Suze:

There's an interesting study done by US criminologist Gary Kleck,
"Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America." The following website may be of interest:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/guns/point-blank-summary.html
"Guns and Violence: A Summary of the Field."

suzeonline, "I imagine there is already plenty of evidence and research from the police and government departments that violence happens in our society?"

Everybody knows there is violence although the amount might be poorly estimated by some. For example, in Australia criminologists wonder why people, especially women, have become so fearful and even restrict their activities and those of their children when crime rates have been falling.

"In Australia, studies have shown a substantial proportion of the population incorrectly believe crime rates are increasing when, in fact, they are stable or declining (Weatherburn & Indermaur 2004). Research has found that women, older people and more poorly educated people hold less accurate perceptions of actual crime rates than those who are male, younger and more highly educated (Indermaur & Roberts 2005)."
and
"The discrepancy between the crime rate and the public's perceived crime rate has been commonly attributed to the expansive media coverage of crime, especially violent and more sensationalised crime (Duffy et al. 2008)."
(Mis)perceptions of crime in Australia
Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology, July 2010

Also, understanding of the causes -the contributing factors- are not always known. That is why I posed the question of what is different between countries and jurisdictions that causes different amounts of crime. It has a bearing on social policy and planning. Better to know that (say) our social policies are breaking down our sense of belonging and creating feelings of isolation and alienation, in order that we can challenge and change those policies.

This is a call for proactivity to treat the causes, rather than the usual reactivity and knee-jerk populist fixes promoted by cynical, lazy, short-sighted politicians and a grubby, sensationalist media. It is easier to pass more laws where laws already exist than be seen to be challenging public perceptions, even if they are wrong.

*But you are excluding for instance, multiple murders such as the more recent Melbourne gangland murders simply because all did not occur at once.*

Cornflower, that was the whole idea of getting rid of automatics
and semi automatics. If somebody is going to go nuts with a gun,
with a single shot they will do a whole lot less damage.

We've had no mass shootings since.

Note that the Tucson gunman was overwhelmed, when his magazine
of 33 shots was empty and he had to reload. If he'd had a single
shot pistol, he would have done a whole lot less damage. Clearly
he had intentions of shooting more people, for he had more
ammunition, ready to reload.

They tried to ban those large magazines in the US, but the gun lobby
won. They tried to ban assault weapons, the gun lobby won.

So, let them shoot each other, see if I care. They clearly need
more pain to learn.

Just be glad that your kids and grandkids are going to school in
a school where kids are not bringing guns to school.

You can thank the change in thinking about guns in Australia, which
happened with the gun buyback and a change in laws, before we
became like America.

There is nothing to be gained from the broken record, 'We have had no mass killings since Howard'.

Plainly that inference is fallacious, it is a non-sequitur, a conclusion that cannot be logically drawn from the premises given. Its obvious flaw is demonstrated by the fact that the very killings that Howard made political capital out of would not have been prevented by his buy-back and laws. It is a matter of public record that Bryant was unlicensed and he bought an illegal gun for $5000 that had previously been surrendered to police. A Bryant could do that now from similar blackmarket sources.

As shown by recent events in Australia, examples being a mother who stabbed her two children and started a house fire that resulted in four deaths and arsonists in Victoria who were responsible for over 170 people dead along with massive losses of both farm and native animals, multiple killings are not explained so simply through the tools they use. Nor is prevention as simple as bans (laws, penalties and bans didn't stop Bryant and similarly they didn't prevent arsonists who kille over 170 people, or a mother who killed her children and herself).

Further, multiple killings go back through history, it is by no means a recent development that can be explained as easily as some with a secondary agenda (for example winning the next election) would have us believe (especially where they themselves might have been implicated in selling off [say] mental health facilities).

cont.,

contd.,

What is known is that we know little about what motivates multiple killers and for all we know the decisions made by Parliament (say) to increase population density or in town planning (high rise housing unit blocks with poor social amenity) could be adding to a problem. It is already known for example, that economic and family stresses restructuring that has been going on the country in recent decades has increased death through suicide.

This is a call for proactivity to treat the causes, rather than the usual reactivity and knee-jerk populist fixes promoted by cynical, lazy, short-sighted politicians and a grubby, sensationalist media. It is easier to pass more laws where laws already exist than be seen to be challenging public perceptions, even if they are wrong.

We have nothing to lose and everything to gain from a national, co-ordinated study of violence. It is overdue and crucial to advising social policy.

*We've had no mass shootings since.*

Ah Cornflower, that is what I actually wrote. And it happens to
be correct.