Switzerland has multiple Guns in almost every home; and the gun crime rate there is no worse than ours, although they may well have a lower break and enter crime rate, for understandable reasons, than here?

Japan with far tougher gun laws has its fair share of shootings proving it's not the gun that does the crime but the nut on the end of the trigger, a gun is just a useful tool in the right hands!

Better we focus on ensuring those hands are those we can trust?

By the way, the record for illegal use of firearms is just a s high for police persons as for the general public!

Proving that it's not the gun that is the problem but the hands that hold it!

This is an emotive issue and given you are emotionally involved Andy, hardly capable of clear cold rational thinking?

And the wilshire stay sharp is the principal weapon in most home killings repeated stabbings! So following the Howard fear based rationale, [ban it and it will stop,] should we ban all stay sharp knives.

In unsafe hands even a bolt action or single shot weapon, bow and arrow, sling shot can still take multiple lives!

In bonaparte's times there was a pump up air rifle that was lethal up to 700 yards, ditto equally silent armor piercing crossbows!

Imagine either one of those with a telescopic lens and laser point?

We need to include law abiding gun owners as part of the solution not alienate them with revenue gathering licence requirements and treating one and all as the problem or potential criminals.

A licenced dealer can likely spot a gun nut from a mile away, but they along with most of his law abiding customers are now treated like potential criminals or cash cows; the problem?

And therefore offside!
Rhrosty.

This article's badly edited: the NRA hasn't "campaigned against armour-piercing bullets (so called ‘cop killers’)"; it's campaigned against BANNING them.

Sorry Rhrosty, but the gun death rates are not similar between Australia and Switzerland. Switzerlands is more than 3 times ours! Homicides are more than double and suicides are more than 4 times. And Japans is even less than ours, far far less in all categories.

Have a look at the comparisons between countries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
It even breaks it down into homicide and suicide and accidental rates.

Please, if you are going to comment using objective stats that can be looked up, like gun crime rates, at least try and look it up first before commenting.

I've looked at the stats Bugsy, and have decided to exclude suicide as a crime; given one would have to include death by numental as well, in all deliberate suicides.

To get comparable death by one's own hand comparisons which seem to be higher in switzerland than here?

Comparable gun related homicide seems higher here as do drive by shootings, up since the tighter gun laws were introduced?

Homicides seem to be higher in near neighbor NZ, with tougher gun laws than here?

Which seems to underline the fact that tougher gun laws are not the answer?

But effective measures which keep guns out of nuts hands may be?

I mean in the recent Cafe killing, was the shooter licenced and in possession legally acquired Gun?

We ban the use of illicit drugs and have done for around 80 years!? That prohibition is working out well isn't it?

An illicit guns stat seems to be missing in your anti gun rationale, Bugsy!
Rhrosty.

I don't have an anti-gun rationale, but I do have a preference for statistical sources other than your anus.

Now you are just breaking down the gun crime stats into smaller categories and engaging in cherry-picking exercises that appear to support your argument (at least superficially because the source of your 'facts' appear to be unknown or non-existent).

I'm done with this, this whole thread will be case of cherry picking facts or making up statistics without objective analysis of the data as a whole.

The facts are clear: is gun related deaths as a whole are significantly down, mass shootings clearly so, and this is highly likely due to the gun laws and subsequent changes in gun culture. You can ignore that if you want, but don't try to fudge the data.

If you need a gun to feel safe, you are not in a safe place.

Bugsy

I completely agree on the use of reputable statistical sources.

I do think suicides are the weak point in an otherwise well-argued article, however. Most of the economic benefit of firearms control Andrew identifies are from a reduction in firearm-related suicide, but at least some of those people are likely to commit suicide by other means. It is still plausible that overall suicides are lower with gun control, because suicide attempts by gun are far more likely to result in death than attempts by other means:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/case-fatality/

But Andrew then he probably over-states the benefits if gun control if he assumes that all if the decline in firearm suicides represents survivors (its not clear from the article what assumptions he makes here).

Even if no suicides were avoided, however, the lower rates of firearm murder and accidental death in countries with gun controls surely justify them.

Normally I am not a fan of government regulation, but on this issue, I think the libertarians are wrong.