---->Back to the thread, with an election imminent, John Howard the politician wanted to look masterful and decisive, and he had a populist 'solution' that would make him look good <----

uh.....howz abt you get yr facts straight, eh?

there was *no election* imminent....

Howard had just ousted Keating with a land-slide victory; the PAM occurred a few, short weeks after Howard was sworn in...which kinda, sorta leaves the question hanging: "what other motive did Howard have to capitalise on this tragedy?"

you, of course, would be unlikely to have a satisfactory answer to that because, like most of the other fckn shills on this "Forum", you have that inalienable trait of leftists/'liberals'....a total inability to believe in "conspiracy theories", eh?

ChrisPer, so the ground moves again.

It is incorrect to lay the blame at the media. Reports of mass shootings get spread in many ways and those obsessed by such activities would no doubt find a way to obtain information about them – even in pre-internet days. Changing the way the media reported mass shootings is unlikely to influence the thinking of those already obsessed by the idea of getting their own back on the world.

The problem is much more to do with the thought processes and reasoning patterns of mass shooters.

I still don’t think you have grasped the essential point. If your opinion is the only evidence that anti-gun activists are creating mass shootings, that means there is no evidence. You have fooled yourself.

Copycat suicides are a whole different issue. There are significant underlying pressures that cause people to want to take their own life. When they get to the point, they will often copy a successful suicide (particularly if they want a successful suicide themselves and are not using it as a call for help).

As the thread seems to have gone quite peculiar, I probably won’t respond again.

I don’t mind discussing the data and evidence, but there is no reasoning with those like jimbo! who label you one of the enemy if you fail to accept their particular conspiracy theory.

Multiple killer or mass killer is a better descriptor since they may not always rely on a gun. Bryant for example also took cans of fuel and it is fortunate these were not applied in a a densely populated, confined area.

Mass killers are in fact well known for comparing their dreadful tolls with the number counts of others they follow. Where the media and others who should know better sensationalise to give the offender the country-wide and often world-wide notoriety he seeks, why it is wrong to consider the ethics and principles of reporting?

Here is an interesting article,
What Motivates Mass Murderers
We refuse to confront murderers’ motivations, and make high body counts more likely.
By John R. Lott Jr.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/342150/what-motivates-mass-murderers-john-r-lott-jr

Many mass killings end in the suicide of the offender and that can be forcing the police to kill them.

I'm not responding to overlapping individual pleas of the gun lobby but to the gun lobby (GL) as a whole.

First a question of my own: What exactly are the specific measures you are seeking as a result of the complaints against Howard's defence of the public from gunnies?

Now any other of the GL's excuses for the US kill score, referred to by OTB:

GL: "What you are not saying is that the offenders and victims of weapons offences in the US are almost invariably young blacks from poor neighborhoods."
Ans: "the ethnicity of Americans killing and being killed" - that is one of the GL excuses I referred to for the massive US gun kill rate.

GL: Other weapons kill people.
Ans: Sure. Any evidence that stopping gun possession has been accompanied by an increase in knifing, bashing and poisoning etc.? E.g. comparing prevalence of alternative homicide methods in America's open slather states and stricter-control states? More knife homicides in states that won't let the killers use a gun?

GL: Lunacy, drug intoxication, TV, inferior races, family breakdown - any of whose perpetrators or victims could explain America's ten thousand shooting victims.
Ans: Not without a gun. That's why we don't have 700 gun homicide victims a year here. There's those that seem to be busting a gut to get there though.

as per usual, the gun-grabbers on here are being either totally or partially dishonest and mis-leading....using the lingua franca of the gun control lobby.....½-truths and distortions if not out-right lies....

for instance, in the case of the US....they consistently *FAIL* to mention how many violent crimes are prevented *each year* by civilians using fire-arms...up to two million....and...even this may be a conservative estimate if you consider those cases that are not even officially counted....like, for instance, brandishing a fire-arm to scare off an intruder, a mugger, a car-jacker or an armed robber...

another for instance....
if only *four major, urban areas* (Chicago, Detroit, LA & New Orleans) are excluded from the violent crime stats, then, overall, the US is safer than Belgium and *much safer* than many parts of Australia....
those afore-said four areas contain the highest concentrations of gang-bangers...usually black gangs....and...some Mexican gangs made up largely of illegal aliens...

so...which is it?

does the US have a gun violence problem or a violent young black man/gang problem?

a final for instance...
even if you accept the official media accounts of these so-called lone-nut gun-man massacres (and increasing n°s of people do not!), their relative rarity (when compared to the prevalence of other violent crimes) and the relative unlikelihood of the average punter being "caught up" in one, provide *ZERO* justification for *any* draconian gun control @ all!

more here....
http://www.gunfacts.info/pdfs/gun-facts/6.2/gun-facts-6-2-screen.pdf ;

This is a laugh;

Quote,

“If it is claimed that the lone wolves who carry out multiple killings can be deterred or stopped through John Howard's bureaucratic BS 'gun control' that only affects and is complied with by the respectable law-abiding citizens who would never offend and are in fact the mainstays of peaceful, civil society, lets have it. Please show us exactly how John Howard's 'gun control' would have stopped Bryant, or any of the other evil fiends who killed in Australia?”

End quote.

It has been repeated so I suppose me doing the same is okay.

Howard's supposed BS 'gun control' achieved this;

In the 10 years before Howard's gun laws there were 8 shootings in Australia involving more than two people being killed by a single assailant with a gun;

1987 Joseph Schwab – Killed with a gun 5 human beings before being shot dead by police
1987 Julian Knight – Slaughtered with guns 5 people and wounded another 19
1987 Frank Vitkovic – Shot and killed 8 and wounded a further 5
1990 Paul Evers – Murdered with a gun 5 people
1991 Wade Frankum – Took the lives with a gun of 7 people and wounded 6 others
1992 Malcolm Baker – Blew away 6 people
1996 Martin Bryant – Massacred with guns 35 innocent people and wounded a further 21 people

In the 18 years since the count is ZERO.

I know this irrefutable and overwhelming statistic must stick in the craw of guys like OTB. They dance around with what ifs, with statistics from the US, with cost analysis but in the end they can't BS their way around the patently obvious fact, the gun control measures were extraordinarily effective. To claim otherwise is to be open to the charge of being delusional, though judging from some of the posters here they are in good company.