@JessFR
You
think an argument can be made about mass shootings? There hasn't been a mass shooting since the amnesty. There should have been about 20 by now, according to the rate that they were occurring before.
Incorrect,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting
Only 2 dead fortunately plus another 5 injured but that was luck, there's no reason whatsoever it couldn't have been a lot worse.
The capacity for another mass shooting is there. People just cheat the statistics by using expansive definitions for before 96 and much narrower ones after.
I'm not saying the mass shooting rate hasn't been reduced, but it most definitely has not been eliminated and mark my words another mass shooting is going to happen.
I would have said this before christchurch and people would have mocked that too. But it's true of australia as well. I promise you that at some point there will be another mass shooting, in australia, the weapon will be a semiautomatic pistol. Probably a 9mm. I guarantee it. The laws aren't so expansive as to prevent such a crime, and between that and growing extremism, such a crime is inevitable.
And when it happens australians will be completely shocked, they will wonder how on earth someone could get such weapons in australia. They will however NOT conclude that the 96 gun controls are a failure. They will conclude they didn't go far enough. And they'll try yet again.
As for suicide, I don't think anybody ever expected a gun amnesty to significantly reduce the suicide rate. It's pretty easy to kill yourself. Killing a room full of people is another story. The Australian amnesty was introduced as a response to the Port Arthur massacre in the same way the NZ amnesty was introduced as a response to the Christchurch massacre.
Regardless of if it was expected, many years ago I did quite extensive research wanting to answer the question of how effective Australian gun control was out of my own curiosity. My recollection is I determined that suicide rates were one area where a statistically significant correlation may exist with the 96 howard gun control laws.
After researching it, I concluded the opposite. There is a similar argument in the UK, that stabbing rates replaced the shootings. You would expect that to happen to some extent, but it is illegal to carry a knife (or any weapon) in Australia and most people follow that law. So you have a population that isn't armed to the teeth all the time. I thought this resulted in considerably less homicides. Maybe I'm wrong. Happy to look at your research.
I haven't done the same research regarding the UK, so I can't really comment on how successful it has or has not been.
I believe you are wrong. I freely admit its been a long time since I researched this, I researched it very extensively many years ago as I said, came to a conclusion, and haven't ever gone into it as thoroughly since.
My conclusion was that there was no question that the 1996 had had no measurable impact on the statistical measures I checked other than perhaps suicide. I checked homicide, armed robbery, and suicide if I recall correctly.
Australia never had the kind of gun culture america had. People weren't armed to the teeth even before 1996. That's likely why it had so little impact.
Which is why I say that IF your measure of success is a reduction in overall homicide and armed robbery, the Australian gun controls were not in any way a success. My recollection is I found they may have been a modest success in reducing suicide, mainly in rural areas. Places where there already were more guns to start with.
And as for mass shootings, in truth I didn't extensively look into them. At the time I wasn't particularly concerned with the emotional impact mass shootings have on society, and was only looking for if gun control saved a statistically significant number of lives, and frankly at the time I deemed mass shootings, having only maybe a couple dozen deaths every couple years at the most (at the time in australia) not statistically significant enough to use as part a definition of successfulness in gun control.
Over time, and especially as there have been more and more horrific mass shootings in the US, my opinion has evolved, if I were doing such research now I would be including mass shootings. I suspect mass shootings, by most definitions, have decreased in probability because of the howard gun controls. But I do not believe they've been eliminated.
There weren't many mass shootings before 96 going by how I would usually define them, and using a more expansive definition I would say there have been a few since 96 as well.
The biggest success of Australian gun control is probably the fact that people believe that it has worked. Because it is believed to have worked, people aren't as worried about being shot, police are disinclined to preemptively shoot people.
I'm not saying the howard gun controls were a total failure, but I don't really consider them very successful either. My general feeling is that they did a lot of damage to private gun enthusiasts and didn't provide much benefit to show for it. Did it provide enough to have still been worth it? I don't know..
What I think, is that there are better methods of gun control that people fail to consider. They always go for gun focused gun control. I don't think that's the right approach. I think we should have people focused gun control. Don't worry so much about banning this type of gun or that type of gun, but rather implement a very strict system by which people have to be trained and evaluated to be licensed to own guns. But once they have that license, for the most part they can generally buy whatever guns they want.
I think that would be a far better and more successful system striking the ideal balance between liberty and safety.
Of course the second amendment types would hate it, and in fact you probably couldn't implement my system without either modifying or eliminating the second amendment. So it'll never happen saddly.
