30, 1997, the government purchased and destroyed more than 631,000 of the banned guns at a cost of $500 million.
 
To what end? While there has been much controversy over the result of the law and buyback, Peter Reuter and Jenny Mouzos, in a 2003 study published by the Brookings Institution, found homicides "continued a modest decline" since 1997. They concluded that the impact of the National Firearms Agreement was "relatively small," with the daily rate of firearms homicides declining 3.2%.
 
According to their study, the use of handguns rather than long guns (rifles and shotguns) went up sharply, but only one out of 117 gun homicides in the two years following the 1996 National Firearms Agreement used a registered gun. Suicides with firearms went down but suicides by other means went up. They reported "a modest reduction in the severity" of massacres (four or more indiscriminate homicides) in the five years since the government weapons buyback. These involved knives, gas and arson rather than firearms.
 
In 2008, the Australian Institute of Criminology reported a decrease of 9% in homicides and a one-third decrease in armed robbery since the 1990s, but an increase of over 40% in assaults and 20% in sexual assaults.

Like Dennis Prager says: 'Its important to put clarity before agreement'. I don't know that her conclusion that there has been no effect on massacres in Australia is true. There really hasn't been any multiple-victim shootings in Oz since the 1996 legislation. Is it possible that the gun ban prevented massacres? Perhaps, but the percentage of those who die by massacre is tiny and I don't think it warrants regulation in the same way that heavily regulating or banning pools - which kills far more people than guns - is warranted.

UPDATE: The always erudite Maverick Philosopher.

Liberals routinely pose the rhetorical question, Why would anyone need a semi-automatic rifle?  You need to have an answer at the ready.  When 'Assault Weapons' Saved Koreatown

William Spengler, the miscreant who ambushed NY firefighters, killing two of them, was a convicted felon out on parole.  In 1981 he was convicted of killing his grandmother with a hammer.  Two points.  First, if he hadn't been let out he couldn't have committed arson and murder, outside the prison, leastways.  This supports my claim that it is liberal culture, not gun culture, that is the real problem.  Liberals have a casual attitude toward criminal behavior.  Second, as a convicted felon, Spengler illegally possessed the guns he used in his rampage.  Liberals need to reflect on the fact that criminals, by definition, do not respect laws or the rule of law.

UPDATE II:  John Lott Jnr:

With the public school shootings in Germany, it might be worth noting how hard it is to legally own a gun in that country.  New registration figures indicate that there are 1.4 million people who legally own guns in the country out of a population of 81.8 million people --- a 1.7 percent rate.  Of course, the illegal rate of gun ownership is presumably quite different.