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.

sorry, posted before editing there. It should read:

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

Ref. crime in Japan and Australia.

Japan far outdoes us in Sarin related deaths.

Our last massacres were performed with motor fuel and matches.

Damn good thing we didn't have these fool gun laws back in 1940.

If the general male population couldn't competently handle a gun in 41, we would not have been able to raise an effective militia, to stop the japs in New Guinea.

You would have been too busy digging where instructed by your Japanese masters to have been able to flit around university campuses half your life.

One amazing fact in this developed world is how many highly educated people are just too dumb to know which way is up.

I love the idea that the world was ending due to firearm deaths prior to a white knight riding over the horizon in 1996.

The ABS shows that firearm deaths in Australia declined from 1968 at a slowly increasing rate from then until the present, with the greatest change of rate between 1989 and 1993, exactly that period which Mr Leigh and others refer to as "before 1996".

It doesn't explain the experience in New Zealand, which didn't make wholesale changes and has had a similar lack of mass shootings to Australia.

Further afield, Canada enacted registration of long arms, which have recently been discarded as a waste of resources.

The experience in Australia is similar, with very, very few offences by licensed persons. So much so that it is generally hidden data.

Despite all of this legislation, criminals use firearms with little apparent difficulty procuring them. The suggestion of criminal's firearms being primarily sourced from licensed owners, having being debunked by various police agencies.

What is missing in the article, the discussion and the debate on this point in general, is the distinction between those within the system, ie licenced owners and those who aren't.

Those who operate within the system are directly affected by this debate and any changes in legislation. Those who don't will continue as entirely unaffected as ever, at least until the authorities catch up with them.

Significant changes to mental health programs were made in the same period. Now we have all sorts of services and awareness campaigns making a significant difference to the way mental health is managed, treated and most importantly, perceived within the community.

How much have these changes affected firearm deaths - both suicides and murders - and are they still working? Nobody knows.

In short, the simplistic premise in the article that the legislation changes of 1996-7 made all the difference is at best shallow.

Focusing on the NRA in this article is nothing more than fear mongering. The author should be ashamed of himself, but given his occupation, that is unlikely.

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

I would argue the reverse. If you're scared of your fellow citizens having guns, I would look for the problem in the mirror. I'm more worried about my fellow citizens having the right to vote, than gun ownership (I don't own a gun).

author, "The rarity of mass shootings is almost certainly a direct result of the gun buyback"

Love the science in that (NOT). The rarity of sabre tooth tigers in my backyard is almost certainly a direct result of the garden gnome.

author, "..impact of the buyback on firearms suicide rates. Again, we found that the firearms suicide rates fell more rapidly after the buyback, and that there was a strong correlation between the share of weapons bought back and the drop in suicide rates"

Firearms were never popular for suicide. Hanging is.

As well, what you are not saying is that the number of suicides overall did not drop because the very few who might have chosen a firearm found rope instead.

However the really interesting problem, again not stated, is that the gun buy-back was for pump action and self-loading firearms. -Just wondering why the unavailability of a second or more shots would deter someone contemplating suicide.

There are plenty more holes in this article but those will do for starters.

If this is the quality of the 'research' being done, Australia is in a pickle.

It was politically inspired, right?

Dear Andrew.

Pump action shotguns and self loading rifles were available in Australia for almost 100 years. Australia's firearm laws for most of last century was almost non existent. Firearm licenses did not exist until the mid seventies. Firearms could be purchased in NSW even by 16 year old boys (with parents permission) at sporting stores, major department stores, and men's suburban hairdressers. Ammunition could be purchased at corner stores and petrol stations. Firearms could be rented from gun shops.

School cadets took their rifles home from school on buses and trains and nobody even batted an eyelid. Holiday time at Sydney's Central Station looked like a war movie, with hundreds of shooters standing on the platform, many with slung rifles on their shoulders.(bolts removed).

With all of those guns freely available, there must have been massacres and shootings all over the place. No. Such behaviour did not enter the heads of people until the liberalisation of our entertainment censorship laws, when dozens of "action" movies portrayed role model movie stars as mass murderers, who shot down people by the dozen, and were applauded by the public for doing so.

If your society is going off the rails, and people are doing things that they never did before, an intelligent person would look for a reason for it by examining what has changed about their society, not by blaming a factor which had always been a part of Australian culture.

The state of NSW has made firearm laws more onerous six times now, in response to ever rising instances of firearm crimes. In the year 2000, 60% of the handgun shootings in the entire state of NSW occurred within the geographical boundaries of two notorious ethnic ghettoes in Sydney. That fact alone, should ring a bell with you that if Australia imports people who cultural values approve of lethal violence to solve personnel problems, or if we allow our media to condition our youth to accept a similar violence approving culture, then that is more significant in the criminal misuse of firearms than the mere presence of firearms.

I don't need statistics to show me that I would rather live in Australia than the U.S., and yes I have travelled to the U.S.. I doubt that anyone who hasn't actually been there in person could really compare the two countries.

I don't ever want to see Australia go the way that trigger happy America, the original Cowboys and Indians country, has gone, so we need to resist any attempts at all of relaxing our gun laws in any way.

The NRA can just shoot their big boys toys at some little clay pigeons to satisfy their childhood dreams of going 'bang-bang'.

Dear Rhrosty,

It is patently evident you were caught out when making an assertion that;

“Switzerland has multiple Guns in almost every home; and the gun crime rate there is no worse than ours” when the statistics did not support it.

Bugsy rightly took you to task pointing out that Switzerland had twice the number of homicide deaths per 100,000 that Australia.

You then rambled on about not considering suicide a gun crime. Well Bugsy expressly separated homicides out.

The thing is mate if your contention was that gun restrictions are useless because you believed the Swiss figures were lower then the corollary is that having been shown that the Swiss figures for homicide are more than double Australia's it follows you must accept our tougher restrictions lead to lower homicide rates. If you don't you can rightly be accused of blatant double standards.

Suseonline, "I don't ever want to see Australia go the way that trigger happy America, the original Cowboys and Indians country, has gone.."

It is "..the original Cowboys and Indians country"? Wasn't it 'cops and robbers' in another of your posts that damned the US?

Which part of the US did you visit? Hollywood?

Hopping hoplophobes, Suseonsomething! You had better be on the lookout for those kangaroos hopping down George Street in Sydney too.

After the gun buyback, the SSAA monitored Australia's crime rates for several years and published the results in The Shooters Journal.

Firearm murders rose, because of the presence in this country of ever increasing numbers of immigrants who came from very violent societies where the idea of killing somebody who offends you is a cultural norm.

Faced with the unpleasant truth that gun crime was rising, the anti gun lobby fiddled the figures by including firearm suicides with murders. They claimed that since firearm related suicides fell after the gun buyback, it had obviously saved lives. They even extrapolated the statistics to determine how many lives had been saved by bthe gun buyback.

This was an outright lie. Despite the reduction of firearm related suicides, the suicide rate actually rose. People considering suicide simply used another method.

Now, getting back to my original premise that a law abiding and peaceful culture is more important to reducing crime rates than the mere presence of firearms, the laws governing the publication of suicides proves the point.

In every advanced society, the media is prevented from publishing details of suicides, especially when the suicide is a celebrity who has a large group of people who are fans. History has proven without doubt that people will commit suicide in sympathy with a well loved celebrity who's personnel problems they identify with. Not only will people kill themselves in sympathy with their role model heroes, the press usually does not publish details of the suicide method, because those who wish to kill themselves to conform to their heroues behaviour usually choose the same method as their hero.

Culture is a guide to behaviour. Having our entertainment industry promote mass murderers, serial killers, and "ice" drug producing chemists as role model heroes is a dumb thing to do.

I agree with Lego (again). The current batch of violent video games coupled with generations of movie/TV violence has to have had an effect on the psyche of western culture youth.

I personally think addiction to violent video games is a strong contributing factor to the epidemic of one punch deaths. ICE has to be another major factor.

I am not a gun owner, I never have been even though I spent the first 35 years of my life in the USA. I don't think people need to own a truck load of guns or automatic assault weapons. But, as cliché as it is, guns don't kill people, people kill people.

To what LEGO and ConservativeHippie have said I would like to draw attention to some other contributors to violence:

1. Fatherless homes and one could add to that the resultant effects of babysitting young developing minds in front of the TV, movies and games, and in some cases also being the neglected, sometimes abused victim (mum's boyfriends);

2. General denial of love, time, (reasonable)boundaries and recognition by parent/s, usually solo and drug affected, which causes the child to gravitate to drugs, crime and gang membership;

3. An unsatisfactory example being modelled in the home by parents and their acquaintances (see Struggle Streets [SBS]). There are generations of ferals all caught up in a cycle of unemployment, poor choices and violence.

-The involvement of young urban black youth in some known and predictable US suburbs in drugs and gangs is a sure predictor of serious violence, where knives, brass knuckles, baseball bats, firearms and other tools of their trade will always be in plentiful supply. That is regardless of whatever bans and laws duplicating other laws, might be enacted as part of populist 'gun control' politics.

Gun control is ineffective through being misdirected. It is misdirected because the root causes, the fundamental contributors and precursors to violence are not being properly identified and treated.

4. Irresponsible commentators, political lobbyists and news outlets MUST stop sensationalising certain crimes to draw audiences. That applies to follow-ups after the offender is gaoled. It should be quite apparent to authorities that it is the nation-wide and now world-wide notoriety guaranteed by irresponsible media and commentators with a secondary agenda in mind, that is encouraging offenders to commit certain crimes, eg mass killing with firearm.

Australian authorities should be very careful indeed not to arrogantly assume that they are alone in the World in being so clever in inventing the multicultural policy that proofs against imported hatreds and imported toxic political systems and values.

Australian authorities are already being cowered by political correctness into not gathering and analysing data that could point to any negative consequences of immigration and multicultural policy.

The BS gets piled higher and deeper, as of course I knew it would.

Lets just ignore the fact that countries with strict gun laws have lower gun-related crimes.

Now we are accused of not addressing violence at its root cause before restricting access to the very tools that allow violence on larger scales.

Sorry, I just can't get into your 'conservative' screwed up views on how society is to blame and guns are the answer.

Of course this site is always inhabited by old fogies, so some historical anachronistic fantasy will also be employed again to justify why we as people who don't really take much interest in firearms should allow 'law abiding citizens' (who would most likely have a much different political philosophy to their own) access to them. Are we expecting another Japanese invasion? I suppose a few more pump action shotguns in circulation might deter them.

Of course, the argument that criminals always have access to illegal guns, well that would only increase (only a fantasist would argue otherwise) with a relaxation of our current gun laws.

Seriously, you guys might be arguing for pleasures (or rights?) that were taken for granted in bygone eras, but that doesn't really cut the mustard. Did you know 'Heroin' was a brand name of a drug that was sold in pharmacies? Old laws get overturned for good reasons.

First it was Rhrosty pulling figures out of his arse now it is Lego.

Lego wrote;

“Despite the reduction of firearm related suicides, the suicide rate actually rose. People considering suicide simply used another method.”

No it didn't. Suicide rates per 100,000 were rising alarmingly for the 25 years before the Port Arthur Massacre. From 1997 after the Howard gun buyback there has an equally steady decline to some of the lowest levels ever recorded.

http://www.mindframe-media.info/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/11868/Suicide-Figures-ABS-2015.pdf

Don't the pair of you get that it reveals just how little you really know and how sheep-like the both of you are at regurgitating easily refuted crap?

So Lego when you assert that the gun buyback was ineffective because 'suicide rates increased' then the opposite must be true if instead the rates had in fact declined. Since they have will you now be touting their effectiveness? Obviously not because being hypocritical is a small price to pay to maintain a soundly discredited but doggedly held mantra.

The problem, Bugsy, is that laws should be based on evidence and not on the emotional demands of some vocal pressure group.

Particularly not on the say-so of the unrepresentative, secret squirrel few, who are behind 'gun control' in Australia.

Maybe as someone with knowledge of gun control you might be so good as to detail exactly who is presently behind 'gun control' in Australia, the number of signed up members (since it boasts 'Australia' in its name), the sources of its funds and how they are expended (details of independent audits would be nice since it always has the begging bowl out) and what links it has to foreign interests and to political parties (the NSW Greens?).

If others are involved, what specifically is their interest and what role do they play?

Y'know, the ordinary information that any responsible organisation or political lobby group should be providing as a matter of course.

After all, you wouldn't want to be taking the word of a secretive outfit, with connections that conceal their business with 'gun control' as 'gun control' conceals its links with them and their probable support and funding.

On the other hand there are legitimate associations of the highly respectable citizens with firearms licences who have satisfied the rigorous checks including character and are known to be upright and reliable. However you wouldn't have a bar of what they say.

'Gun control'(sic) where the political parties are concerned is all about political spin: buying votes with fear and not addressing the real underlying fundamental, thorny issues. You are happy with that though.

I think the difference between us and America is the purpose of owning a gun. When America's constitution was established the right to bear arms was inserted to protect the individuals from the government, not each other. Considering how much power the church had in the middle ages in Europe the right to bear arms was created to allow the people ultimate freedom from the tyrant. In australia, by comparison a revolution would be virtually impossible and a civil war laughably one sided because of the illiteracy of the people in using and handling weapons.

While many people praise, rightly, the removal of slavery in the USA let's not forget that it came about through an armed public which allowed the civil war to be successful.

To Steelredux.

OK, I submitted my figures from memory, and I admit that I got it wrong.

We have two premises here. Yours appears to be, that reducing the number of firearms reduces suicides, and that this is born out by your graph. If that was correct, the USA and Switzerland must have the highest suicide rates in the world. And those countries with very strict firearm laws must have the lowest suicide rates in the world.

Mine premise is, that the very wide discrepancies in world wide suicide rates and crime rates is more a factor of cultural conditioning than the mere presence of firearms.

Lets look at Japan and Mexico.

Japan has probably the highest suicide rate in the world because it's culture stresses that those who violate the nations cultural norms (or WU) should torment themselves with feelings of shame that make the Christian concept of shame seem lenient by comparison. Suicide is seen as an honourable way out for those who have erred in a big way. Japan also has extremely strict firearm laws. It is also supposed to have a very low crime rate, but things in Asia are not always what they seem. Japan is the only country in the world that has no problem having a criminal class with semi official status. Judges, politicians and mob bosses are regularly seen together disporting themselves in nightclubs and brothels, while too many people and bagmen who know too much seem to have a habit of "suiciding" late at night from tall buildings.

Mexico has extremely strict firearm laws, a murder rate (from memory) about 15 times higher than Australia, and a very low suicide rate. Suicide is considered unacceptable because the catholic culture considers suicide a mortal sin.

Therefore, culture is more important than the mere presence of firearms in suicide rates, and since crime rates can be independent of firearm availability (eg Switzerland and the rural parts of Australia), culture is more important than firearm availability in crime rates.

Suicide

It is simplistic, damned BS and an insult to the many professionals in government and the private sector who have been working so hard on initiatives aimed at reducing suicide to claim as some here have done, that it was the gun buy-back that was responsible instead.

Bugsy,

You say "Lets just ignore the fact that countries with strict gun laws have lower gun-related crimes."

Let us not ignore your statement because it simply isn't true.

Many countries with strict firearms laws have high gun related crime rates, far higher than the USA.

"• The US has the highest gun ownership rate in the world - an average of 88 per 100 people. That puts it first in the world for gun ownership - and even the number two country, Yemen, has significantly fewer - 54.8 per 100 people
• But the US does not have the worst firearm murder rate - that prize belongs to Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica. In fact, the US is number 28, with a rate of 2.97 per 100,000 people
• Puerto Rico tops the world's table for firearms murders as a percentage of all homicides - 94.8%. It's followed by Sierra Leone in Africa and Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean"
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list

By the reasoning of those opposed to gun ownership, the USA with the highest ownership rate in the world should have the highest gun crime rate but it doesn't; I wonder why?

Has the subject research by Andrew Leigh and another, ever been subjected to peer review in any of the well recognised scientific journals? I don't mean in the occupational interest mags, but for peer review in a scientific journal of substance.

If not why not? Because it does appear contentious, even from a layperson's normal reading.

Here is an alternative view (excerpt) from John R. Lott, Jr., President, Crime Prevention Research Center, Swarthmore, United States,

"Conclusion
It is very hard to look at the raw data on firearm suicides and homicides and
see any benefits from the gun buyback. In 2004, the US National Research
Council released a report reaching this same conclusion (p. 95): “It is the
committee’s view that the theory underlying gun buy-back programs is
badly flawed and the empirical evidence demonstrates the ineffectiveness of
these programs.”
It is very difficult to use Australian data to evaluate the impact of a law
because you only have one experiment and it is difficult to disentangle other
factors that might be coming into play. When there is only one experiment it
is not even possible to disentangle two different factors that might have
changed at the same time."
http://tinyurl.com/knwhb34

tbc..

Since Steelredux is missing in action, I guess I will turn the blowtorch on Bugsy. Although, have the feeling that he is another "hit and run" artist, who runs into the arena, lets fly with a few insults and sneery one liners, then runs back into the stands thinking that he is a hero.

Your premise is, that communities with strict gun control have low crime rates. That is just not true. Australia once had almost non existent firearm laws and a very low crime rate. Same for England and New Zealand. The example of Switzerland completely blows your theory out of the water. So too, even today in Australia, those areas of Australia where firearm ownership is high are the rural areas where violent crime rates (if you take out the aborigines) is very low. Some country towns have never had an armed robbery in their entire history.

If you stopped parroting the slogans of the anti gun, animal loving vegans, and thought for yourself, you might have the intelligence to figure out that what I just wrote should give you pause to think again.

Law abiding societies do not need strict gun laws but violent societies do. Australian society was once very law abiding, but something happened to change that. You don't want to think about what that could be, because that is too hard. Better to just adopt a superior air and mouth off against "old fogies" who you obviously detest, and sneer at guns and gun owners.

If you knew your history like us "old fogies", you might have cause to think again. England once had the lowest homicide rate ever recorded in the industrialised world, and almost non existent firearm laws. That changed in the late 20's when the British government made firearm ownership very hard to obtain. That was not in response to rising crime rates, but because the British government feared an armed socialist revolution. After the Dunkirk debacle, the British government appealed to sporting shooters in the USA to donate their rifles to Britain, so the British could defend themselves.

contd from previous post..

and regarding suicide, from Australian researchers,

"Results
• There was no evidence of an impact of the 1996 firearms restrictions on
firearm suicide rates among young people (aged 15 to 24, and 25 to 34, years).
• Where structural breaks were found, they typically occurred a number of years
before the 1996 legislative changes.
Conclusions
• The current study confirms and extends Lee and Suardi’s (2010) finding of a
lack of structural breaks in firearm suicide around the time of the 1996
legislative reforms.
• The results suggest that the significant financial expenditure associated with
Australia’s firearms method restriction measures may not have had any impact
on youth suicide.
• Overall, these findings contribute to the growing body of evidence
documenting the limitations of various forms of method restriction as a means
of addressing youth suicide.
• This highlights the importance of early detection of (and response to) suicide
risk factors in younger people, as well as the need for careful evaluation of the
costs and benefits of interventions intended to contribute to suicide prevention."

Suicide Prevention and Method Restriction: Evaluating the Impact
of Limiting Access to Lethal Means among Young Australians
McPhedran, S., & Baker, J. (2012).
Archives of Suicide Research, 16: 135-146

The 'gun control' abolitionists are a secretive, unethical crew. Their spin deliberately conflates the unlawful gun ownership and offences of criminals - which in Australia is almost invariably the Middle Eastern dominated outlaw motorcycle gangs - with the many thousands of highly respectable citizens who have sought and obtained licences, who are the most unlikely people to offend, ever.

<Ethnic crime: Middle Eastern bikie gangs at war in Sydney

On Monday July 29, 2013 two Middle Eastern males with links to bikie gangs and terrorists were killed just kilometres - and minutes - apart, becoming the latest victims of Sydney's out-of-control gun violence..

But it’s not just turf wars.
One former counter terrorism officer, who asked not to be named, said the gun culture had become so ingrained among Middle Eastern males in southwest Sydney that they have taken to settling so-called “honour” disputes with guns.
“The culture is all guns and drugs. If someone looks at your wife the wrong way, you shoot them. They think they’re bulletproof and they have this wilful disregard for authority.”
For the past two years there has been more than one shooting incident reported to police every three days, centred in an arc from Punchbowl and Bankstown to Auburn and Berala, but with shootings as far afield as Kings Cross, Bellevue Hill and Birchgrove..

The State Crime Command’s Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad launched Operation Apollo in February 2013 to try to get on top of gun violence. They have arrested more than 320 people, laid more than 600 charges, and seized more than 80 firearms.
But the shootings continue."

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/criminal-bikie-gangs-boost-numbers-with-young-muslim-and-eastern-european-recruits/story-fnihsrf2-1226733840346

The 'gun control' abolitionists are about disarming legally licensed Australia Ordinary reputable citizens, farmers, competition shooters and game hunters are their targets. They are not about criminals.

What is especially concerning is that the few activists (some allegedly on the public payroll and moonlighting?) who are the movers and shakers behind 'gun control' -their euphemism for abolition- are so guarded and secretive about their political and other links, domestic and overseas. Why?

Any correlation between F/A's and suicide has yet to be demonstrated. In my experience anybody intent on taking their own life will turn to whatever means are available to them. Often depending very much upon their age and gender, as to how they may go about it. Furthermore the desperation too, often prescribes, the means ?

Moreover our politicians must accept, any further imposition of tighter restrictions on licit shooters, will only serve to further marginalise them, and generate even worse negative publicity, for them and their legitimate sport.

Whereas, all parties should realise there's got to be a climate of co-operation and communication between - the shooters, police, and the lawmakers, in their collective endeavours to interdict illicit F/A's importation, and the criminals who bring 'em into the country.

Without that combined synergy, a prosperous underground F/A trade will only continue to proliferate unabated. A couple of points I've seen raised herein - and I'd like to add my own observation, based purely on my own experiential evidence ?

There's absolutely no doubt whatsoever, certain ethnic groups see the possession, ownership and use of F/A's as a fundamental 'right' and a important part of their culture. Notwithstanding the laws that have been framed to control the possession and use of those F/A'S.

Many of these groups form distribution points, for trafficking illegal F/A's. Therefore authorities (Customs & Police), who're trying to obtain intelligence on their operations, encounter a wall of silence, a complete lack of co-operation and the 'usual' language barrier ?

Governments (State & Federal) must throw all available resources, into targeting the ethnic criminal groups who illegally importing weapons into the country, with the heaviest of penalties for those caught.

My own suggestion...ANY indictable offence where a F/A forms part of the, 'commission of that offence' if proven, a mandatory ten (10) years is automatically tacked on to the penalty phase. An example; six years for 'Aggravated Burglary' because the offender was in possession of a F/A, he receives an additional ten years ! No parole, or remission - a full ten years !

How I choose to spend my time is no concern of yours LEGO. If I want to not spend my time looking at all the fogies arguing among themselves, that's my choice. If you choose to hit refresh every 5 minutes, that's yours.

The argument from history is bunk. As you mentioned, many countries has non-existent firearm laws, they also had non-existent drug laws around the same time. Perhaps we should legalise all drugs as well, regardless of the potential for harm. The drugs have also changed of course, as has the societal norms, as certainly has the firearm technology which allows dozens of people to be killed within a few minutes by a single weapon.

It is these that should certainly be controlled.

Gun control is NOT a euphemism and it is not about abolition, that is a made-up hyperbolic strawman argument. The latest news stories provided by onthebeach to me is not a justification for relaxing guns laws, quite the opposite in my opinion. At least you know who gang criminals are: they're the ones firing guns in suburban areas.

And Is Mise, you have to Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica to try and get support your argument? Seriously?

I admit that that crime and gun crime are multi-factorial and that cultural influences play a large role. Which is why Australians choose what they think is right for our country, and they have. It's just not YOUR choice, you're in the minority. Boobloodyhoo.

Here's a question for you though: why would the American NRA make up fake crime statistics about Australia?

I use guns on the family farm, am part of a family of licensed gun owners and grew up in the daily company of two neighboring "uncles": one served in WWI, the other in New-Guinea in WWII. The respect I learned for weapons preceded touching one for the vast majority of my childhood and young adulthood.

I am part of the group of people that sees itself as responsible, capable and reasonable gun owners, and I have no problem with current Australian gun laws. I would like to see *more* enforcement of certain points: I would like to see possession of *any* unregistered weapon by *anybody* as an offense. I would like to see possession of *any* weapon (registered or not) by someone unlicensed to do so as an offense. I would like *all* registered weapons to have barrel-striations on record, and all future legal weapons to have deliberate scorings in the barrel that mark every round distinctively and uniquely. I think all factory rounds and shot should be tagged by minor metallurgical inclusions that allow routine identification of the batch and likely distribution and sale points. I think absolutely none of the above would impede a single legitimate Australian gun user. I am willing to bet my guns won't be stolen or misused and I am happy to register any further guns I obtain. I am happy to have such guns and their rounds capable of *positive* identification, so they can be *excluded* from suspicion.

The criminals who use weapons outside the law can argue their case from inside gaol, being summarily guilty of possession/misuse/unlicensed use of an unregistered/excessive firearm independent of any consequences or "intent" they may imagine arguable.

I think that Australian-style gun laws would be a great benefit to ordinary Americans. They have allowed a sub-culture of violence to flourish and laws such as ours and enforcement of the points I raise would clearly distinguish the capable and law-abiding ("well-organised") American gun owners from the violent criminals whose "rights" have been mistakenly and disastrously conflated by the NRA with those of the competent and capable.

Rusty

Bugsy, "Gun control is NOT a euphemism and it is not about abolition"

Oh yes it is, on both counts. Bans and more bans and you know it. It reflects on your credibility that you don't admit it.

"The latest news stories provided by onthebeach to me is not a justification for relaxing guns laws"

You and your strawman. Where was I talking about 'relaxing' laws?

The point, which of course you have refused to address, is that the whole aim and sly intent of the artifice that is 'gun control' is to inconvenience, penalise (through random police checks in their homes to take an example) and strip away the rights of the very citizens who DO obey the laws to pursue their interests in game, competition, collecting or whatever.

Bugsy, "firearm technology which allows dozens of people to be killed within a few minutes by a single weapon"

Where have any of the highly legitimate associations and clubs that represent those many thousands of law-abiding, licensed firearms owners ever asked for anything like that?

You make it all up to sledge the PROVED good, honest, respectable people who are likely your own neighbours, your treating doctor, the retiree across the road, but why? What have they ever done to deserve your hatred?

Anyhow, if it comes down to it, car licences enable and are in fact crucial for almost all crime and certainly serious crime against people. So why the hell aren't you volunteering yourself and making it obligatory for all who want to own or control a vehicle to undergo the same checks as apply in the case of firerams licences?

Gun control are the secretive unrepresentative few who skulk behind closed doors - totalitarians who would scare the daylights out of George Orwell if he was alive today.

Now what about some answers on who is behind 'Gun Control', where they get their support, their links with domestic and international

Thanks for outing yourself as a conspiracy nut OTB.

I don't really have anything more to say to all that. At least people can read it now and decide for themselves who is being hyperbolic and just plain OTT.

Dear LEGO,

Lol.

“Missing in action”?

Actually worked most of this weekend and an early start tomorrow. Perhaps in future you might try and give a bloke at least 48 hours rather than 15 before pulling that crap. Some of us do have other lives.

You wrote;

“OK, I submitted my figures from memory, and I admit that I got it wrong.”

Congratulations for at least acknowledging your figures were actually the opposite of what the facts were, something Rhosty was unable to do.

Further by saying you had 'submitted them from memory' reinforces my previous point. These obviously came from a gun rights source which you have picked up and ran with without bothering to check its veracity. That sir is blind and wilful ignorance.

You wrote;

“We have two premises here. Yours appears to be, that reducing the number of firearms reduces suicides, and that this is born out by your graph.”

Incorrect. We have only one premise that was dealt with in this exchange and it was yours;

“Faced with the unpleasant truth that gun crime was rising, the anti gun lobby fiddled the figures by including firearm suicides with murders. They claimed that since firearm related suicides fell after the gun buyback, it had obviously saved lives. They even extrapolated the statistics to determine how many lives had been saved by the gun buyback. This was an outright lie. Despite the reduction of firearm related suicides, the suicide rate actually rose. People considering suicide simply used another method.”

To be precise your premise was that the 'anti gun lobby' of 'fiddling figures' and of 'outright lying'. That has been shown to be rubbish full stop.

This brilliant Aussie says it far better than I ever could. Please watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZFLk5L70MQ

You were right LEGO to raise the problem of comparing suicide rates and gun crime between countries. That is what makes the Australian experiment so telling. Most of the other factors of different cultures and law enforcement were set aside. The fact is suicide rates went down virtually on cue after the buyback and the incidents of mass shootings which were occurring annually ground to a halt. Only the most ' blind and wilful ignorant' could ever claim there was absolutely no connection those some hear appear to be attempting just that.

Speaking of onthebeach ... how does someone quote John R. Lott, Jr without acknowledging he is one of the most strident pro gun advocates in the world. His research has been found to be at best sloppy at worse fabricated. His book 'More Guns: Less Crime' was systematically taken apart by UNSW academic Tim Lamberet and it is worth a read.
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/guns/lott/lott.pdf

I will leave the last word to a brilliant Aussie critic name Jim Jefferies. The man may be a pisspot and pretty rough around the edges by he is a fine example of a comic with an eye for the absurd. His brilliant routine made news in a number of national US papers. Warning – heaps of swearing.
https://youtu.be/HZFLk5L70MQ

Beat ya by one minute there Steele. sorry :P

Watch. Its funny because its true

Dear mikk,

Lol

Great minds....

Better get rid of that pesky 's' we both used.

http://youtu.be/HZFLk5L70MQ

And I agree, brilliant!

Bugsy,

The only conspiracy would be by the secretive gun control activists who resolutely refuse to disclose the barest details of their 'organisation', but always have the begging bowl out for undisclosed sums received and purposes to which the money is applied.

Rusty Catheta, "I would like to see *more* enforcement of certain points: I would like to see possession of *any* unregistered weapon by *anybody* as an offense. I would like to see possession of *any* weapon (registered or not) by someone unlicensed to do so as an offense"

"I would like to see *more* enforcement of certain points: I would like to see possession of *any* unregistered weapon by *anybody* as an offense. I would like to see possession of *any* weapon (registered or not) by someone unlicensed to do so as an offense."

?!

If you are the holder of a firearms licence as you imply you are, it is odd that you seem unaware of the regulations that have been around for yonks and throughout Australia.

There are other inconsistencies too. For instance, anyone with a firearms licence would be aware that quite apart from the costs and useless of the data gained, because it is the UNregistered guns owned by UNlicensed criminals that are used for crime, any slight alteration to a barrel and use will change the marks of the rifling. Further, police stats even demonstrate that the few firearms stolen from licensed owners do NOT feature in crimes.

You are likely flying a false flag. However what matters is your ignorance of the existing regulations and your proposed 'solutions' are ill-directed and nonsense. There is nothing you have suggested that would deter or prevent any criminal act, because criminals do not buy from legitimate sources. Are you aware what that means?

Rusty,

You should go on the stage; with a routine like:

"I would like *all* registered weapons to have barrel-striations on record, and all future legal weapons to have deliberate scorings in the barrel that mark every round distinctively and uniquely. I think all factory rounds and shot should be tagged by minor metallurgical inclusions that allow routine identification of the batch and likely distribution and sale points. I think absolutely none of the above would impede a single legitimate Australian gun user."

you'd be a hit on the club circuit.

Bugsy,

"And Is Mise, you have to [use/quote] Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica to try and get support [for] your argument? Seriously?"

Yeah, seriously, they all have restrictive gun laws and they have very high murder rates, so they qualify.
So does Mexico and South Africa.

Can you tell me why the USA with its high gun ownership rates is not higher on the world murder scale?

If more guns mean more crime then why doesn't the USA have the highest crime rates?

Drugs and crime cartels/gangs.

Which is why they have restrictive gun laws.

Try and pick more geographically and demographically comparable countries next time.

Yuk it up all you want, Is Mise. "microstamping" is a trivial addition to legal gun manufacture, and I'd be happy for mine to be. *positive* identification for every legal gun is feasible now just by examining the barrel striatons of any registered gun, and would eventually become trivial if all new weapons were suitably microstamped, or it's existing striations recorded. What uses of your gun couldn't you justify before a jury of your peers? I'm not worried, what are you afraid of?

Rusty

En guarde, Steelie.

I don't blame you for crowing over my mistake that suicides rose after the gun buyback. Your successes on OLO are so few that you can't help yourself when you score a point.

Getting onto your last premise, you seem to be suggesting in a roundabout way that those countries with little gun control have high crime rates and high suicide rates, while those countries with strict gun controls have low crime rates and low suicide rates. I know you did not say that outright, but like so many of your ilk, you can't do what I do, stick your neck out and say exactly what you mean. But my reading of your post leads me to presume that this is your position.

Now, am I correct? If not, then clarify your position.

If I am correct in understanding your position, then your position is obviously wrong. Australia and Britain are just two countries which once had very low crime rates and almost non existent firearm laws. Switzerland has very low crime rates and every house has an assault rifle. Everybody is armed in Israel, and crime rates are low. Mexico has very strict firearms laws, a homicide rate 15 times Australia's, and a very low suicide rate. The USA has strict gun laws in those states and cities where hispanic and negro crime gangs are right out of control, and lenient gun laws in the mostly white North Western states and towns where crime rates are low.

The USA has a homicide rate five times higher than Australia. But if all the homicides where firearms were used were taken out of the US statistics entirely, the US homicide rate would still be double the Australian rate. If you can't figure out that something other than firearm availability is a far more important factor in people making the decision that killing another person is the right thing to do, then If I were you, I would not sit around waiting for Mensa to give you an invitation to join them.

On The Beach, Whatever you reckon, Old son. I guess poorly delineating my furious agreement with current gun law and my desire to see it even better enforced would somehow be invalidating of my views to some. Good luck. If I really need any clarifications when I'm on the farm I'll be sure to ask the local former Senior Sergeant next time he's over for a cuppa. Suits?

In any case I don't see how the points I raised are dreadfully burdensome. The minor records and paperwork are all indoors with no heavy lifting, and electronic records are getting easier. I see no reason to think that good records assist criminals, but excellent records can exclude the rest of us from suspicion as easily as checking a library book or a number plate, so I'm OK with that. If you want to have a pissing competition about who is too much a weakling to do paperwork, no worries...You win!

Rusty

Rusty,

It simply doesn't work.
Every shot that is fired alters the ballistic imprint of a barrel's interior.
Using sabot rounds leaves no markings on the projectile at all, nor are there any marking on a paper patched bullet.
Decades ago the use of ice (frozen water variety)slugs in shotguns left no ballistic trace and after a minute or two no bullet either.

How are you going to ensure that there are identifying marks on home cast bullets or on solid copper or brass projectiles machined in the home workshop's lathe?
It takes only a few minutes with a 1/8th hole punch and a sheet of scrap plumber's lead to produce sufficient shot to load up a few shot gun cartridges; not good for ballistic efficiency but effective at usual crime ranges.

Your ideas have been coming up for years and no one, knowledgeable on the subject has ever supported them.

Ice slugs? lol

Mate, why do you have to go and weaken your own arguments like that?

It's becoming increasingly difficult to take you seriously.

Bugsy,

You laugh at the use of ice slugs; I fired them very successfully back in 1963 in experiments at a RAEME Base Armoury; we also fired ice bolts from crossbows.
High powered air guns will also fire ice bullets.
Despite what Myth Busters may have found it is possible to fire a lethal ice projectile from a shot gun.

Is mise,
There may be the odd genius-among-thieves that takes the trouble to completely obscure all forensic evidence. I don't think such are really the majority of gun crime. Scorings in barrels *DO* wear, yes, but even incidental ones identify bullets and barrels years later, so your objection is a bit thin, you probably meant to say "does not always work perfectly". Deliberately machined or laser etched ones could last the life of a barrel and be straightforwardly readable like a barcode, as with microstamping of breech and firing pin.

I understand that gun manufacturers regard it as "too hard", but since the technique works well on existing minor defects, how hard is it really to add a few more in an organised manner? So far they have not distinguished themselves from sullen teenagers faced with a chore, and are not convincing.

Yes, I am *aware* that shotguns don't leave equivalent marks on shot, but shot and *most* rounds are produced in batches. Given the sensitivity of current spectroscopy, different batches can already be distinguished using their incidental metallurgical differences, just like gold bullion can be roughly dated by the isotopic mixture of atmospheric trace components trapped in the metal. I am proposing that commercial producers simply add further contaminants in a sequence of combinations that makes a more readily detected metallurgical "barcode". A smaller device might then be sufficient to read it. *obviously* some will make their own, and their particular melt will also be distinctive, possibly *very* distinctive unless they melt actual bullets as many lead alloys are specialised for their purposes. *some* traceability is better than *no* traceability. *I* would be happy for my gun to be etched so that every single round could be identified as mine if found, and for that to be as straightforward as junior constable checking my rego plate with an "app". If detectives don't like my suggestions, fine. They presumably are looking at their own best options. Though I understand the US "ATF" have sought such markings, and I reckon their ballistics fellows know a thing or two about guns.

Rusty

Hi there RUSTY CATHETER...

Unfortunately Rusty - IS MISE is quite correct in general terms, with his various descriptions of untraceable ballistic residual and vestigial propellant compounds. He's also correct when he avers some variants can be fashioned in one's home workshop.

A 'sabot' based round ensures the projectile or filling therein is properly positioned in the barrel of a gun, to preserve accuracy and to ensure that (usually commercially produced) 'filling or load' is carried precisely to it's target.

As an example sabot rounds are now known within the industry as 'BFS' loads, so named after the Frenchman who developed the first anti-tank penetrating round. Such innovative ordnance includes, but not limited too, HE (high explosive) similar to RDX C3 or C4 an excellent 'entry tool'. Or worse, the frightening and horrific military designed 'flechettes' used extensively in Vietnam by the Yanks.

Today, US law enforcement agencies use such innovative descriptive terms for their 'entry rounds' such as the Federal 'Hyrda Shok' the inimitable 'sledgehammer', or the 'Bolo' anti-riot round etc. etc.

RUSTY CATHETER, I'll not persist any further with this stuff, as I realize most people don't particularly like engaging in this boring, 'ballistic masturbation', as it's popularly known in the business ? As I said at the outset, IS MISE is, in general terms, quite correct in what he asserts, with ballistic typing and comparison.

Rusty Catheter,

"..poorly delineating my furious agreement with current gun law" is how you came to mislead others on the provisions of Queensland's regulations you say? What about you then clarify for the benefit of the many here who do not understand the regulations and look to apparently knowledgeable posters here to clarify things for them?

Also, if you are intending to have a word with the local country (I assume) Senior Sergeant you might want to ask him how much time trained officers in the station are being required to spend on such ridiculous mundane tasks as printing the voluminous, redundant bureaucratic paperwork that the that the cooperative licensed citizens are required to complete, while the ferals are not receiving any police attention. You might also ask him how many trained officers he has has available for patrols for example.

You might also ask him what value he sees in conducting random police inspections in the homes of the respectable citizens who have met all of the requirements pf licencing and are leading exemplary lives, along with their families.

That is NOT something that the noisy gun control activists would ever countenance where known criminals are concerned though.

Because unlike ordinary citizens, criminals have rights and floggers like the Green Left and 'human rights' lawyers to say so and conduct ferocious lobbying on their behalf! Yet any illegal guns are held by offenders and almost always those are drug-dealing Middle-Eastern bikies. They use them too!

contd..

continued..

Rusty Catheter,

If you do have a current firearms licence and your remarks make that dubious (maybe you were a gun owner years ago), you should have a think about what exactly is required outside of the sole robust and effective control that is the licence itself.

The rest is time-wasting bureaucratic pap that wastes the time of the Firearms Branch, local police and irritates the very people the police rely on for support, order and intel, namely the good citizens who do obey the laws.

Then again, maybe you can give some examples of where the personal details and other information held in the existing gun registry have deterred a criminal or led to his arrest? Gun registries are laughed as 'White Elephants' overseas, where the experience with them has proved they are damned useless and waste police resources. But you would add to that!

It is the blind leading the blind. Amateurs who are clueless about risk assessment and authoritarian hoplophobes who don't care about having laws based on evidence.

Apart from yourself, all licensed individuals, their clubs and associations recognise the rather obvious fatal flaw where the Howard-inspired gun control 'initiatives' are concerned, which is that all of the bureaucratic paraphernalia (and there is a mountain of it) do squat to deter or collar offenders.

That is because criminals DO NOT obtain licences (wouldn't qualify anyhow) and they certainly are NOT going to be buying from legal sources or registering their tools of trade.

'Gun control' and its narrative have nothing to do with preventing crime. It is solely aimed at taking away the rights of the ordinary, law-abiding citizens, disarming Australia. However, in the troublesome times that are developing in its area of the world, Australia would be advised to encourage more young people to take up target shooting and putting some real effort into school Cadet units as examples.

To Rusty Catheter

The now banned book (in the USA) "Hitman" (Palladin Press )which was a "how to" book on how to commit a murder, recommended using a rat tail file on the muzzle of the firearm/murder weapon after committing the murder with it, to destroy the ballistic signature.

When I was a boy in the little southern NSW town of Marulan, it always used to amuse me when on Saturday mornings, the local farmers would all come to town in their Holden utes with a rifle stuck prominently on the shelf of the rear window. Windows open, doors unlocked. Funnily enough, there were never any massacres. But there was some crime. The one that I witnessed, was when the local copper turned up one evening at our farm on a stolen horse, drunk as a lord. My uncle Norm drove him home.

Is Mise is right. You can think up all of the bureaucratic solutions you want, all they are going to do is drive ordinary firearm owners crazy, and prompt them to ignore the law. Prior to the gun buyback, it was already known in NSW that hundreds of thousands of gun owners were neither licensed, or they had unregistered firearms. The police were trying to get them to become part of the system with gun amnesties and programs designed to get gun owners licensed. All the gun buyback did was drive them all underground again.

The Howard government calculated that somewhere bewten 2.5 million and 3.5 million firearms should have been surrendered in the gun buyback. All they got were 860,000. That means that there are around 2 million self loading rifles and shotguns out there. How are you going to ballistically stamp them?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Sydney daily Telegraph interviewed the local Muslim homeboys about obtaining handguns. They boasted that they could get a Chinese manufactured copy of a Colt 45 or a CZ75 pistol "like ordering a pizza."

Well, the committee seems to have it.

O sung wu, I don't dispute there may be difficulties. I am also aware of the specifics you raise regarding sabots etc. I don't see them as reasons to not investigate nor to require innovations that enable even partial traceability from manufacturers. In any case these things and home manufacture do not constitute the total of all gun crimes. Good luck to the investigators I say, wherever they can get traction.

On The Beach raises a few points, including a couple that the gun-happy twits I grew up with hadn't, so thanks for that. I'm sorry you find the inspections onerous. Be assured that highly-trained professionals in many fields are similarly inspected and re-tested over things they too regard as matters of routine competence, usually with goodish grace.

LEGO, I am aware that *some* criminals take the trouble to deface their weapon, or dispose of it in very thorough manner. Probably not many, despite the availability of such books as you mention. I am also aware that some get completely illegal weapons and ammo, probably untraceable and lacking any identifiers. I don't believe that I have suggested to either yourself or On the Beach that these should not be sought, or sternly punished, on as many grounds as feasible. I used to attend seminars given by forensic chemists and other types of forensic analysis at their then new lab on Kessels Road many years ago, and perhaps I developed a little too much optimism based on their more interesting work. It sounds like the solution to the less tractable side of the problem remains out of reach, and that's a shame.

I can't say I wish you any success in your crusade against gun control, I'm for it, and I'm considering relinquishing my own, if not soon. You will probably regard that as disqualifying my opinion entirely.

Whatever.

Thanks for your clarifications, gentlemen. It helps put some things in perspective for me, even if I now find it unconvincing. I doubt I'll be swinging back to your position this lifetime.

Rusty

Hi there LEGO...

I've been out of the game for awhile now, so I'm not entirely across the latest ballistic protocols ? Neither am I up with the more finite propulsion profiling that's currently in vogue today ? Be assured LEGO, most Ballistic specialist are updating their skill set regularly, with the latest developments flowing out of Quantico, steadily as well.

The same applies with the Bomb squad, the moment a new (civilian) IED functions, virtually anywhere in the western world, the AFP's, ABDC very quickly disseminates the pertinent data to all relevant agencies throughout Australia ?

So the 'Techie's' proficiency is always improving exponentially. Furthermore police command seem happy enough to continually update the squad's equipment, whenever required to do so ? Rarely will a Case Officer leave Scientific these days empty handed, as was the usual practice 25 - 30 years ago.

Finally, crooks have to be doubly smart not to leave 'something' notwithstanding how microscopically challenging it may be ? I hope it helps LEGO ?

Rusty Catheter,

It doesn't surprise at all that you are not interested in evidence, after kicking off with that unfair and manipulative 'If you’ve got nothing to hide, then what do you have to fear?' argument directed at another poster. Cheap rhetorical trickery where there should be a convincing, compelling argument based on evidence for any proposed limitations on what he and others can do.

'Gun control' is NOT the same as and cannot be even considered to be in the same ballpark as the proper, responsible management of firearms. Even better, the research and policy should be being directed at violence and its contributors. We might be getting somewhere that way.

Licensing the firearms owner is by far the most effective, robust control. It gives the means to restrict and charge the unsavory few in society who commit crime. Apart from that, there are perfectly good laws and there always were, that cover crimes against people and property.

It is really dumb to have ordinary law-abiding citizens recorded on police computers as 'persons of interest', crazy and an abuse of their rights to be conducting random inspections in their homes, and lunatic to have police and weapons branches constantly watching over the shoulders of ordinary peaceful citizens.

Meanwhile, drugs are freely available in night spots attended by young people and those venues are likely controlled by notorious crime figures and have been for donkeys years. Middle-Eastern Bikies have shoot-outs in Sydney and Bikie gangs surround a police station on the Gold Coast.

The police say they haven't got the resources. Their political masters say there is no money to do better. However there is no problem in wasting police resources monitoring law-abiding, respectable, licensed people, who according to the mantra of 'gun control' have automatically forfeited their rights and privacy These people and thousands more,

http://www.shootingaustralia.org/index.php

Amazing how the political parties imagine they are unlikely to cop some blow-back in the polls from those thousands of good citizens they continue to alienate. Could happen and one day soon.

To OSungWu.

Crime rates have been rising steadily alongside prosperity throughout the western world since the mid sixties. Despite western people being more prosperous than at any time in history, we are seeing manifestations of crime never, or rarely, seen before. The most disturbing of which is serious juvenile crime. In the USA, juvenile homicide is now the USA's fastest growing crime statistic. Here in Australia, in June 2000, the Australian Institute of Criminology realised a public statement saying that it was "puzzled" by the significant rise in very serious criminal behaviour being perpetrated by juveniles.

And this despite very significant advances in crime detection. What with photography, fingerprinting, DNA analysis of the most infinitesimally small traces, mobile phone tracking, GPS tracking, advanced forensics, and security cameras and web cams everywhere, there should be hardly any crime at all.

But prisons in NSW are full and getting fuller. Even the ancient Parramatta and Berrima prisons were reopened, and this despite new, novel punishments like "community service" and "home detention."

Now, the proposition put forward by Steelredux and Rusty, is that banning guns makes society safer. While they may have a point, my premise is, that firearms laws are a litmus paper test of how sick your society is, or is becoming. The easy availability of firearms is not a problem in a functional society. But western societies are sick and getting sicker. They will continue to become more dysfunctional, and crime rates will rise, even after all firearms are banned (as in Britain). We are aiming at the wrong target.

Steelie and Rusty think that banning guns will make everything OK. What I am arguing, is that the problems are, the importation of people from very violent cultures, the glamourisation of criminal behaviour by the media, coupled with a breakdown in marriages resulting in too many fatherless children being educated by the entertainment media to think that criminal behaviour is fun, taking drugs is cool, and that Real Men don't get mad, they get even. With a gun, a knife, or a box of matches.

To all who strive for 'gun control', let it be known that criminals have successfully manufactured and used fully automatic, electronically fired sub-machine guns and moreover killed policemen using them in a shootout in India.
One of the weapons was captured and although roughly made was of a sophisticated though easy to make design.

Google is a mine of information.

Oh, LEGO. You presume too much.

<<Here in Australia...>>

Despite his nom de plume, o sung wu is as Australian as they come and served in the NSW police service for decades.

<<Crime rates have been rising steadily alongside prosperity throughout the western world since the mid sixties.>>

No, since the ‘70s, the overall crime rate has been on the decline (with a temporary increase from the early ‘80s to early ‘90s). Only assaults have been on the rise. (http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/facts/1-20/2013.html)

<<And this despite very significant advances in crime detection … there should be hardly any crime at all.>>

You’re assuming that all crime is rationally thought out. Most isn’t, and the risks involved in the few crimes that are rationally thought out are always underestimated.

<<But prisons in NSW are full and getting fuller.>>

Yes, and there are a variety of reasons for that (many of which can be summed up by the more punitive societies that we live in now), and an even more complex interplay of factors are involved regarding America’s rise in serious juvenile crime.

But because YOU can’t explain any of this, you blame one of your pet peeves - violence in media. The relationship between violent media and aggression in children is complex and not yet fully understood. It varies from child to child and much of it is only a short-term display of increased aggression. However, there is no evidence yet linking violent media to crime - either adolescent-limited, or life-course-persistent.

All your arguments are based on carefully cherry-picked, allowing you to fill in the blanks. Explaining crime is more complex than you understand.

<<But western societies are sick and getting sicker.>>

Actually, by any sociological measure, they’re getting better and better, overall. Why, it was only 70 odd years ago that much of the world was at war because a Western country(!) was ruled by a mad man. And you think prisons are filling now? Britain prisons were once so full that they colonised an entire continent just to ease some of the pressure on them.

Oh, where was it again..?

I would be astounded if the incidence of home burglary was not shown to be on the rise. The police closure figures are heading in the opposite direction. Given that many offenders are committing the crimes to support a drug habit, the risk of harm to the home occupants cannot be discounted.

Crime numbers are also affected by the lack of reporting, because the victims believe that the loss was small or because they don't believe police will be interested or likely to make and arrest. -However the risk of harm to them if they had happened to stumble across a drug-affected offender may have been high. As well, the changing demographics through immigration can increase the likelihood of attack where the offender perceives the victim's life as low value.

Discussion of the rights of the honest, responsible, law-abiding citizens who include (say) air-gun competition at their local club on the weekend as one of their favoured recreations, should not be framed any discussion of crime and violence which has nothing to do with them. That is unless like any other member of the public they are an unfortunate victim of an attack in the street or in their home.

Again it is worth reminding that the illegal possession and use of firearms is very much restricted to criminal gangs, largely ethnic Bikies and for territory, enduring hatreds and always involving the manufacture, trafficking and supply of drugs.

The reason why 'Gun Control' activists must conflate the unlawful, harmful actions of criminals with the lawful, innocent and helpful (eg in feral animal culling) recreational pursuits of the licensed citizens become very plain, doesn't it? It is all shameless lies to frame-up, a stitch-up and negatively stereotype respectable, law-abiding members of the public to disarm them, just because.

There has to be something behind the extreme lengths that 'gun control's' activists and those shadowy figures and political interests behind them go to to avoid disclosure and how they shrink from public scrutiny. Thay have to disarm Australia, why?

To make way for the New World Order of course otb, why else?

Gun owners first, climate change deniers next and Christians after that!

MUHAHAHAHA

Hi (again) LEGO...

I tend to agree with you concerning your assertions that many young people are influenced by violent video games and 'R18' DVD's. Many have even adopted the language spoken by some of these fictitious hero's ?

Furthermore from my own empirical knowledge, some ethnic groups believe the possession, carriage and use of a F/A as a right. I again mount my 'high horse' ? The coppers will lock up these people, and spend hours and hours assembling a good brief. They get to court, and some progressive left leaning magistrate will either cut 'em loose' or if they're unable to do so, sentence them to a hundred strokes with a large feather !

Moreover if the matter is kicked upstairs, some 'jelly judge' will generally opine the accused is remorseful, because he didn't estreat his bail on a capital offence, and sentence him to ten minutes with time served ? You wonder why most detectives experience hypertension !There's your problem LEGO, or to be more precise...? The problem lies with politicians, and an out of touch judiciary.

It's little wonder morale is consistently low at squad level. Detectives have to do their job despite the best endeavours of politicians and a bloated, overtly arrogant judiciary.

How does one find out how many people there are in "Gun Control Australia"?

'Twas said that there were two of them and that they had a Gestetner, rumour has it that there are now four members and that they have a computer and a printer.

We don't really know.

Dear LEGO,

You wrote;

“En guarde, Steelie.”

Which is very much like the retort from a certain Black Knight “It's only a flesh wound!”.

I find it interesting that you keep rolling premises my way. I offered none. All I've done is hold yours up to the cold hard light of facts and found them wanting.

But if you've asked me to clarify a position and I'm happy to do so.

Howard's Gun Laws were primarily aimed at reducing mass shootings and by any measure they have been spectacularly successful in that very endevour. In a very real sense they were about securing a universal freedom, that of being able, with one's family, walk down an inner city thoroughfare like Hoddle Street or visit a tourist attraction like Port Arthur without fearing a crazed lone gunman might take them from you.

You tell us “Switzerland has very low crime rates and every house has an assault rifle.” but they also have mass shootings like this on in 2001;

“He started shooting in the hall where the members of parliament were meeting. He killed three members of the Executive Council ("Regierungsräte") and eleven members of the legislature ("Kantonsräte"), and wounded 18 politicians and journalists, some heavily. He fired 91 rounds.”

Leibacher “was armed with a civilian version of a Stgw 90 (Swiss Army assault rifle), a SIG Sauer pistol, a pump-action shotgun, and a revolver, and he wore a home-made police vest.”
Wikipedia

Cont...

Cont...

Or this report in Time magazine 2013;

“Last week’s shooting at a wood-processing plant in Menznau, Switzerland, which left four people — including the shooter — dead and six others injured, is fueling a recurring debate about the country’s gun policy, one of the most liberal in the world.”
“The issue is even more pertinent these days because the tragedy at the Menznau factory, where an employee armed with a Sphinx AT380 weapon opened fire on his co-workers in the company’s cafeteria, came only weeks after another shooter killed three people and wounded two others in the southern Swiss village of Daillon in early January.”

My position is that I do not want a return to this type of multiple shootings in my country. Most Australians worth their salt would be of the same mindset. Why aren't you?

That suicide rates, both gun related and overall, began reducing after the introduction of those gun laws was likely an added but very welcomed bonus.

As I stated before, the fact that the gun buyback was so widespread nationally and altered so dramatically the weapon stock in Australia we have been able to showcase to the rest of the world the effectiveness of this measure without the complications of comparing countries with differing gun laws and cultures.

John Oliver's examination of our laws make great viewing including an interview with John Howard.

Part 1 http://youtu.be/9pOiOhxujsE

Part 2 http://youtu.be/TYbY45rHj8w

Enjoy.

Oh goody, AJ, I was hoping you would turn up.

Are crime rates rising in the western world? My source for Australia, is Lucy Sullivan's book "Rising Crime in Australia" which displayed statistics from the late 1800's to the year 2000, and who's graphs for all classes of crime (except homicide) showed an exponential growth after the mid sixties.

For Britain, "The Sunday Express" newspaper reported in June 1999, "In recent months there has been a frightening number of shootings in Britain's major cities, despite new laws banning gun ownership." the "Manchester Guardian" lamented that Manchester was being called "Gunchester". While the "Times" headlined on January 16th, 1998, "Killings Rise As 3 Million Handguns Flood Britain." Chief Inspector Colin Greenwood of the West Yorkshire Constabulary, was quoted "No matter how one approaches the figures, one is forced to the rather startling conclusion, that the use of firearms in crime was very much less than when there were no controls of any sort. Half a century of strict controls on pistols has ended, perversely, with far greater use of this class of weapon than ever before."

In the USA, we are seeing manifestations of crime never seen before in this society which has always been armed, from school massacres by schoolchildren, to massacres involving disgruntled people and imported terrorists. If there is any decline in US crime rates, the best reason for that, would be because the USA has probably the highest proportion of incarcerated prisoners in the world.

Now, you have misrepresented my position. Which, I might add, unlike yourself, I have clearly stated. My premise is, that crime rates are rising in the western world because of a combination of factors. The main ones are, the importation of unassimilatable and intrinsically violent people into western societies from very violent cultures, the glorification and glamourisation of criminal behaviour by the entertainment media, coupled with a breakdown in marriages leading to too many poorly socialised children, who's primary guide as to how they should behave is a TV set.

Please state your position and be prepared to defend it.

I can only spare one post to you Steelie, because my favourite victim AJ has turned up. (curse the 24 hour rule)

We had a mass shooting the other day in the Lindt cafe in Martin Place, although the perp was shot dead by the police before he could kill any more victims. The perpetrator? An imported criminal from Iran who claimed "asylum" and got it. After easily obtaining Australian citizenship (casting pearls to swine?), he engaged in every kind of criminal activity from welfare fraud, murder, and insulting Australian war dead. And I notice that you wrote "mass shootings" and not "massacres", because there is the little matter of the Childers Hotel fire, where all the perp needed to kill 15 people was a box of matches. Meanwhile, Howard's buyback has not prevented a certain section of people now resident in Sydney, to go on almost nightly shooting sprees, with NSW Police now calling the Muslim area between Auburn and Punchbowl "The Gaza Strip."

I know that Switzerland has had massacres (one of which included military hand grenades). Switzerland, like every other western society, is being influenced by the same factors I have mentioned previously. The question you want to dodge is, why is it happening now, when it had never happened before? If the guns have always been there, what is it about Swiss society which is changing? Your premise seems to be, (as usual, you never say anything you have to defend) that guns cause crime, high suicide rates and massacres. Just ban the guns and everything is hunky dory. That is an easily disprovable premise.

Strict gun laws can be very useful in preventing firearms crimes, but they are tackling the symptoms and not the cause. As in Britain, firearm crime in Australia will continue to climb because we can not stop the importation of illegal weapons into the hands of men who have a compulsive need to own a lethal weapon.

Dear LEGO,

This is starting to get ridiculous.

The gun buyback was designed to stop mass shootings, particularly of the type perpetrated by a crazed lone gunman. No one in their right mind ever thought it would stop someone lighting a fire at a backpackers.

The Lindt Cafe incident was a tragedy but it was hardly a mass shooting of the type described above. Monis was certainly a crazed gunman but thankfully he was only able to kill one of the hostages he held. Police were responsible for killing Monis as well as another of the hostages plus wounding several more including one of their own.

Just think for a moment if Monis had been armed as the Swiss gunman with “a Stgw 90 (Swiss Army assault rifle), a SIG Sauer pistol, a pump-action shotgun, and a revolver”. What if he had been able to get off 91 rounds instead of 1?

Here is a premise for you; our gun laws possibly saved the lives of many more of the Lindt Cafe victims because Monis was unable to readily arm himself in the manner of the Swiss gunman.

What he did have was a sawn off pump action shotgun.

“The pump action shotgun used by Man Haron Monis in the Lindt Cafe siege is one of the most popular guns stolen in Australia and one of the easiest to come by, experts say. A joint federal and state government review into the Martin Place incident revealed there are 250,000 illegal firearms in circulation in Australia, most of them "grey market" guns that were never returned in the national buy-back scheme following the Port Arthur massacre.”
http://www.smh.com.au/national/gunmans-sawnoff-pump-action-shotgun-easy-to-come-by-say-experts-20150223-13mcg7.html#ixzz3hEPoV5J3

Switzerland has about a third of the population of Australia yet has experienced multiple incidents of mass shootings of the type we saw off through John Howard's gun buyback.

I repeat my question, why do you want Australia to return to an annual diet of a mass shooting? It is not something most thinking Australians want but you seem hell bent on trying to defend it.

Why?

Yes, LEGO. Given that I’m actually qualified in this stuff - making you appear foolish every time we discuss it - I’m sure you were just hankering for me to make an appearance. Oh, and your “favourite victim”? Really, now. You’ve been thumped on issues of race (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856&page=0, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16259&page=0), the death penalty (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17092&page=0, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17144&page=0) and now climate change (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17494&page=0).

Sixth time’s the charm, eh?

<<Are crime rates rising in the western world? My source for Australia, is Lucy Sullivan's book "Rising Crime in Australia"...>>

Sullivan is a sociologist, not a criminologist. So her understanding of the causes crime, from a sociological perspective (the perspective that conservatives so often deny (apparently not when it’s convenient though) - yourself included when trying to pin it on intelligence and race alone), are good. But, according to her book, her ability to analyse statistical data - when it comes to determining real figures of crime - are woefully inadequate.

Firstly, Sullivan only uses police and conviction records because that's all the Commonwealth yearbook (her only source) provides. These figures ignore the:

- inconsistent recording rates/methods by police over time and across jurisdictions;
- 'dark figure' of crime revealed by victimisation surveys and offender surveys;
- increased number of acts now classified as a crime (e.g. domestic violence, drink driving);
- increased frequency in reporting of crime due to evolving attitudes towards crime (e.g. rape, child sex abuse, assault);
- increased conviction rates with better technology and methodologies (as even you mentioned).

When discussing juvenile crime rates, Sullivan fails to account for the aging population.

Worse still, Sullivan takes the combined records of police and convictions featuring in the '60s (which she refers to as the 'Rosetta stone' of the data), and assumes that the same discrepancies exist throughout the rest of the data when reconstructing it.

By the way, her data only goes to 1993, not 2000, and in the early '90s there was an unusual spike in crime rates. Crime rates plummeted from there, rising again only slightly around 2006. The long term trend, however, is continuing to decline.

Continued…

…Continued

Which brings me to yet another problem with her data: the fact that Australia didn’t start recording national statistics until 1993. Before then, it was too ad hoc to take much notice of without controlling for the factors listed above.

<<In the USA, we are seeing manifestations of crime never seen before in this society which has always been armed…>>.

Yes, how crime manifests changes over time. Our perceptions of how heinous, or not, it’s becoming is also influenced by the 24-hour news cycle providing us with a continuous bombardment of graphic scenes. All I’m arguing here is that the overall rate is declining.

<<Now, you have misrepresented my position.>>

Please, enlighten me as to how.

<<Which, I might add, unlike yourself, I have clearly stated.>>

My “premise” is that the overall trend in crime is on the decline. How could I have made that any clearer?

I couldn’t have.

What you’re actually asking (as we have been through so many times before (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#276047)) is that I state a position that aligns with one of the limited caricatures that fit your narrative so that you can attack it with ad hominems when I start to poke holes in your case.

<<My premise is, that crime rates are rising in the western world because of a combination of factors.>>

You haven’t demonstrated that they’re rising yet.

<<The main ones are…>>

You haven’t demonstrated any of these (though the third one is legitimate a social problem, but so is forcing unhappily married couples to stay together, and expecting people who fall pregnant to marry). In fact, in the first two threads I linked to above, I had unequivocally debunked the assumption in your first factor regarding “intrinsically violent people”. Given that there is no reliable evidence for your third assumption, I’d be interested to see you link violence in media to crime while controlling for all the other contributing factors.

You’ve been watching too much Cable Guy.

AJPhillips, "..her ability to analyse statistical data - when it comes to determining real figures of crime - are woefully inadequate"

You should be directing your attention to the original article that has led to the discussion at foot, specifically Andrew Leigh's very shaky assertions that:

- The rarity of mass shootings is almost certainly a direct result of the gun buyback; and,

- That the buy-back, which is the political 'Progressive' double-talk for mandatory confiscation, was responsible for a permanent reduction in suicides.

Where is the science that supports those conclusions? Where has the subject 'research' ever been subjected to peer review in any credible science journal?

That is what scientists interested in science do isn't it, subject their method, findings and conclusions to peer scrutiny? After all, a scientist wouldn't ever want to be misleading the public through giving the media sensationalist headlines (and not correcting them) and not the boring but necessary facts?

Hi there A J PHILLIPS...

'...Given I'm actually qualified in this stuff...'? What precisely are you qualified in A J PHILLIPS ? Are you now a ballistic expert, an armourer perhaps, or are you in reality a 'closet' 'Bomb tech' ?

Actually I suspect you are what you've always been, a entry level theoretician ? Mate you've sure got tickets on yourself ? And you wonder why it is, that I'd NEVER seriously bother to discuss P.P.& P. with you, despite all your taunting and goading for me to do so !

I will admit one thing though, you'd certainly 'mesmerize' and 'bewitch' a bunch of working detectives with your collective wisdom and immense knowledge !

If the banning in Australia of certain types of firearms resulted in there being no further massacres why haven't countries that allow these weapons also experienced massacres?

As the commonly available double barrel, ejector shotgun has a higher rate of sustained fire than a pump action shotgun then why hasn't there been a massacre with one of these weapons, if rate of fire is a factor?

Our revered PM has just banned the sale of a particular brand of lever action shotgun, even though it complies with Australian law and legal import licences were granted.
Apparently it has a high rate of fire, but its rate is not higher than the lever action Winchester shotguns that first came on the market in the late 19th Century and were not banned in 1996 and are available on an A class licence.

If rate of fire is to be a criterion then what should be the position on some 'burst fire' firearms that currently do not require a licence or registration at all?

There is one type of firearm that is powerful and can fire either shot or ball and which when unloaded is not a firearm under the various Acts but becomes one when loaded.
There are also very powerful firearms available, in fact laying around in sheds on rural properties, that are not only not considered to be firearms but the last time that I asked the authorities, they had never heard of them.

o sung wu,

I have been meaning to say to you that it must be galling for police to have politicians claim credit for any short-term reduction in offences, when it was most likely the equally short-term increase in police resources that was actually responsible.

In this case it is a Labor politician exhibiting the colossal, bare-faced effrontery and moralising BS, and coincidentally at a time where his leader is under scrutiny along with the union bosses that Labor and the Greens cozy up with.

Nothing is being said about the limitations police face, including the running commentary by leftists and the Green Left in particular that seldges and demonise police. For example, the Labor and Greens vowed before the recent Queensland election to knobble the police initiatives that proved so success in setting the violent, drug-dealing outlaw bikies on their heels in that State.

Also the devious efforts to blame-shift the gun and violence crimes of such mongrels onto the thousands of good, law-abiding citizens instead.

All to conceal the rather obvious unwillingness of the politicians themselves to resource the police appropriately and enable lasting full cooperation between all agencies, State and federal, whose responsibility it is to protect the public, especially where drugs are concerned. Illicit drugs make millions annually in Asutralia and therein lies some problems.

Your premise appears to be, that Lucy Sullivan is unable to understand statistics on any subject or make inferences as to their cause, because she is a sociologist. Naaah, I don't accept that.

Australia has recorded crime statistics which measured the rise of violent crime in Australia for over 100 years. Had they showed that crime was not rising, one presumes that you would not be thinking up lame excuses as to why they could be inaccurate. Perhaps you could get your socialist friends to "homogenise" the raw data to conform to your humanitarian ideology, like the climate scientists did for the raw climate figures?

Sullivan did discuss juvenile crime with accompanying graphs on page 33-36. Perhaps your edition was the "homogenised" version?

Sullivan's book showed graphs for court conviction rates for homicide, murder, rape, robbery, assault and property crimes, all of them showing a "J" curve with rates falling until after WW2, rising steadily after, and increasing upwards in increasing increments after the seventies. If they have suddenly fallen, they must have bounced off the ceiling. Although, since even the Canberra based Australian Institute of Criminology claims that ethnic related crime is a figment of the public's imagination, then if it was the AIC who posted up the new figures, I would regard them with suspicion and deep mistrust.

And you are saying that crime in the western world is not rising? Gee, 3000 murdered in one go in New York by your Muslim friends. Bombings in London and Madrid. So many rapes by your Muslim friends in Sweden that according to one Youtube website, Swedish women are dying their hair black. 70 Australian girls gang raped by your muzzie mates in 2000. School massacres by schoolchildren. Juvenile homicide rate in the USA the fastest growing crime statistic. Nightly shootings in the Muslim areas of Sydney now becoming routine. Thousands of cars being burned in France, and now Sweden. So many new crimes we have to think up new names for them. Carjacking, ram raids, drive by, tagging, granny bashing, purse snatching, "Islamist" terrorism, "honour killings", and home invasions.

G'day the ONTHEBEACH...

Yes you're quite right, coppers have to do their job in spite of the rhetoric spewing forth from politicians. One of my old bosses firmly believed, successfully deciphering crime per se was all subject to a political imperative . It wouldn't matter whether you're an axe murderer, provide there was no political backlash, the pollies couldn't careless. However, if there was a political dimension and some good mileage to be gained, they'd throw all the resources available, often to the exclusion of everything else.

The greatest (political) hot potato to my mind, was gaols. Most political parties were content to leave them be, provided that portfolio remained quiet. A case of, seen but not heard.

Concerning the F/A debate, most of my former colleagues enjoy sports shooting themselves. They too were subject to the same F/A laws everyone else was required to observe. The only difference, if a copper were to be caught in some minor F/A violation, he'd most likely do his job, as well as whatever punishment the Court might impose ?

With such a high public profile, any serious incident involving a F/A, generally precipitated politicians to go off 'half-cocked', and their very first 'frenetic' response is to immediately tighten the F/A's legislation ! And in so doing, to further impose even more stringent directives on the legitimate shooter. And as you can imagine, all that achieved, was to alienate the licensee even more so, from police and authorities, and that's regrettable.

In my own experience (I'm unable to officially confirm it across the Stat?), most serious crime in which I've been involved, is perpetrated by 'unlicensed' people with 'unlicensed' F/A's. Granted not in all cases, but certainly the majority.

onthebeach,

All valid questions, I'm just not that passionate about the topic, sorry. I only dropped by because I saw an old argument that really grinds my gears. Sorry, it's not my intention to derail the thread.

o sung wu,

Usually when I evoke an emotional response like that from someone, I assume that I must be on the money. But when the person openly admits that they refuse to engage with my arguments, I think it's a given. It becomes particularly obvious with you because you seem to take the discrediting of the arguments of even just those with whom you ideologically identify as a personal attack on yourself.

That's really odd.

You sound annoyed; as if you didn't get a bite from me that you were looking for out of your post to LEGO, with dubious claims that I have already dealt with in the past. But despite your unfounded claims of my alleged taunting and goading, I left you alone because I don't want to sound like a broken record and my responses to you on criminal justice issues really upset you.

If you ever feel like contributing with more than just personal abuse, then, by all means, explain how - through your practical experience - you know that I'm wrong here, as you have subtly implied. I won't hold my breath, however. I have made similar requests in the past and your only response is to re-state your intention to keep it to personal attacks only.

LEGO,

Just when I had finished discussing the caricature-like positions/premises that you try to guess out of your opponents, you provide us with this corker...

<<Your premise appears to be, that Lucy Sullivan is unable to understand statistics on any subject or make inferences as to their cause, because she is a sociologist. Naaah, I don't accept that.>>

Naaah, I wouldn’t either.

Is it any wonder you refuse to respond with quotes? You could never misconstrue what others said if you did.

<<Australia has recorded crime statistics...>>

Again, not nationally until 1993. But moving on...

Continued…

...Continued

<<...which measured the rise of violent crime in Australia for over 100 years.>>

So now it’s been rising for 100 years?! Before it was just the '60s. Please show me figures that control for all the factors I mentioned earlier.

<<Had they showed that crime was not rising, one presumes that you would not be thinking up lame excuses as to why they could be inaccurate.>>

Pretty big assumption there. Could you at least explain why they're lame? How, for example, is recording instances of child sex abuse "lame"?

By the way, I see no reason for academics to feel the need to push the line that things are generally getting better, any more than I see the need for you conservatives to claim the world's going to pot. Christians at least have an excuse: it's predicted in the Bible.

I suppose if academics claimed that the world was going to pot, you conservatives would accuse them of just wanting to ride a gravy train of mediocre pay by predicting doom and gloom.

They can't win. You guys will see conspiracy in everything.

<<Perhaps you could get your socialist friends to "homogenise" the raw data to conform to your humanitarian ideology…>>

You still haven't demonstrated any wrongdoing with regards to homogenisation on that other thread.

<<Sullivan's book showed graphs for...>>

Yeah, I've already dealt with Sullivan's data. Find something new.

<<...Australian Institute of Criminology claims that ethnic related crime is a figment of the public's imagination...>>

No, they don’t. I'll give you a sticker if you can properly state what it is here that you're misconstruing.

<<Gee, 3000 murdered in one go in New York...>>

That's like the climate change denialist telling the climatologist that it was really cold the other day. It's long-term trends that matter.

As for all your other scary incidences, many horrible things happened in the past too. We just didn't have the same levels of media coverage, nor the same levels of condemnation of it.

Ah, the good ol' days. They were grand, weren't they? At least for us white heterosexual males, anyway.

Dear o sung wu,

You wrote;

“In my own experience (I'm unable to officially confirm it across the Stat?), most serious crime in which I've been involved, is perpetrated by 'unlicensed' people with 'unlicensed' F/A's.”

My thoughts went to deliberating what exactly was Australia's 'most serious crime' and arguably it would have to have been the Port Arthur Massacre, unless of course you could furnish us with an alternative.

And you are correct Bryant did not hold a gun licence. Yet he was able to purchase his weapons from a licenced gun dealer, one Terry Hill from Guns and Ammo.

You indicated that you thought politicians tightening gun laws after such a serious incident was going off 'half cocked'. In my mind if they had sat on their hands then that would have been a far greater crime. Do you really think we should have just gone on like before?

Hi Steelie. I am prepared to fall foul of the 24 hour post rule to reply to your double post to me.

The reason for the gun buyback, according to John Howard himself, was that it was "to make Australia a safer place." That was Howard's stated intent, and it has not worked. It is true that firearm related massacres have almost ceased, and it could be fair to suggest that the gun buyback therefore worked. But I think that that is wrong for two reasons. The first is, that those men the least likely to commit a massacre were the ones who handed their firearms in. Of the many different personality types of riflemen who will never surrender their weapons, one demographic would be the very type who would commit massacres.

Secondly, a plausible reason why non politically motivated firearm massacres in Australia and overseas have reduced, may not be related to firearm availability at all. Remember that I advocate that the entertainment media is responsible for producing violent action movies that are engineered to appeal to socially awkward young men who harbour grudges against authority. These young men are being conditioned by the media to think that real Men are violent men who mass murder the people who they hold a grudge against, and they will win the admiration of the public by doing so.

This vulnerable demographic is being taught by the entertainment media that inflicting revenge is what Real Men do, and that extremely violent men are sexually attractive to fabulously attractive young women.

In other words, most men who commit massacres do so to enhance their self esteem as Real Men who die like samurai. But Martin Bryant was unique in that he was actually captured. And what a miserable specimen of humanity he turned out to be. I submit, that the real reason why such massacres have not repeated themselves, is that the very demographic most prone to this behaviour are very concerned with fragile self image, and they do not want to be associated with a pitiful dumbass like Bryant.

Hi AJ.

Let me start by saying how pleased I am with your last disjointed and tossed together post. I see that you are up to your old tricks of never plainly stating an reasoned argument which you are prepared to defend. Just make the other guy do all the work and make him verify everything. Do the old ABC interviewers trick of focussing upon some salient point the other guy said and squeeze as much mileage out of it as you can. Obfuscate, muddy the water, cast doubt, and deny, deny, deny. It is quite effective for a while. But sooner or later an impartial observer figures out that you are not debating, you are stifling debate.

You focussed upon Lucy Sullivan and suggested that sociologists can't analyse crime statistics because they are not a criminologists. That is like saying that geologists can't analyse climate statistics because they are not climate scientists. News flash. Most people can grasp simple statistics and graphs. We know what is going on when Lucy wrote on page 14 of her book, that if convictions for robbery remained stable until the early sixties, then quadrupled between 1964 and 1971/2, and increased by a factor of 14 between 1964 and 1993, then that means the crime of robbery alone is significantly increasing. Only university trained criminologists like yourself who's brains have been debilitated by the corrosive effects of socialist humanitarian ideology, and who use the three monkey approach to data analysis, can never see the self evident reality. Or will admit that anything which contravenes to holy orthodoxy could be wanting.

If you are suggesting that "the old days" were no better than today, then you could probably get away with saying that rubbish to the younger generation. The older generation would just laugh at you. When I once told a group of lefty teachers that I used to walk into classrooms as a student carrying a Lee Enfield .303, some of them indignantly refused to believe it.

Here's another one for the gun control minded to have a think about.

Over 100 years ago Edward Moore invented an electrical centrifugal 'silent' machine gun that was tested by the US but was not adopted due largely to its being somewhat cumbersome and inaccurate.

100 years on and the possibilities are much better and mechanical accelerator guns are quite easy to make.

The Coil Gun is in development ffrom the lowly backyard workshop to the realms of big business and even space launch.

"Small coilguns are recreationally made by hobbyists, typically up to several joules to tens of joules projectile energy (the latter comparable muzzle energy to a typical air gun and an order of magnitude less than a firearm) while ranging from under one percent to several percent efficiency."
That's so far!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coilgun

The future of gun control looks rocky.

Ice bullets, centrifugal guns, coilguns?

Mate, I'm done. You're too much.

<according to John Howard himself, [the mandatory confiscation from lawful, licensed owners] was .. "to make Australia a safer place.">

The persistent allegation is that George 'Dubya' Bush's 'Man of Steel' John Howard, aka 'The Lying Rodent' (for his shabby treatment of lawful firearms licensed Aussies), was aimed at 'gun control' (in lieu of risk identification and measured treatments!) by his wife, the real power behind PM Howard.

Howard exasperated LNP ministers and experts with his intransigence in implementing wasteful, discredited political stunts as:

- the 'Steal Back', the mandatory confiscation from lawful owners;

- the 'White Elephant' gun registry, that other countries including Canada found a complete waste of resources;

- the hideous mountain of worthless bureaucratic paperwork; and,

- the close monitoring of respectable, licensed, CRIME-AVERSE citizens that occupy trained police to this day.

Way to go JWH, have police monitoring the licensed pillars of society in lieu of the thugs with the illegal guns, ie organised crime and the drug gangs.

What JWH never accepted, the inconvenient truth, is that offenders do not get their guns from legitimate sources, they don't go to police to get refused for a license (their modus operandi is to break laws!) and they do not register their guns.

In short, JWH's 'gun control' was ill-directed from tors. Political populism and 'gun control' slurs against lawful owners that took attention away from deficiencies in government policy, planning and administration that likely would have been laid bare by any Commission into Port Arthur slaughter. That is, had JWH NOT rushed to prevent such a review. For starters, through differing political idealism, governments of both conservative and left persuasion had sold off mental health and rehabilitation assets, putting all responsibility on their carers. -Arguably, it is why low IQ and disturbed individuals figure prominently in police shootings.

The Port Arthur murderer, his marginal IQ, irrational beliefs etc were known to authorities prior. He unlawfully obtained a restricted gun previously surrendered to police. There is NOTHING in the Howard-inspired 'gun control' that might stop him today. A Royal Commission was needed, JWH!

LEGO,

There's a heck of a lot of mere speculation that you offer up there as evidence.

<<I advocate that the entertainment media is responsible for producing violent action movies that are engineered to appeal to socially awkward young men who harbour grudges against authority.>>

I'm pretty sure the entertainment industry is savvy enough with their marketing strategies to want to gear their action movies to a bigger portion of the population than a few loners sitting somewhere on the autism spectrum. Our do you honestly think they're out to trigger as many massacres as they possibly can?

<<These young men are being conditioned by the media to think that real Men are violent men who mass murder the people who they hold a grudge against...>>

Such as? The only two I can think of is The Crow and The Punisher, and both are based on comic books written decades before them.

Most action movies convey the message that the good guys always win, and that crime doesn't pay.

Your paranoia with regards to the entertainment industry sounds pathological.

<<I submit, that the real reason why such massacres have not repeated themselves, is that the very demographic most prone to this behaviour are very concerned with fragile self image, and they do not want to be associated with a pitiful dumbass like Bryant.>>

Gawd, so now we're a psychologist. That’s a pretty broad generalisation.

I find it odd that someone - whose beliefs about race are so similar to the beliefs of those who've spawned so much death and destruction as a result of them - is worried about the effects of violence in media.

It reminds me of the time I heard that Hitler was a vegetarian because he couldn't stand the thought of killing animals.

<<Let me start by saying how pleased I am with your last disjointed and tossed together post.>>

My attempt to address every one of your uninformed claims may have given my post a chaotic look, but there was nothing “disjointed” about it.

Continued…

...Continued

<<I see that you are up to your old tricks of never plainly stating an reasoned argument which you are prepared to defend.>>

Oh, but I have. Numerous times. I’ve even defended them against your misrepresentations and drawn your attention back to them when you’ve pretended that nothing was said. Simply scroll up and take a look. The “impartial observer” knows to do that.

<<Just make the other guy do all the work and make him verify everything.>>

If you are make a claim, then I am entitled to request evidence for it. It's called 'the burden of proof'. Zeus knows I’ve provided plenty of links in the past to support my arguments for you to not look at.

<<Obfuscate, muddy the water, cast doubt, and deny, deny, deny.>>

Yeah, good luck finding an example of that.

<<You focussed upon Lucy Sullivan...>>

No, I focused on her data.

<<...and suggested that sociologists can't analyse crime statistics because they are not a criminologists.>>

They can try, but they’re unlikely do as good a job of it. Just as a heart surgeon is not going to be able to perform brain surgery as well as a brain surgeon - despite both being doctors.

<<News flash. Most people can grasp simple statistics and graphs.>>

Of course. Apparently they don't always know what factors they need to control for though.

<<We know what is going on when Lucy wrote on page 14 of her book…>>

Yeah, I’ve already addressed her data. Come up with something that negates what I said and I’ll reply.

<<If you are suggesting that "the old days" were no better than today…>>

That depends on one’s idea of “better”. How does one measure “better”? Crime statistics at least suggest things are improving. Certainly since 1993 when the data became more reliable.The world is less violent now than it has ever been before. Stephen Pinker wrote a well-researched book on that. If you consider lynchings, slavery, segregation, racism, homophobia, the oppression of women, world wars, genocide, and murderous despots a good thing, then I guess we are sliding backwards.

There is reason to believe that the sensationalist treatment of multiple murderers by the media that guarantees world-wide public notoriety, follow-up exposure too, could be encouraging possible offenders to see multiple killing, in this case with a firearm, as the very best way, the Gold Standard if you will, for getting attention.

Not all would-be mass murderers are intending suicides, but I rather suspect that many of the young, intelligent male offenders were seeking a way of getting limelight and forcing 'authority', 'government' and the 'public' who have not previously bent to their personal opinion, to take notice of them. It was that way with the young, intelligent Evan Pederick, the Hilton Hotel bomber, who had enjoyed a comfy life and a securejob, but was forever bent on making authority and everyone else bow to his opinion of what he thought was necessary and 'right'.

The cluster effect has been well studied in the case of suicides, but could apply more broadly.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201208/when-suicides-come-in-clusters

http://www.livescience.com/51429-mass-shootings-are-contagious.html

The research of the Labor Party politician who posted the subject OLO article does not appear to have considered the apparent random clustering of mass homicides in Australia in a relatively short period. Relatively quiet before and after the cluster, meaning low incidence not complete absence of incidents. Why is the question, although it could be as simple as randomness.

That being the case, the conclusion that Howard stopped mass murder must be fatally flawed.

That leaves the only reasonable conclusion that there is no compelling evidence whatsoever of any positive effect on mass homicide that is due to the Howard-inspired 'gun control' and the State exercised mandatory confiscations of their property (under threat of State armed force and incarceration!) from lawful, licensed owners.

The Howard-inspired 'gun control' does however provide case examples of propaganda, political cynicism, the downside of party politics, too much power vested in the Parliamentary Executive and lastly but certainly not least, a world class example (sic) of a very HUGE, awe-inspiring(sic) amount of public money WASTED. Taxpayers' money that could have been put to use elsewhere, perhaps mental health?

STEELEREDUX...

I'm unaware of the essential facts touching on Martin BRYANT other than what was in the media. Though prima facie, I'd have to agree, the enormity of Port Arthur - Australia has not seen the likes of it before, and hopefully never ever see it again.

In terms of individual criminals, the most 'dangerous' and I'm not sure what yardstick one might use to determine 'dangerous' ? But in my experience anyway, was/is Archie Beattie McCAFFERTY a killer of extraordinary malevolence and venom towards me and his other potential victims. When younger I could go the biff, (no false hubris either, just a fact) and no doubt I could handle Archie with reasonable ease ?

Nevertheless! I was very wary of him, and yes I'll admit even fearful of the man. Archie's presence somehow inculcated a deep seated dread in everyone (police) who had to deal with him, and I was Case Officer ! Whether one could juxtapose the degree of criminality between Martin BRYANT and Archie McC. I'm not sure ? The only professional measure, would need to come from an experienced forensic Psychiatrist.

Personally, I'd prefer to deal (physically) with half a dozen BRYANT'S, then one McCAFFERTY ? And I know very little of the former ?

Did the government (PM John HOWARD) respond correctly in the wake of Port Arthur ? In my opinion only; with the buy back; yes. With the imposition of mandatory F/A and personal licencing; again yes. With the selection and catagories of F/A's that were subsequently prohibited or heavily restricted; clearly No !

Because the government of the day were being pressured to 'quickly and dramatically' overhaul the F/A's legislation, I believe some of those individuals who were asked to furnish 'expert' advice to government, were clearly erroneous with that advice ? I did know a couple of them, and while their hearts were in the right place, some of their advice unfortunately, was clearly flawed ?

I know that I should not give my opponents debating tips AJ, but simply cutting and pasting quotes from me, and dismissing them with sneery one liners, is hardly a reasoned argument. You would be better off submitting paragraphs consisting of two or more sentences, because it would make you seem knowledgeable. Your tactics at the moment, mark you indelibly to the audience as a spoiler, who resorts to poor sarcasm as a way to mask the fact that he can not align his scattered thoughts together into a cohesive argument.

And if you wish to continue claiming that crime is not rising, please go right ahead. The older generation will know straight away that you are a moron, while the younger generation, who have been boiled in rising crime like frogs, will at least suspect that your premise is nonsense. Once your credibility is shot, you have lost the debate.

My premise is, that the tide of rising crime throughout the western world is caused primarily by three factors. The first is, the importation of people from very violent ethnic and religious groups, who I think are genetically, or at very least culturally, disproportionately prone to violent behaviour. That certain ethnicities and cultures are disproportionately represented in serious crime, is hardly deniable. But I hope that you are stupid enough to deny it.

The next two reasons are related. That is, that the entertainment industry is glamourising violence, criminal behaviour, and drug abuse to our most vulnerable demographics. If you think that the media can not influence behaviour, then you must think it should be OK for alcohol producers and cigarette manufacturers to advertise in children's magazines. Oddly enough, although we have strict controls on the promotion of these legal wares in the media, we have no controls on pop stars and role model movie stars promoting criminal behaviour and drug abuse on screen.

The strange exemption that the movie industry has when promoting anti social values, has been recognised by advertisers. Movie stars now routinely smoke in "incidental" smoking scenes, much to the fury of anti smoking campaigners.

A J PHILLIPS...

What exactly do you know about F/A crimes ? Those matters which are specifically enjoined to this Topic ? Not some vague data, that you've teased from some dusty tome inadvertently filed on the wrong shelf amongst 'fiduciary duties of criminologists' ?

Your own opinion and views please, your own suggestion(s) - not an extract from some long forgotten academic who's never seen a gun, let alone observed the damage or the benefit from discharging a gun ? Show this bigoted, intolerant and partisan old copper his wrong ? Show us all, your stuff there A J PHILLIPS ?

"Ice bullets, centrifugal guns, coilguns?

Mate, I'm done. You're too much"

Can't help keeping myself up to date!

3D printed guns are already making the gun control freaks quake in their fancy footware.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_printed_firearms
for a bit on the latest technology.

Fifty years ago I saw a petrol driven machine gun fired on the Holdsworthy Military Range (NSW). It was a linear accelerator using a chain saw as the accelerator; estimated muzzle velocity was 1,500 ft/sec. The steel projectiles were spitzer point approx, 1 inch in length.

LEGO,

You’ve used the “sneery one-liners” argument before (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856&page=0) and it didn’t work then, so what makes you think it will work this time? I’ll tell ya what. How about you give me an example of where I don’t respond to what you’ve actually said, and I’ll walk away now with my tail between my legs. Of course, we know you won’t, because you can’t. You’ve never been able to.

<<You would be better off submitting paragraphs consisting of two or more sentences, because it would make you seem knowledgeable.>>

I do. The first time. There’s no need to the second, third, fourth, or fifth time when I can refer back to an old response you've ignored.

<<…if you wish to continue claiming that crime is not rising, please go right ahead. The older generation will know straight away that you are a moron…>>

Only those who are not aware of the changes in media reporting and the additional coverage that technology enables, along with the factors I mentioned earlier, of course.

<<My premise is, that the tide of rising crime throughout the western world is caused primarily by…>>

Yeah, I already addressed those here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310194, here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310115, here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310290, and, to a lesser extent, here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310247. That you choose to ignore me and press on regardless is not my problem.

There’s your idea of a “sneery one-liner”. You need some new material.

o sung wu,

That’s a pretty broad question. What about firearm crimes do you want to know? From a psychological and sociological perspective their causes are near identical. From a crime theory perspective (particularly a routine activities theory perspective) firearms make confrontation and fatalities more likely because the perpetrator doesn’t need to consider their physical strength.

By the way, I speak from well-established theories. If you have anything to suggest otherwise, beyond your own creative descriptions and uninformed opinions of them, then I’d love to hear it.

As for my opinion on the gun control issue. Intuitively, I’d say it’s a good thing. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to expose you as an intolerant bigot though.

I am an experienced debater AJ, and I know how to handle hecklers like you. I once thought that people with opposing views could be swayed by reasoned argument. All I had to do was keep talking sense and sooner or later, cracks would start to appear in my opponents logic, which even they could not ignore. But then I realised that some people desperately do not want to change their opinion. They are prepared to do anything to avoid seeing that which they most definitely do not want to see. So, we are both now playing to our audience. You are persisting with you heckling style, which is OK with me. I know that submitting reasoned arguments is more effective.

The premise which you are implying, because you are too frightened to state plainly state a premise you will have to defend, is that rising crime in Australia is a figment of the public's imagination. It is caused by increased media publicity. It was, however, a premise you did not support with an argument. My premise is that crime in Australia is rising, and I have Lucy Sullivan's book full of statistics and graphs with which I can quote. Similarly, the older generation know that what you are saying is complete BS.

We know that when we were young, firearms were sold everywhere and they were easy to obtain. But there were no massacres. No housing estates like "the Bronx" in Fairfield, where ambulance officers and fire crews refused to enter, for fear of being pelted with rocks and bottles by teenaged hooligans. Schools did not have permanent security guards to protect teachers. Mobile security patrols did not follow buses in certain parts of Sydney to prevent attacks by hooligans. In one attack, a female driver was raped. Police stations and churches were not being shot up. There were no nightly shootings in the area between Auburn and Punchbowl. Taxi drivers were not protected by plexiglass screens. Off duty police like Constable McCarty were not ambushed and murdered by ethnic gangs armed with machetes. Kids did not kill kids

John Howard is the father of the Australian Gun Lobby, were it not for him the Shooter's and Fisher's Party and other groups would not exist.
He also has the distinction of being the only Australian politician to have a round of ammunition named in his honour, the .38JWH.
This round replaces the venerable .45 Colt semi-automatic pistol round which was banned when legal pistol calibres were reduced to .38.
This was a prime example of a stupid and useless law; in my own case I had to sell my .45 calibre revolver and I then bought one of the same make and model in .357 Magnum, a much more powerful pistol.

The aim of the legislation was to limit the power of available pistols, in this it failed miserably, yet it is still on the books.
The .38JWH is a prime example as it that it replaced.

John Howard was also only the second PM to lose his seat whilst still in office, the number of votes by which he lost was smaller than the number of voters in his electorate who said that they intended to change their vote because of the gun laws.

Funny that.

LEGO,

So now I'm just a heckler? Convenient, isn't it? You avoid quoting others at all costs (and when you do, you re-word it), so that you can misconstrue what they say and respond to that instead. And that's when you bother to respond to an argument at all. Then you repeat your old discredited claims as if nothing was said or asked in response to them. Then, when someone uses humour to convey the absurdity of the situation, you accuse them of heckling or using “sneery on-liners”.

It’s thoroughly dishonest, but I don’t think you even realise you do it.

No-one like discussion with you, LEGO. So much so that when you come across someone with a bit more patience, like myself, you have no idea what's going on and therefore assume that they must be using "tricks".

<<The premise which you are implying, ... is that rising crime in Australia is a figment of the public's imagination.>>

Implying? No, I thought I'd stated that clearly enough.

<<It was, however, a premise you did not support with an argument.>>

Yes, I did. (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310193, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310247, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310318)

<<...and I have Lucy Sullivan's book full of statistics and graphs with which I can quote.>>

Yes, and you still haven’t negated any of my points highlighting the problems in her data.

<<Similarly, the older generation know that what you are saying is complete BS.>>

Yes, and I’m sure they were all there busy accounting for the dark figure of crime and acts that were not yet considered crimes.

There was still a heap of shooting massacres in America (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States), you just didn’t hear about them all. In Australia, there was the Hope Forest massacre and the Whiskey Au Go Go arson in the early seventies in Australia.

As for your list of scary facts, you’re taking a very narrow view of what constitutes crime (and assaults are up, after all). Have you bothered to factor in white collar crime? Here’s some US stats for you http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-12-25/news/ct-oped-1225-chapman-20111225_1_golden-age-crime-and-property-crime-homicide-rate.

Also, I’ve only claimed a decrease since the ‘70s. However, the world is still less violent overall.

AJ Philips, "As for my opinion on the gun control issue. Intuitively, I’d say it’s a good thing."

More correctly you should be calling that psychological bias in decision-making. There is already an abundance of fundamental attribution error and confirmation bias already apparent in the OP (article) without adding to it.

The goal of 'Gun control'(sic) is the complete confiscation and banning of the possession and use of firearms for all but the State. That is totalitarianism. It is most often promoted by leftists, who believe in State control, a Big State and are always flirting with bans and unnecessary or over-regulation. They always presume to know what is best for others and it is their way or the highway.

'Gun control' activists deliberately conflate the good guys, the many thousands of responsible licensed firearms owners (many of whom have had licences for longer than most here have been alive) with the small proportion of nasty types and their unlawful activities - criminals, almost invariably drug-dealing organised criminal gangs.

That is to negatively stereotype good responsible citizens as 'red necks' and worse, to poison the well against them and deny them their freedom and rights as citizens. That is also to pretend that those fine upright citizens have no interest in crime prevention, which is laughable.

Who better to advise government on the risk-assessment, risk management and evidence-based regulation affecting firearms than the responsible, law-abiding citizens who have held licences for years?

Who worse to take advice from than the highly secretive 'gun control' activists who refuse to even give the basic details that any reputable association would give as a usual course, eg., sources of their support and money and political and other links domestically and overseas?

Australians would rightly have reservations about secret-squirrel political lobbyists who are alleged to receive sponsorship from by a shady overseas billionaire currency dealer and have similarly undisclosed political links in Australia.

Hi there LEGO...

Let me share something with you, about our pompous, hauteur and affected little friend, A J PHILLIPS. He's admitted to me, ad nauseam, '...I speak from well-established theories...' ? There lies his trouble. Everything that emanates from the lads mouth is theory. To be hoped he matures sufficiently, to offer up, an original thought of his own ?

Something you can take to the bank LEGO - whenever you're dealing with a human being, you learn their responses, under stress, are unique and distinctive. No individual, will react exactly the same as another, and in no way could any one person be described as conceptually 'theory based'? Sure you can cumulate 'genres'. However police generally work in the singular.

A simple example; a routine NFA (Next of kin fatal advisory) - Some people react quite predictably when you first tell them, they often cry, they sob, often disbelieve you ? Many claim we've made a mistake ? While others say very little, just offer a cup of coffee and a simply thank you, and close the front door. You just don't known nor can you pick it. While it's true, when you join the job, they teach you some basic strategies, in reality you just learn to 'wing it' as it were ?

Bottom line LEGO, whenever you deal with a human being you quickly learn they're can be the unpredictable, uncertain, and erratic, whenever they're confronted by something unexpected ? The presence of police at their private dwelling or place if work, is still a serious affront to most people's sensibilities and more often, unwelcome.

Theory alone, can't equip you to safely and effectively deal with people with differing levels of agitation and tenseness. A sound theory base, can be an elementary template in some circumstances.

For this reason, I believe our little friend A J PHILLIPS gets his 'knickers all twisted' because he wants to be taken seriously, and NOT suffer a rebuff or a dismissal from others who find much of what he says as patent nonsense.

onthebeach,

Relax. o sung wu simply asked me for an opinion not based on any reasoning, so I gave him one. It was not meant to be a reasoned stance.

o sung wu,

Clearly you are a highly unstable person with some serious emotional issues. Probably the result of a lifetime on the job.

You take a step back from the offensive to ask two reasonably polite questions, then, after receiving a polite answer, you launch another personal attack. Only this time, you are too cowardly to address it to me. You also show signs of paranoia with an unfounded description of me and talk of ‘people like me’.

<<He's admitted to me, ad nauseam, '...I speak from well-established theories...' ?>>

“Ad nausem”? When have I said that before, let alone repetitively?

And “admitted”? You make it sound like it’s something shameful that needs to be dragged out of me. The ignorance you display next reveals why…

<<There lies his trouble. Everything that emanates from the lads mouth is theory.>>

In science, a theory is well-establish and confirmed explanation for something (so to that extent, my “well-established theories” was a pleonasm), not just some dreamt-up musing as it is in the more colloquial sense.

<<…our little friend A J PHILLIPS gets his 'knickers all twisted' because he wants to be taken seriously...>>

Hey, I’ve been perfectly calm here. The only signs of stress have come from LEGO and his referring to my “Muslim friends”. But you ignore that. The only reason I mentioned my qualifications earlier is because LEGO’s display of confidence was unusual given that I wasn’t even an expert on the last topic we discussed and he still failed.

I’m sorry this is difficult for you to watch, o sung wu. If interpreting my discussion with LEGO as a desire on my behalf to big-note myself or have others take me seriously - or if interpreting my tone as showing signs of stress - works as a coping mechanism, then you go for it. But you have no right to come here and abuse others.

You need help.

Thank you A J PHILLIPS, indeed I do need help, as with nearly hundred retired (mainly) detectives who've had to take their previous vocation well into their precious retirement time ? Because there's been a hitherto, unholy collaboration, between DPP and Defence Counsel, having Court (Trials) being listed (intrudingly), almost sixteen months into some members retirement ? The first near sensible thing you've unwittingly uttered A J PHILLIPS ?

A J Philips,

Thank you for your reply.

o sung wu, "The presence of police at their private dwelling or place if work, is still a serious affront to most people's sensibilities and more often, unwelcome"

Yes and every single one of the good, reputable citizens with firearms licences must accept regular, random inspections and interrogations in their place of residence.

You would not be surprised that the police with firearms licences and there are many, dislike it as an affront as well. After all, criminals don't have to put up with that cr@p without good cause being shown why the interest. Yet it is the criminals who have the illegal guns and for unlawful purposes of course.

Imagine Tom (or his wife), a pillar of society who has been duly licensed, owned and used firearms for forty plus years being asked by neighbours why the fully marked police car and long police visit. Later that day a caring neighbour, Wendy, appears to provide womanly support while enquiring diplomatically, "Hey Linda, don't like to ask but we are worried about you and the family. To be honest, Anne across the street saw the police too. Is there anything wrong? Are things OK between Tom and you, because you can always come over to us for a while".

So, what is the right reply that assuages concern and maintains privacy?

Police I know are very annoyed that they are required to add useless, annoying inspections at the homes of ordinary law-abiding people who have done nothing wrong and likely never would and it is all on the top of the paperwork and police 'service' obligations. They do NOT have that time to waste and they are rightly concerned that they are being made to interview and inspect at the homes of people they know to be respectable and law-abiding.

Surely, though, it is a good thing that we have a National Firearms Agreement and that the laws are the same across the nation?

If we didn't have National Laws then stupid things could be law; say in Western Australia it could be an offence to have a pencil with a fired, inert, absolutely harmless brass cartridge case stuck over the end of a pencil and in the other States it would be quite OK to have a pencil so adorned.

Now isn't it good that that is not the case.

It would be ludicrous if one had to have a firearm's licence to buy percussion caps for an 1840 muzzle-loading shotgun at a gun shop but no licence was required to legally buy percussion caps at another shop in the same street in the same town.

Would it not be even more ludicrous if one could buy blank rim-fire cartridges at another store without a licence but need a licence to buy them from a gun shop?

I am happy that such anomalies are not around 19 years after the new, sane laws were introduced.

But maybe I dream and such stupidities are real and help to make Australia a safer place.

Hi ONTHEBEACH...

Once again you've hit the proverbial nail right on it's head ! If F/A's inspections 'must' occur, surely that particular task could be more properly consigned to an 'inspectorate' or some such body. If a householder is not cooperative or obstructive, then let the coppers carry out the inspection complete with a marked car etc.

Any irregularities, any nonsense during the process of an inspection, OK, then hand it to the coppers, surely these irregular inspections could form part of an (informal) exchange of information, or a general Q & A perhaps, all undertaken in a convivial atmosphere over a coffee or two. I believe 98% of all licenced shooters will eagerly cooperate with the authorities, because it's in their own interests to do so.

Licensee's for the most part, are generally law abiding people. Therefore it's for this reason, they wouldn't wish to run the risk of endangering their sport by making life even more difficult for themselves by not co-operating or obstructing the inspectorate doing their task ? Why would they, if they've complied with their legal responsibilities ? Therefore, there's no need for the coppers, nor a marked vehicle and certainly no (embarrassing) uniforms ! It's a win win all around, therefore everyone should be happy ?

Sooling police onto the reputable, law-abiding citizens with licences is rather missing the point, one would think.

Double post, AJ. I was too tired to play last night.

If I had more space than 350 words a post, I would be very happy to quote entire passages of my opponents verbatum. Because if I do not include the previous or following sentences, I get accused by dishonest debaters like yourself, of taking quotes out of context. I know that you are playing to the audience, because you made the same accusation on the "climate change " debate. You said that the quote from me, that Flannery had said that "the dams would never fill again", was wrong, even though you knew it was right. They may not have been Flannery's exact words, but there was no change in their meaning, and you knew it. The object was, to run me around on a wild goose chase researching the exact quote, to derail my line of reasoning. Your intent was to delay and to obfuscate. I won't fall for that trick again.

I already knew that you were not prepared to debate honestly, because of our encounter on a racism topic. Either races are equal, or they are not. Your tactic there, was to oppose the concept that races were unequal, while simultaneously refusing to defend the concept that they were equal. This puts you in the position of always demanding that your opponent provide proof and come up with reasoned arguments, while you just sit back and heckle.

I have met "debaters" like yourself before, and they drove me crazy until I figured out what they were doing. But this encouraged me. I realised then, that this indicated that I was dealing with people who knew that they were wrong, but who were desperate to hide the truth. It is easier for me, because all I have to do is debate honestly. While my opponents can only imply their position, present no arguments themselves, and have to keep coming up with new ways to throw me off the track.

Continued

Continued

And you are right, there are a lot of people here who will not debate against me. The reason is, that I was just another friendly gun nut minding my own business until the Left decided to use me as a scapegoat for their own stupidity. Now I am on the attack. I will enthusiastically go after Lefties and their causes everywhere. And I enjoy sneering at their pomposity and tying them up in knots. I think that this is why you are so determined to get at me, and no blow is too low to do it.

But I know what you are doing, so rotsa ruck.

Back on topic.

You have claimed that crime is not rising, and then implied that the public only thinks it is rising because of increased media coverage of crime, and now you are even denying that you said that. This is another tactic of the dishonest debater. Always change your position so that you can not be pinned down. If you wish to submit a reasoned argument that crime is not rising, then go right ahead. I will very happily examine what you written, and subject it to fair examination. But I know you won't. Because that means that you would have to say something you would need to defend.

In addition to the facts I have already written in previous posts about rising crime, I would add that the clearest picture of our changing society comes with any train ride from Sydney's Central Station into the South Western suburbs. We now see graffiti splattered suburb, after graffiti splattered suburb, of houses with steel bars on every window.

Another factor, is that people who murdered more than once in the past, were simply tagged as multiple murderers. But with multiple murder homicides of total strangers becoming more commonplace, sub groups of multiple murderers have been identified, and they have had to be named. We now have serial killers, spree killers, and mass murderers. Nobody knows what to call kids who kill kids. Gunkids? Psychokids? Schoolboy terminators? Junior Rambos? Krugerkids?

Hi there LEGO...

Your suggestion a train ride out to Sydney's, South Western suburbs, would make the average citizen wonder whether or not, crime's under control, or is it on the increase ? Many of Sydney's well to do areas, with those patrician members of the cities society, also have a well hidden underbelly of ineradicable crime too !

Apropos this particular topic though, it's the criminal element who (generally) commit most gun crimes. It's the criminal element who're are behind the trafficking of illegal F/A's into this country. And it's the criminal element who continue to 'force' the hand of government, to ever increase restrictive elements of the F/A laws ?

Every time a crime of violence occurs, where the presence of a F/A is an integral component of that crime, someone usually from the 'left', will start complaining, that government's are not doing enough to curb F/A crime. Therefore the laws governing F/A 'MUST' be tightened ?

This response and the attendant processes, are clearly flawed. All it achieves is to further alienate the licit shooting community, by introducing, even more disproportionate and restrictive F/A practices. Ultimately, it may well serve to drive some law abiding individuals, underground.

LEGO we speak of young Muslim's being 'radicalized' ? If governments continue to impose ever stricter laws, on legitimate shooters, it could well work in reverse ? It may well 'radicalize' honest (younger) shooters who view these laws as being grossly and overtly unfair ! Therefore they see their only course of action, is to go 'underground'. And in so doing, utter that age old Aussie response...'bugger 'em all' !

This what disrupts police action against the organised criminal gangs that make millions from trafficking drugs and are responsible for almost all gun crime in Australia: an incoming Labor government that vows to wipe out the highly successful anti-bikie and anti-gang arrangements that were already in place and seen to be working.

-Working so well in fact that other States were moving to implement similar regulations - because criminal figures were moving interstate after finding Queensland much too hot for them.

<Palaszczuk says Labor to repeal bikie laws

Queensland's controversial bikie laws would be repealed and replaced under a Labor government, though the opposition leader won't reveal what with.>
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/01/25/palaszczuk-says-labor-repeal-bikie-laws

Simply amazing how there is always sympathy for the alleged 'rights' of known criminals, but there is no concern whatsoever about random police inspections and interviews in the home of the duly licensed, police-certified crime free citizens who are known and proved NOT to have anything to do with gun crimes, who utterly oppose such crime and are among the most trusted, upright members of society.

Go for a boat trip with reputable Gold Coast businessmen and they can point out the multi-million dollar waterfront mansions built with drug money.

Taking cocaine alone, if there were random 'Drugwipe' checks of the legal elite as they straggle out of their office buildings and expensive venues in the city centres on Friday nights, it is possible that the courts couldn't operate the following Monday.

What about regular, random 'Drugwipe' checks of all politicians and public servants? They would be furious at the mere suggestion, scandalized and outraged, adamant that it would would abuse THEIR rights.

However it is OK, necessary, to direct police to conduct regular, random, flying inspections and interrogations in the home of ordinary law-abiding, character-checked, licensed citizens have done nothing wrong - quite the opposite in fact, they are known and certified to be law-abiding.

That is the Catch 22 lunacy of 'gun control' for you.

Hi Mr O Sung Wu. I have not responded to your posts aimed directly at me because I needed to conserve my replies to Steelie and AJ.

AJ claims that he is a criminologist, and if he is, it certainly raises doubts about the quality of education in Australian universities, if today's "criminologists" can't figure out what causes crime. My premise is, that crime is rising for three primary reasons, two of which are related. The first is, that people are being imported into western societies from very violent cultures who's concept of right and wrong can be diametrically opposed to our own. I would submit as evidence the fact that in 2000, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics published a news release saying that 55% of the handgun shootings in the entire state of NSW occurred within the boundaries of two notoriously crime prone ethnic ghettoes in Sydney.

As to the glamourisation of criminal behaviour, graffiti is a good example. In the past, graffiti was almost always political and no where near as prevalent as it is today. My favourite examples were on railway cuttings near Strathfield where long ago, somebody has painted PIG IRON BOB which some wit had changed to BIG STRONG BOB. Then there was DONT GET YANKED INTO WAR which some other wit had changed to DONT GET YANKED INTO WARSAW.

Today's graffiti which now defaces every fence, wall and structure in Australia (and everywhere else) was not the product of original thinking by young Australians which erupted spontaneously. It was created in US ghettoes and it spread by the media as a fashion statement for young people. It has gone far beyond being a minor problem, the NSW State Rail now spends $60 million a year repairing damage to public property, which includes replacing nearly every window in suburban trains that are regularly scratched with glass.

The media is routinely glamourising criminal behaviour to our youth and then pretending that it can not influence people's behaviour. Which is obviously malarky when it is largely sponsored by the advertising industry which claims the exact opposite.

LEGO,

It’s not that you’re dishonest because you don’t quote others.

<<…if I do not include the previous or following sentences, I get accused by dishonest debaters like yourself, of taking quotes out of context.>>

It’s that you wouldn’t quote others because you are dishonest.

Your continual misrepresentation of what others say relies on the hope that your “audience”, or “the impartial observer” (that you are so focused on), has forgotten what exactly was said and just assumes that you’re addressing the claims of others accurately. Or perhaps I’m giving you too much credit and the only person you’re deluding is yourself?

Ironically, the quote above, that I’m responding to, is an example of this type of dishonesty.

<<You said that the quote from me, that Flannery had said that "the dams would never fill again", was wrong, even though you knew it was right.>>

I already addressed this here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17494#309589. Repeating a lie doesn’t make it come true.

<<The object was, to run me around on a wild goose chase researching the exact quote, to derail my line of reasoning. >>

No, I clearly stated the object here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17494#309484.

<<Your tactic there, was to oppose the concept that races were unequal, while simultaneously refusing to defend the concept that they were equal.>>

Wrong again. (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#275806, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#275877)

I even tried to get you to clarify what you meant by “equal” to give you a more definitive answer and you repetitively refused because it wouldn’t allow you to obfuscate (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856#275877).

<<This puts you in the position of always demanding that your opponent provide proof and come up with reasoned arguments, while you just sit back and heckle.>>

I’ve already addressed this here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310291, and here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310327.

<<…this indicated that I was dealing with people who knew that they were wrong, but who were desperate to hide the truth.>>

When only one of us can respond to direct quotes and link back to previous arguments to reveal the lies in the other’s claims, it’s pretty obvious who’s “desperate to hide the truth”.

Continued…

…Continued

<< I think that this is why you are so determined to get at me, and no blow is too low to do it.>>

Actually, it’s more to do with my fascination with the extent to which you will duck and weave. Exposing it is a bonus too. Oh, and try giving just one example of a low blow from me. Another claim you can’t substantiate and will, therefore, simply press on as if nothing was said.

<<You have claimed that crime is not rising…>>

Overall, yes.

<<…and then implied that the public only thinks it is rising because of increased media coverage of crime…>>

Yes.

<<…and now you are even denying that you said that.>>

Erm, no. I happily acknowledged that. (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310327)

<<If you wish to submit a reasoned argument that crime is not rising, then go right ahead.>>

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310115,
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310193, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310194,
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310247, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310291.

<<I will very happily examine what you written, and subject it to fair examination.>>

Well get cracking then.

<<In addition to the facts I have already written in previous posts about rising crime…>>

Hang on. You still haven’t justified the first “facts”. You merely asserted them.

<<…I would add that the clearest picture of our changing society comes with any train ride from Sydney's Central Station into the South Western suburbs.>>

When someone pits anecdotal evidence against decades of research, you know they haven’t got a case. The same can be seen in the GMO and aspartame scares.

I don’t know what your last paragraph is supposed to prove.

<<… if today's "criminologists" can't figure out what causes crime.>>

All crime?

Where do you get this idea from anyway? Do you think criminologists are clueless just because they don’t always agree with your amateur, cherry-picked assertions?

Good afternoon to you LEGO...

Thanks for replying to my recent thread, I understand you've been busy presenting your opinions to Messrs STEELEREDUX and our little treasure, A J PHILLIPS.

I've read your responses carefully, particularly your claim that 55% of all handgun shootings in NSW have occurred in those; '...notoriously crime prone ethnic ghettos, in Sydney...'. Actually, I took part in several TF's (Task Force) established in that area, though our brief was not specifically assigned with interdicting illicit weaponry, therefore for that reason I'm quite surprised the percentages you've quoted herein are so low ?

It seemed every premises that we raided, illegal and modified long-arms were subsequently seized, though I note you refer specifically to 'handguns'. Nevertheless, the figures are truly worrying, and I'm speaking of my contribution, which was some years back. Therefore one can only imagine what the area is like now, apropos illegal F/A's. As well as what the precise rate of possession is, amongst that unique demographic ?

To be honest with you LEGO, I could find absolutely no fault in anything you've asserted or raised, which is worrying in itself ? The longer governments allow these social sores to fester and indisputably deteriorate, the harder it'll be for them to correct it .

Hi AJ.

I am sorry, I don't debate against links. That puts the onus upon me to do all the work, re-reading everything you have written, only to make the same conclusions that I have previously. Then you will say that I am misinterpreting and misquoting you again. If you have anything to say, just write it out plainly and clearly instead of implying everything, and then claiming that my understanding of your implications is deliberately wrong.

I submitted that one aspect of rising crime was the importation of people from very violent cultures, something that I think you oppose. One fact which confirms my premise, is the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research who's press release "Firearms and Violent Crime in NSW (issue number 57, May 2001). On page 4. it said this.

"It is evident from figure 4 that Shootings in the Canturbury-Bankstown and Liverpool-Fairfield subdivisions have been more pronounced than the increase in the rest of the state between 1995 and 2000. In fact shootings in these areas account for more than half (55%) of all handgun shootings which occurred across NSW in the year 2000.

From this press release I conclude that handgun crime rose after the gun buyback, and that most of this rise was caused by recently imported immigrants from violent cultures who made these areas into crime prone ethnic ghettoes. Now, if you oppose my premise, what evidence do you submit that handgun crime did not rise after the gun buyback? And the onus is upon you to prove that this behaviour was commonplace, even when these suburbs were populated entirely by working class white Europeans.

I also maintain that graffiti in NSW was only a fraction of the problem it is today. I can see that with my own eyes, and any person who is may age would agree with me. Now, you call the evidence of my own eyes "anecdotal", implying that it is untrue. What hard statistical scientific evidence do you have that graffiti is no better or worse today than say, 50 years ago?

Hi there LEGO...

Your opening remarks that you'd addressed to A J PHILLIPS; '...I don't debate against links...'. Well I'm really sorry for you old man, because that's all A J PHILLIPS has, in his limited inventory of responses !

Perhaps you should have answered them the first time around then, LEGO.

<<...I don't debate against links.>>

You don’t have to click on them (your “audience” and “impartial observers” at least have the opportunity to though), just as I am under no obligation to repeat myself simply because you chose to ignore or misconstrue me the first time around.

<<That puts the onus upon me to do all the work, re-reading everything you have written…>>

So why should the onus be on me to repeat myself? Sorry, but it is you who is trying to make me do the additional work and waste my word count. I already waste enough words quoting you to save us both time.

<<Then you will say that I am misinterpreting and misquoting you again.>>

Lucky for you I actually go to the effort of demonstrating it too then, rather than just claiming that you do.

<<I submitted that one aspect of rising crime…>>

You haven’t demonstrated that it’s rising yet. You could start by negating my arguments against Sullivan’s use of her data.

<<One fact which confirms my premise, was the importation of people from very violent cultures…>>

In trying to prove your point, you become more and more specific in your evidence. Remember, I’m talking about the overall crime rate. Here you're talking specifically about immigrants from certain cultures, in specific areas, committing specific crimes. That's cherry-picking at its finest.

<<Now, you call the evidence of my own eyes "anecdotal", implying that it is untrue.>>

No, my point was more to do with the unreliability of anecdotal evidence and its being indicative of an argument that has no basis. It was also in reference to the overall crime rate, so your request for “hard statistical scientific evidence” demonstrating that graffiti is no worse than 50 years ago is barking up the wrong tree.

o sung wu,

I link back to old posts not because my arguments are limited, but they have not yet been countered/addressed. I’m actually hankering to move on, but it appears LEGO has nothing more. I've apparently over-estimated him.

Congratulations, AJ. You spent all of your last post standing on your dignity, and wrote nothing on the topic under discussion. I know that you want to run me around in circles with your links, like you did with the Tim Flannery quote, but like I said after that effort, I won't get caught with that tactic twice.

If you do not want to write reasoned arguments supporting whatever vague premises you are implying, that is OK with me. Impartial audiences will be swayed by a speaker who is prepared to submit reasoned arguments that support his clearly stated position, especially when what he or she says cross connects with facts already known and appreciated by the audience.

Crime is rising. I have submitted four examples, armed robbery, disproportionate and serious ethnic criminal behaviour, hand gun shootings, and graffiti. In every case I have provided both hard and "anecdotal" evidence to support my claim.

Other than moaning that crime is not rising, and demanding that I do all the work and prove that it is rising (which I am doing), you have not submitted any evidence to support your IMPLICATION that crime is not rising. You have grudgingly conceded that sociologist Lucy Sullivan was right when she said in her book that armed robbery was rising. You have not commented on the NSW BCS&R report that handgun crime rose after the gun buyback. You have said previously that you think that the degree of ethnic criminal behaviour is exaggerated, (which runs contrary to public perception in Sydney) but whereas I have provided hard evidence to support my premise, you have done nothing.

Finally comes grafitti. I have provided "anecdotal" evidence while you have provided nothing at all. And every older member of OLO who witnessed how graffiti became a went from a trivial problem to a serious problem in the early 80's will agree with my "anecdotal" recollection, and will wonder what planet today's "criminologists" come from

Just to add to the debate, the Australian Crime Commission's annual Illicit Drug Data Reports show the established, increasing trend of illicit drugs importation, manufacture and use in Australia, with new records being set.

It is the imported organised gangs - made possible through immigration and multicultural policies that put large numbers and 'diversity' above effective risk management and retaining the Australian culture and way of life - that are directly responsible for:

- the increases in drug manufacture, import and trafficking,

AND

- for the violence associated with drugs and especially relevant here, weapons crime.

The gangs import and sell their preferred 'gangsta' guns.
[Note for John Howard enthusiasts: criminals do not give a hoot about 'gun control', but they are thankful for the disarmed, vulnerable public that makes their business so much easier]

Regrettably the same extreme political correctness that puts 'diversity' and large numbers of migrants ahead of risk management is also responsible for rolling logs in the way of retaining and analysing ethnic crime numbers.

The task of waving the red flag to show the unforeseen negative consequences of the 'lapses' (sic) in immigration screening has fallen upon whistleblowers such as retiring senior police. A Google search should remind NSW residents of stern warnings of imported ethic gangs and traditions of violence from a number of retired senior police officers, including police Commissioners. The warnings have been routinely ignored by the political parties, always concerned about the ethnic vote in marginal seats.

The importation of criminal gangs, their drug business and weapons violence is not new, as demonstrated by the Calabrian Mafia with Italian migrants. What has always been obvious too has been the migration lobbyists' success in cloaking the negatives and building the motherhood that any migration is always 'good' for Australia. That goes well back too, Google search Labor's Al Grassby, the 'Father of Multiculturalism' and his connections with the Calabrian Mafia, for instance in Griffith, NSW.

and criminal gangs also manufacture firearms, unfortunately the easiest to make are sub-machine guns; this practice is highly illegal but what the heck, when did that ever stop a criminal?

Google shows some interesting designs,(no patent fees applicable),
one, the 9mm BSP is named for many of its components which are British Standard Pipe fittings and come from the local hardware store.

Well A J PHILLIPS, as it now appears that you wish to 'move on', please, don't let me delay you ! Why not go and annoy a bunch of boozers at the local pub, or a bikie gang somewhere ? I'm sure they'd thoroughly enjoy receiving an avalanche of your usual verbiage and academic detritus !

LEGO,

No, actually. I spent the last half of my address to you dealing specifically with your “evidence”.

<<You spent all of your last post standing on your dignity, and wrote nothing on the topic under discussion.>>

I’ll also note, too, that the only heckling going on here has been from o sung wu and his petulant personal attacks. Funny you don’t mention that.

<<I know that you want to run me around in circles with your links, like you did with the Tim Flannery quote...>>

My response to which still remains unchallenged. (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17494#309589)

<<If you do not want to write reasoned arguments supporting whatever vague premises you are implying...>>

So what are these other "premises" you speak of now? Or is this another question of mine you're not going to answer?

<<I have submitted four examples [of crime rising]…>>

Thus my point about cherry picking. But let’s take a look at them anyway…

<<…armed robbery…>>

No, that’s been declining. (http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/facts/1-20/2013/1_recorded.html (see Table 1 and Figure 3), http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/4510.0~2014~Main%20Features~Robbery~12)

<<…disproportionate and serious ethnic criminal behaviour…>>

You actually haven’t provided any evidence for this. Even if you had though, it wouldn’t be evidence of an overall rise in crime, but merely evidence of what you have stated above.

<<…hand gun shootings…>>

You provided evidence of a rise in one area, in one city, over the period of five years ending 15 years ago. That’s not evidence of an overall rise. That’s cherry-picking.

<<…and graffiti.>>

Since the ‘50s? Yeah, I’m happy to take that on your amateur anecdotes. Have you got any data showing recent trends though (e.g. the last twenty years)? It could be declining now for all we know.

<<In every case I have provided both hard and "anecdotal" evidence to support my claim.>>

You mean "and/or". Cherry-picked data is not “hard evidence” either.

<<Other than moaning that crime is not rising, and demanding that I do all the work and prove that it is rising...>>

No, I provided you with the stats before. Now I've provided you with even more to not look at or cry conspiracy over.

Continued…

…Continued

<<…you have not submitted any evidence to support your IMPLICATION that crime is not rising.>>

Yes, I did. In my very first post to you on this thread. (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310115)

I’ve stated outright that the overall crime rate is on the decline too. No implications necessary.

<<You have grudgingly conceded that sociologist Lucy Sullivan was right when she said in her book that armed robbery was rising.>>

When did I do that?

<<You have not commented on the NSW BCS&R report that handgun crime rose after the gun buyback.>>

Actually, I did. See my last paragraph to you in my last post.

<<You have said previously that you think that the degree of ethnic criminal behaviour is exaggerated...>>

Where did I say that? Time you started providing links to all these things I’m apparently saying/implying.

Fat chance, eh?

<<...whereas I have provided hard evidence to support my premise...>>

No, as I pointed out earlier, you cherry-picked. “Hard evidence” would span over a much longer period and include recent data, and data that controlled for all the difficulties in obtaining stats on crime and ethnicity. Your data didn’t even specify ethnicity. For all we know, Caucasians could have been responsible for most of the crime. Your data only specified an area with a lot of immigrants.

<<...and will wonder what planet today's "criminologists" come from.>>

Do you actually think graffiti is a bellwether crime? (Homicide actually is because of its relatively stable rate, the fact that homicides don’t go undetected, and the fact that there is no confusion/argument over what constitutes a homicide.)

One thing criminologists do note, with regards to graffiti, is the fact that it’s the most visible crime of all. So it’s no wonder that an amateur with very little in the way of facts, such as yourself, cites it as an example of an alleged rise in crime overall.

o sung wu,

By “move on”, I meant progress further than we have, not leave. I have so much more I want to get to but LEGO’s stuck on repeat. I’ve been contemplating giving him a rebuttal myself.

To AJ

Thank you for your figures which showed actual crimes for assault, sexual assault, kidnapping, homicide, and robbery from 1996 to 2012.

Assault up, sexual assault up, kidnapping up, robbery down, and homicide down.

According to Sullivan, there were only nine convictions for rape or attempted rape in the whole of Australia in 1923. By 1996 the figure was 116,105. Given that Australia's population in 1923 was only a quarter of what it is today, that still represents an incredible rise from a time when Australia had practically no gun laws, to today's strict gun laws.

At least you have proven that strict gun laws cause rape.

The figures you submitted show a very significant rise in the crime of kidnapping from 1996 (478) to 212 (636). Could I submit that before the advent of Asian immigration into Australia, the crime of kidnapping was almost non existent?

Assault slightly up, and robbery slightly down from the 1996 figures. But robberies in 1996 were at historically high levels. In 1993, robberies were four times the 1964 rate, so a very slight decline is does not alter the fact that robberies are still four time higher than in 1964. That is a very significant rise.

Homicides are down. The reason for that has nothing to do with less people being shot at or stabbed. It has everything to do with the fact that more people are surviving potentially fatal injuries. Mobile phones, ambulances with life support equipment manned by trained paramedics in video contact with surgeons, improved medical techniques, much improved diagnostic equipment ,and improved infection fighting drugs, have all played a part in reducing homicides. According to the NSW BCS&R fact sheet, "shoot with intent" crimes increased from 1995 to 2000.

It is hard to give accurate figures for ethic related crime, because in 1993, the motley collection of ethnic lobby groups successfully lobbied the Federal Labor government to prevent the ABS from keeping or collating any statistics related to ethnic crime. Why would they ethnic leaders do that, AJ?

Think real hard.

Welcome back, LEGO. Unfortunately, I fear that your return from lies and misrepresentation will only be short lived.

<<Thank you for your figures which showed actual crimes for assault, sexual assault, kidnapping, homicide, and robbery from 1996 to 2012.>>

Until 2014 for robbery, actually. Here are the figures showing the downward trend continue to 2014 for street crimes: http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/4510.02014?OpenDocument.

<<Assault up, sexual assault up, kidnapping up, robbery down, and homicide down.>>

Correct, and overall, those figures show a downward trend (you’ll note too, that, earlier, I mentioned assault is up (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310115)).

There are far also far more crimes than just those. Motor vehicle theft, for example, is also down (http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/4510.02014?OpenDocument, http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/second+level+view?ReadForm&prodno=4510.0&viewtitle=Recorded%20Crime%20-%20Victims,%20Australia~2014~Latest~22/07/2015&&tabname=Past%20Future%20Issues&prodno=4510.0&issue=2014&num=&view=&).

And they’re just conventional street crimes. We haven’t even gotten to white collar crime yet. That’s when things get MUCH trickier, and there’s not as many “ethnics” there to blame either.

<<According to Sullivan, there were only nine convictions for rape or attempted rape in the whole of Australia in 1923. By 1996 the figure was 116,105.>>

That’s why I mentioned the factors that Sullivan had not accounted for. I also haven’t claimed that crime is down from then. However, I have mentioned the world is a less violent place overall than it was then.

<<…that still represents an incredible rise from a time when Australia had practically no gun laws, to today's strict gun laws.>>

Guns aren’t usually required for sexual assault. This is a non sequitur.

<<At least you have proven that strict gun laws cause rape.>>

This is the Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Is it any wonder you’re so bad at interpreting statistics?

<<Could I submit that before the advent of Asian immigration into Australia, the crime of kidnapping was almost non existent?>>

You could, and you may even be right. But you need evidence. Our hunches aren’t good enough by themselves.

<<Homicides are down … [because] more people are surviving potentially fatal injuries.>>

So why is the attempted homicide rate declining too?

Continued…

…Continued

<<According to the NSW BCS&R fact sheet, "shoot with intent" crimes increased from 1995 to 2000.>>

One type of homicide, in one state, in that itty bitty time frame again? Do you understand what cherry picking is?

<<Why would they ethnic leaders do that, AJ?>>

I can think of a couple of reasons. Firstly, the figures are unreliable because police and courts in most jurisdictions don’t record ethnicity, and only do so sporadically when they do. Prison data contains country of birth, but it’s not much good to us anymore being the back end of the criminal justice system, and many people of different ethnicities are still born in Australia. Police data would be far more accurate, but even then, different reporting policies and procedures, across different jurisdictions; along with issues of both the over-policing and under-policing, would render the data highly unreliable.

Secondly, raw data has the potential to create a fear and loathing if they show higher rates when the explanations for those higher rates not understood (as we’ve demonstrated (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15856&page=0, http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16259&page=0).

But I'm just speculating here. Since you seem to know more about it, could you link me to some further information? I can't find anything. I've tried Google searches, Google Scholar searches, and I've searched 1993's legislative changes and Hansard records for "Australian Bureau of Statistics" and couldn't find what you were talking about there either. I'll need more information to refine my searches.

The only thing which your statistics have indicated, AJ, is that in the last twenty years, the exponentially rising incidences of many types of crime in Australia which began in the 60's, have plateaued. But the incidences of all types of crime are still many times higher than that period of Australian history when firearms laws were almost non existent. Begin your graphs in the mid sixties when firearms were still freely available, and extrapolate them to last week, and despite the recent plateauing of some types of crime statistics, the trend is still up.

Your statistics have shown that the ever the rising incidences of notoriously ethnic related crimes like kidnappings, home invasions, street shootings, and terrorism, are also showing promising signs of beginning to ebb. But they are still a long way above what they were in the mid 20th Century, when guns were everywhere, and almost everybody had a white face. Crimes like kidnapping were almost non existent before the advent of large scale Asian immigration, and you know it. The word "home invasion" was coined specifically to denote the armed robbery of Asian households, because Asians do not trust banks, and they prefer to keep large amounts of cash in the family home. Street shootings have probably declined because the NSW Police's Middle Eastern Organised Crime unit is the State's largest, and all that to police Muslims who make up only 2.3% of Australia's population. Terrorism is down, probably because we seem to have exported some of our most devoutly religious Muslims to Syria.

Your claim that the world was a more violent place in 1923 is interesting, but what it has to do with Australian rape statistics you did not explain.

Nice bit of dodging you did with the question of why ethnic leaders tried to hide the extent of ethnic related crime. The most obvious answer was, of course, that they were desperate to hide the extent to which multiculturalism was creating a tidal wave of crime. Instead of banning firearms, we would be better of banning Muslims, Pacific Islanders, Lebanese, Romanians, and Vietnamese.

LEGO,

There IS actually a statistically significant decline.

<<The only thing which your statistics have indicated, AJ, is that in the last twenty years, the exponentially rising incidences of many types of crime in Australia which began in the 60's, have plateaued.>>

You’re also forgetting about those all-important factors that I mentioned earlier regarding Sullivan’s data. Reporting rates of crimes, and the number of acts that we regards as criminal, were increasing at the same time crime in the data Sullivan used was (though not at the same rate) and continue to rise as the overall crime rate slowly decreases, indicating that the real crime rate is actually declining much faster than even the figures that I linked you to indicate.

The best way to account for the crimes not recorded is to compare the reporting rates with the results of victimisation surveys done over the decades. The following three articles discuss this and the effects that is has on recorded crime rates:

http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/conferences/outlook99/indermau.pdf
http://www.ccc.qld.gov.au/research-and-publications/publications/cjc/crime-victims-surveys-in-australia-conference-proceedings.pdf
http://aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/tandi_pdf/tandi061.pdf

There’s a lot of reading there, I know. But no-one said learning about this stuff was easy. Contrary to what you think, it takes a bit more than just using one’s common sense to understand this stuff. Take your time though, due to my workload over the next couple of months, my responses may be significantly delayed anyway.

<<Begin your graphs in the mid sixties when firearms were still freely available, and extrapolate them to last week, and despite the recent plateauing of some types of crime statistics, the trend is still up.>>

See above.

<<Your statistics have shown that the ever the rising incidences of notoriously ethnic related crimes … are also showing promising signs of beginning to ebb. But they are still a long way above what they were in the mid 20th Century, when guns were everywhere, and almost everybody had a white face.>>

See above.

Also, I’m willing to go with that. I haven’t argued that crime has dropped since then.

Continued…

…Continued

I’ve simply argued against with your assertion that crime is on the rise, and that the world is going to pot.

<<Crimes like kidnapping were almost non existent before the advent of large scale Asian immigration, and you know it.>>

No, I don’t know that and for the reasons stated above. I suspect kidnapping is up though, because there are a lot more disgruntled, separated parents now than there used to be.

<<The word "home invasion" was coined specifically to denote the armed robbery of Asian households, because Asians do not trust banks, and they prefer to keep large amounts of cash in the family home.>>

Your perception of the problem of ethnic youth gangs is blown way out of proportion (http://aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/tandi_pdf/tandi167.pdf). This is what the bombardment of graphic images from a 24-hour news cycle does to one’s perception of reality. Your paranoia regarding other ethnicities, and need to believe they’re inferior, doesn’t help.

<<Street shootings have probably declined because ... Terrorism is down, probably because...>>

All assumptions. If we could just make assumptions the way you do, using your "common sense", then there wouldn't be a need for an entire science devoted to studying crime. Nothing is monocausal. Every phenomenon we observe, every individual instance of crime, and every decision made in the process of a crime, is the result of a complex interplay of many factors.

<<Your claim that the world was a more violent place in 1923 is interesting, but what it has to do with Australian rape statistics you did not explain.>>

I didn’t mean to suggest there was a connection. That followed from the sentence that immediately preceded it.

<<Nice bit of dodging you did...>>

Hey, I’ve mentioned several times, in the discussions that I last linked to, that some immigrant groups tend to have higher rates of offending (although those doing the offending are still a small minority of their group). I even alluded to that in my second point. I was simply explaining why those figures would concern them.

I’m still waiting on some further information on that, by the way.

Hi AJ, I thought you had gone missing in action?

I realise that Lucy Sullivan's book, which clearly demonstrated that crime in Australia was extremely low when Australian's were armed to the teeth, (and very poor) is an excruciating embarrassment to you. And you have to dream up any lame excuse to suppress the her inconvenient truths. What was it again? Oh, yes, she is a sociologist, and sociologists can't read data or plot graphs. But her book will not go away, and unless you can dream up some way to "homogenise" the raw data from the Commonwealth year books, then you have the problem, not me.

Now, you seem to be loading me up with homework, maybe it is about time I did the same to you. I expect you to read The 2001 US Surgeon general's report on Television Violence and it's Effects on Children.

http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/access/NNBCGY.pdf

Television and violence essay.

http://cursor.org/stories/television_and_violence.htm

Joint Statement on the Impact of Entertainment Violence on Children

Congressional Public Health Summit July 26, 2000

http://www2.aap.org/advocacy/releases/jstmtevc.htm

Bit of heavy reading there, but you must read it. There will be a test.

On your assertion that you do not agree that the world is going to pot, "see above."

Science has already judged that violence in the media impacts on real life violence. My premise is, and always has been, that the rising incidences of serious crime in the western world is a consequence of three factors, the importation of very violent ethnic groups who have very violent cultures, and the cultural conditioning of young people by the media to think that violent and criminal behaviour is acceptable behaviour, coupled with a breakdown in family socialisation making kids more vulnerable to this media inspired anti social programming.

On the subject of the influence of media violence on real life violence, the American Psychological Association's submission in the historic Joint Statement to Congress began "The scientific debate is over." (see above) And "There is absolutely no doubt, that the increased level of TV viewing, is correlated to the increasing acceptance of aggressive attitudes and increased aggressive behaviour."

Continued

The American Medical association's submission on violent media stated 'the link between media violence and real life violence has been proven by science, over and over again."

Back to ethnic crime. I don't know why you even bother to deny that ethnic crime is a primary reason why crime today is so much higher than when there were no gun restrictions at all. All you are doing is destroying your own credibility with any readers who pick up a newspaper or watch the TV news every day. Now, we were discussing kidnapping, and that term usually denotes the forcible abduction of a person for the purpose of forcing a relative to pay a ransom. This was a crime almost unheard of in Australia before the importation of Asian immigrants. The only kidnapping that I can even remember was the famous Graham Thorne kidnapping, where even notorious crime bosses like Abe Saffron aided the police to help solve the crime.

Your attempt to portray kidnapping as simply a problem of disgruntled parents, is disingenuous, and clearly displays the lengths that you will go to hide from the fact that the immigration of particular ethnic groups has created new types of crime that we have never had to deal with before.

What disingenuous excuse are you going to come up with to explain terrorism, AJ, Which you know is almost exclusively a product of Muslim immigration? Just write "see above" and hope that the facts will go away?

Now, we get down to the last of your post and we see the rather incredible statement by you that you have admitted "several times" that some ethnic groups have higher incidences of criminal behaviour. Ummm, no. That is the first time I have ever seen you admit that. Although, I can see that you don't have any choice. Only a moron could keep claiming there is no link between ethnicity and crime. I suppose you decided that your previous position was untenable, and you had to retreat to a more defensible position?

There have been many claims that the Gun Laws have stopped any mass shootings in Australia and that therefore they are a success.

The Lyndt Cafe and Monis proved that they are a failure.
All the ingredients were there for a massacre.

Monis had a firearm - the laws didn't stop him from acquiring it.

Monis' firearm was prohibited by the gun laws - he still got it.
his firearm was illegally modified - the gun laws didn't stop the modification.

Monis didn't have a firearms licence - he didn't comply with the gun laws.

Monis took hostages - the gun laws didn't stop him.

Monis murdered one person - the gun laws didn't stop him.

Monis had it in his power to murder many more people - the gun laws didn't stop him, he was stopped by men with guns.

Anyone care to refute the above?

Agreed.

Also, would he or the Port Arthur murderer have committed their terrible crimes if they had not been guaranteed world-wide personal attention and endless publicity by a tabloid media that unduly and wrongly sensationalises them and their crimes?

No-one is asking for censorship, but one could hardly use the words responsible and ethical in connection with the sensationalist and 'got-ya' reporting by the tabloids, including regrettably the publicly-funded ABC, (or always accurate and balanced!).

Mind you, can anything better be expected of a media that routinely publicise intimate details of celebrity suicides, images of flooding blood on pavement, bodies, seriously injured victims with underwear showing and so on?

Or a political protest party like the Greens who deliberately post and maintain wrong information on their site, the example here being the false claims that Monis was licensed (the media) and had a registered gun (the media and the Greens - all untrue and completely without factual basis) that bring the NSW police (who denied the claims immediately) into disrepute.

Has that wrong information on the Greens site been removed as yet and if not, why not?

Is Mise, while it's true the gun laws didn't prevent Monis from obtaining a gun, taking hostages and committing murder, the fact that the gun laws also didn't prevent men with guns stopping him severely weakens the case against them.

And just because the gun laws failed to stop one man from illegally obtaining and using a gun doesn't mean they've not prevented others from doing so. Do you seriously doubt those laws have made guns harder to obtain on the black market?

Facts for Aiden.

Nobody has a clue how many guns are in Australia because for almost 100 years, nobody bothered to keep any records. One thing is very clear, firearms have a very long life. Some semi autos which were handed in were the original 1887 Winchester .25 calibre semi autos as well as 1885 model Winchester pump action shotguns.

The best idea of how many now illegal firearms were in Australia was compiled by the SSAA after they asked for and obtained cooperation from the firearms importers to gain some idea of how many guns were out there. The SSAA came up with the figure of around 2.5 million to 3.5 million fireams which should have been handed in. The actual number "bought back" was 860,000. That means that there are now around two million semi autos and pump action shotgums which were once part of the legal system whuich are now part of the black market.

But it does not end there. Firearms owners were so distrustful of government attempts to take our firarms from us that an unknown number of shooters simply hid their bolt guns and refused to register them. How many millions of these exist is anybody's guess. Prior to the buyback, gun shops sold out of cheap firearms (and ammunition, and reloading kits)) as shooters bought cheap guns in the calibres of their already owned and hidden firearms so that any attempt to limit ammunition sales to the firearms registered to each shooter could be frustrated. Buy a crappy Chinese $120 dollar Norinco .22, register that, and you can buy all the ammunition you want for your stashed $2000 dollar Kimber .22 bolt gun.

Prior to the gun buyback, it was believed that there were twice as many unlicensed shooters in NSW as there were licensed ones. The NSW Police had been trying to bring the unlicensed shooters in from the cold, and all the buyback did was drive them right back out again.

Aidan,

"Do you seriously doubt those laws have made guns harder to obtain on the black market?"

Yes, I seriously do; the gun laws created the black market and evidence by the NSW and other State Police highlights the facts that black market firearms are readily available and are being illegally imported as well as being illegally manufactured.
I have friends living in East Bankstown and to them, BANGS in the night are routine.
It's either illegal fireworks or shots, they don't pay much attention anymore.

Hi there IS MISE...

It's been awhile since I worked with several TF's in Bankstown, but from what I've been told by former colleagues it's worse than when I was there. I think it's deplorable that Bankstown and it's surrounding suburbs, have degraded into such an undesirable area save for a number of middle eastern crime gangs. This is despite the public face successive governments have tried to paint. Irrefutable evidence, of a massive failure of (Islamic) multiculturalism ?

Somehow I don't see the Bankstown LAC being overrun with potential F/A applicants, considering how many illicit F/A's we'd seized that were simply incidental to our warrant's. It's all very well for A J PHILLIPS quoting this statistic and that statistic, but at the coal face this data, notwithstanding how accurate or how current it may be, means nothing to coppers executing a high-risk warrant ? And I'm not rubbishing his chosen vocation in this instance either, simply stating a fact.

What can be done about Bankstown ? How can we prevent 'other Bankstown's' from evolving. There're other suburbs, with a similarly high Islamic concentration in Western Sydney ? How many more 'Bankstown's' can Sydney adequately handle ?

Aidan,

I missed the significance of your ".... the fact that the gun laws also didn't prevent men with guns stopping him severely weakens the case against them."

How so?

Before the gun laws of 'Little Johnny' there were armed police who would also have shot a terrorist to save others' lives.

Is Mise, one of the NRA's purported objection to our gun laws is that they prevent good people with guns from stopping bad people with guns. But reality doesn't match that claim.

I still very much doubt that it's anywhere near as easy to find someone willing to risk a lengthy prison sentence to sell you a gun than it was to find someone to sell you the same weapon legally twenty years ago. If it's true then there's a very serious problem with police ineptitude!

Aidan,

Obviously, as far as long arms are concerned, it was easier before the law changes, to obtain one as in NSW as there were few restrictions.
As a point of fact, the Griener Government restored to their owners guns that had been confiscated under the previous Unsworth ALP rule.
However pistols were controlled and it is arguable that it is now very little harder to get a pistol licence, although personal protection is no longer a valid reason.
By the proliferation of illegal pistols it is obvious that there is a thriving blackmarket and don't blame the police as they are not the Customs and as Customs cannot possibly search all containers entering the country don't blame them either.
The Glocks that came in via the postal service were an example of the impossibility of examining all parcels.
There is now-a-days much more unlawful public firing of pistols in our streets and that is a fact attested by police reports.
Obviously our streets are less safe than they were before Howard's
Laws and as greater public safety was one of the claims made for those laws, then they have failed.

It looks as if AJ has left the arena, which is a pity.

To summarise, the degree of severity of any nations firearms laws is generally a predictor of how sick your society has become. Peaceful, law abiding and socially cohesive societies, who's culture forbids violence for personnel reasons, do not need strict gun laws. But violent societies do.

Western societies are becoming more violent for three primary reasons. We are destroying our social cohesion through multiculturalism. We are importing people from foreign cultures which have vastly different concepts as to what constitutes correct behaviour. Some are from cultures like Islam which sanctions the rape of women who do not follow the ways of Islam. Others are from extremely backward societies where male codes of honour demand violence and retribution for any imagined slight. Others engage in criminal behaviour undreamed of by even the worst criminals within western societies. The use of children as drug couriers and as hired murderers, as well as using schoolchildren to sell drug "starter kits" at schools, comes to mind.

AJ's premise that ethnicity and crime are not linked, and that the idea of widespread ethnic crime is just a manifestation of media sensationalism, is more worthy of hilarity than serious consideration.

The next important factor that is changing western culture to a culture promoting violence and criminality violent one is our entertainment media. It is a scientific fact that violent media and real life violence are linked. As the US American Medical Association has written, it has been "proven by science, over and over again." I find it incredible that AJ, who claims that he is a trained criminologist, is ignorant of this fact. It just goes to show how badly our tertiary trained elites are being educated. Apparently, the "dumbing down" of students is not limited to primary and secondary schools.

Lastly, we have the breakdown in societies most important socialising agent, the family. Almost one third of children today are being reared in single parent families. It is no surprise that this figure is much higher within communities where crime is endemic.

There is no comparison between 'Gun Control'(sic) and the reasonable, proven alternative, which is effective, risk-based, regulation and management of firearms that results in evidence-based laws that are effective, efficient and robust.

Good laws enjoy the full support of the public. Good laws do not need to be sold through shameful tactics of fudging numbers and facts. Fear mongering, wedge politics and secret squirrel political deals behind closed doors are not required where laws are fairly based on evidence.

'Gun Control' is the euphemism for the complete disarming of the citizens of the Western democracies. It is about confiscations from ordinary law-abiding citizens by the State under force of arms by the State. 'Gun Control' is totalitarianism.

As a stepping stone to abolition and forced confiscations, 'Gun Control' is about such Marxist tactics as flexing the meanings of words (a common Marxist tactic used elsewhere in politics by the organised Left), negatively stereotyping lawful owners particularly through conflating criminals and the unlawful actions with the many thousands of respectable citizens with licences, and making the lawful, licensed ownership and particularly the recreational use of firearms difficult, expensive and punishing.

The last-mentioned tactic is laid bare, obvious, through legal provisions permitting the State to conduct compulsory, unnecessary intrusions and abuses of the rights of licensed owners, such as by the laws requiring Australian police to conduct random, flying visits with compulsory inspections and interrogations in the home of those ordinary, known law-abiding citizens.

Of course the leftists who spruik the mantra of 'Gun Control' would never countenance such State and police monitoring and random inspections where they themselves or criminals are involved.

Could someone, maybe from those supporting gun control, direct me to where I can find some information on Gun Control Australia?

Their web site seems to be deliberately lacking in any useful information.

They exhort people to join but it seems to be a leap of faith (or into the dark).
No other organization that purports to be interested in the public good seems to be so secretive.

LEGO,

I have already told you that I’ll be busy for the next couple of months.

<<It looks as if AJ has left the arena, which is a pity.>>

I could quite happily leave at this point, though, given that you’re simply repeating yourself now and have spent the whole discussion dodging that which is inconvenient for you.

Lucky for you, though, I enjoy this topic as much as I enjoying seeing you duck, weave and rehash the same old arguments over and over in the hope that they’ll eventually become true. So I’m not leaving anytime soon. I anticipate this discussion going well into the new year.

<<I realise that Lucy Sullivan's book, which clearly demonstrated that crime in Australia was extremely low when Australian's were armed to the teeth, (and very poor) is an excruciating embarrassment to you.>>

Not at all. Not only did I already know about the data she used, but I have addressed them head-on. You, on the other hand, could only flip what I had said off by claiming that it was “lame”...

<<And you have to dream up any lame excuse to suppress the her inconvenient truths.>>

...which you still haven’t justified, by the way, despite my request that you do so (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310246).

<<What was it again? Oh, yes, she is a sociologist, and sociologists can't read data or plot graphs.>>

Let's see what I actually said, shall we?

"Sullivan is a sociologist, not a criminologist. So her understanding of the causes crime, from a sociological perspective ... are good. But, according to her book, her ability to analyse statistical data - when it comes to determining real figures of crime - are woefully inadequate." (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534&page=0#310193)

What kind of a scumbag sits there and lies through their teeth like that? Twice now too.

You have no scruples.

<<But her book will not go away, and unless you can dream up some way to "homogenise" the raw data from the Commonwealth year books, then you have the problem, not me.>>

I’ve already addressed this here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310247 and here http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310247.

Continued…

…Continued

<<I expect you to read The 2001 US Surgeon general's report…>>

You don’t get to expect anything from anyone. Especially when it doesn’t sound like your read what I linked to. I did read it, however, and there was not much there that I didn’t already know.

The article you linked to was problematic too. Firstly, it assumes that correlation necessitates causation (http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations) with the only data to control for spurious correlations coming from South African whites - not a big enough sample size to rule out other influences. Secondly, the author provides no documentation of a systematic method of measurement and analysis so that others may test his findings. Finally, the current homicide rate is still less than what it was 80 years ago, which suggests that the mid-twentieth century was an aberration, leaving the question to be more, “Why was the homicide rate as low as it was in the mid-twentieth century?”, rather than, “Why is it as high as it is now?”

<<On your assertion that you do not agree that the world is going to pot, "see above.">>

This is the slippery slope fallacy. That makes three fallacies from you now.

<<My premise is, and always has been, that the rising incidences of serious crime in the western world is a consequence of three factors…>>

Yes, and for the second time now, I have already addressed this at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310115 and http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310194. I’m still awaiting your response there too. Not just a rehashing of the claim.

<<"There is absolutely no doubt, that the increased level of TV viewing, is correlated to the increasing acceptance of aggressive attitudes and increased aggressive behaviour.">>

I agree, and even touched on this at http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=17534#310115.

<<I don't know why you even bother to deny that ethnic crime is a primary reason why crime today is so much higher than when there were no gun restrictions at all.>>

You haven’t yet demonstrated that ethnic crime is a primary reason for any rise. Perhaps you could start by pointing out the flaws in the article I linked to regarding this (http://aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/tandi_pdf/tandi167.pdf).

Continued…

…Continued

Clearly you didn’t even read it given this next claim...

<<All you are doing is destroying your own credibility with any readers who pick up a newspaper or watch the TV news every day.>>

Oh, and such a reliable medium the media is, too, with its over-reporting on (specifically) violent crime, for the purpose of attracting readers/viewers, to the detriment of any other crime reporting.

<<Now, we were discussing kidnapping, and that term usually denotes the forcible abduction of a person for the purpose of forcing a relative to pay a ransom.>>

Not according to the ABS: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/cfi/101-120/cfi103.html

So your points with regards to kidnapping are irrelevant.

<<Ummm, no. That is the first time I have ever seen you admit that.>>

Ummm, no. The two discussions in the links I referred to were specifically in regards to the reasons for the higher crime rates observed among some immigrant groups. Why would I try to explain something that I denied?

<<AJ's premise that ethnicity and crime are not linked…>>

That depends on what you mean by “linked”. They would be linked to the extent that the higher crime rates amongst some groups would be slowing down the decline in crime by an exceptionally small extent.

<<...the idea of widespread ethnic crime is just a manifestation of media sensationalism, is more worthy of hilarity than serious consideration.>>

No, not just media sensationalism. If you’d stop repeating yourself, we might actually get to the other reasons for such perceptions sometime this year.

<<It is a scientific fact that violent media and real life violence are linked.>>

I like how you say “real life violence” instead of “crime” now. You’ve been doing your homework there, at least.

<<Lastly, we have the breakdown in societies most important socialising agent.>>

Well it’s pretty impressive that the overall crime rate has managed to decline despite this then, wouldn’t you say? Or perhaps forcing expecting young people to marry when they fall pregnant, and making it near impossible for them to divorce when they’re unhappy together, is more damaging?

But that’s a whole other story.

I did hope that someone would attempt to refute my conclusion that the Lyndt Cafe siege was proof that the gun laws had failed, but no such luck.

Well, to all of you that cling to the pious and erroneous belief that the gun laws are a success because there have been no more massacres; the attempt by Monis failed because men with guns killed him and for no other reason.

But not 'civilians' with guns Is Mise.

Is Mise, if you regard anything less than 100% success as failure, you're going to be very disappointed.

Do you also oppose our seatbelt laws because people are still injured in car accidents?

Aidan,

There was proof that seat belts saved lives.

There is no such proof that the 'Gun Control'(sic) inspired regulations could ever do anything but implement bans based on emotional over-reaction, hysteria and of course trample on the rights of ordinary citizens who have already been proved to be of good character and crime free.

To say again, there is no comparison between 'Gun Control'(sic) and the reasonable, proven alternative, which is effective, risk-based, regulation and management of firearms that results in evidence-based laws that are effective, efficient and robust.

Good laws enjoy the full support of the public. Good laws do not need to be sold through shameful tactics of fudging numbers and facts. Fear mongering, wedge politics and secret squirrel political deals behind closed doors are not required where laws are based on evidence and fair.

'Gun Control' is the euphemism for the complete disarming of the citizens of the Western democracies. It is about confiscations from ordinary law-abiding citizens by the State under force of arms by the State. 'Gun Control' is totalitarianism.

It is most unfortunate that the debate is framed by secretive 'Gun Control' activists Activists who are cozied up with extremely secretive wealthy individuals and political interests who interfere in the domestic politics of other countries and manipulate behind the scenes, when there are perfectly reasonable, tried and tested OPEN ways of discussing the subject. Quite obviously 'Gun Control' is not the goal so what should be? Why not take the proved risk-assessment route for starters?

How many weapons did Mad Monis have?

How many fully automatic or semi-automatic rifles?
How many handguns?

Bugsy,

Monis had one illegally modified prohibited firearm, a firearm which the gun laws forbade him to have, if the gun laws were effective then he would not have been able to get his hands on one.
The type of firearm that he had is legally available in most other countries that are comparable to Australia and they don't cause any problems.

What ever way you look at it the Lyndt Cafe was an incident waiting to be expanded into a massacre and the gun laws did nothing to stop it.
Monis was stopped by men with guns and many lives saved by the gun.

Licensing the firearms owner is by far the most effective, robust control.

It gives the means to restrict and charge the unsavory few in society who would choose a firearm to commit a crime.

Apart from that, there are perfectly good laws and there always were, that cover crimes against people and property.

I don't get your logic Is Mise.

That firearms laws 'failed to prevent' a potential massacre (i.e. not a massacre)?

What are you arguing? That a relaxation in the firearms laws may have prevented it? How could that possibly be? The NRA would argue that putting the firearms into the hands of civilians would prevent something like that occurring, but that sounds stupid to me.

How do you tell who is the victim and who the perpetrator in a shootout?

Anyway, you might not be arguing that. You might be arguing that the firearms laws didn't prevent him having an illegal weapon, so they obviously don't go far enough!

But I know you aren't arguing THAT.

Monis had one weapon obtained illegally.

Bryant had more than one rapid-fire weapon, obtained legally. How many people you reckon could have died if Monis was able to obtain several rapid-fire weapons legally?

Anyway, you can take potshots at the gun laws and say they are inadequate, but please let us all know what you think should be done about them. You want them relaxed don't you? Let rapid-fire weapons into the country legally and watch the crime rate fall!

I know it's a straw-man, but hey, it sure sounds like what you're saying. Please clarify your position.

Bugsy,

The logic of the antis is that the gun laws have stopped massacres,
My logic is that the Monis affair could have been a massacre.
That the gun laws completely failed to stop him, armed men had to kill him to put a stop to it.
Men armed with guns stopped a potential massacre, not the gun laws and remember the Monis affair rather dampens the oft repeated claim that Australia is a safer place since 1996.
Monis only needed one gun.

What do I think that the laws should be?
Licencing of firearm owners but no petty restrictions and idiotic hoops to jump through.

Aidan,

One can only wish that the gun laws were similar to the seat belt laws.
Your observation on them misses the point that they only apply on public property, the roads, and not right across the board; I recently drove a powerful (capable of over 100 mph) sedan car several hundreds of miles and didn't wear a seat belt, not only that but we got a wave several times from police cars and they took no notice of the fact that we were not wearing seat belts.
Gun laws apply all over the country, public and private property.

Bugsy,

You are saying that Bryant legally obtained and held firearms.

A firearms licence was required prior to 1996.

If he had a licence as you seem to be alleging that would be news to the police. Where is your evidence?

Otherwise how could he have 'legally' purchased a firearm as you say?

You mean 'police officers with guns' right Is mise?

It's nice to be specific. I have no problem with police officers (men or women) stopping criminals with illegal firearms.

The way you word it, it sounds like having more firearms in the general populace would stop criminals, which I think is a bloody stupid idea.

Bugsy,

Pre 1996 the police issued "Possess, Use and Carry" licences in NSW and no one had the faintest idea who had a gun, one person in the Lyndt Cafe with a handgun could have stopped Monis and saved the life of the person that he killed and the life of the unfortunate woman who was killed by police fire.
I'll say nowt about the police actions as we are still awaiting the findings of the Coroner.

It doesn't sound stupid to me, Bugsy.

The elephant in the room which you studiously avoid noticing, is that firearms laws in Australia were once almost non existent, and people did not go around massacring people or holding other people hostage. As a matter of fact, Australia's first hostage situation, involving a young man named Wally Mellish, became such a farce it made the NSW Police Department the laughing stock of the world.

Wally was upset that his girlfriend wanted to break up with him, so he went to her house with a knife and demanded that she take him back, or he would kill her and himself. When the cops turned up, a standoff occurred, because the NSW Police had no experience with hostage situations. Next came the media in force, which prompted no less than the Police Commissioner to turn up to appeal to Wally to come out. Wally demanded that the police give him an Armalite rifle and ammunition which was duly delivered to him. Needless to say, police departments all over the world were laughing their heads off. It was not because the NSW Police were stupid, but they were dealing with a situation which had never experienced before. People in Australia did not behave like that.

In those days, people who's jobs involved the carrying of valuables, or large amounts of cash, were licensed to carry concealed handguns. That included security guards, bookmakers, payroll employees, jewellers, and gun shop owners. Bank tellers in suburban banks were armed and were quite prepared to shoot it out with any stupid bank robber dumb enough to try and rob their banks. Needless to say, bank robberies were rare. Especially since for most of last century, armed robbery was a hanging offence.

There are excellent reasons why retired police officers, retired and serving officers in the armed forces (and senior NCO's), plus war heroes, should be allowed the privilege of carrying handguns. If we don't trust of very best to protect us, then there is something seriously wrong with our value systems.

I see the government is trying harder to permanently ban the Adler L/A 12g Shotgun, from being imported into Australia ? Why, what are the reasons ? There are infinitely more F/A's on the market, just as lethal, just as effective with rapid cycling, as this Turkish mfg'd SG. ? I wonder who's advising government in this instance ?

o sung wu,

Probably that shadowy and unaccountable group Gun Control Australia.
What you say is true the Adler is no faster at delivering multiple shots than many other repeating firearms.
It's just another chance to have a go at firearm owners, maybe Abbott, in banning it, wanted to emulate his one time boss.
I don't think that Tony will achieve the heights of John Howard and have a cartridge named after him, no one would want a round that continually misfires.

Just as an asid, Gun Control Australia was going to be called Australian Gun Control but a keen shooter got in first and registered the name before them.

It would be highly embarrassing given the furore surrounding the ethical problems and alleged conflicted personal and job roles of federal politicians, if any of the shadowy few behind that disclosure-averse gun control outfit turn out to be moonlighting public servants.

Worse if they are trying to serve two masters, especially if they are linked with domestic political interests or some overseas organisation, as some allege.

It is outrageous and unethical that some media outlets and particularly the taxpayer-funded ABC are giving podiums and free publicity to a shadowy 'gun control' crew without giving the public full disclosure detailing specifically who they are, what membership they have in Australia and what domestic and international political interests and organisations are linked with them and the nature of any support.

Australians need to be aware that they live in what is now a hotly contested area of the Globe and the number of jealous eyes observing the agricultural land and other resources are increasing. Australians are far too naive and trusting in 'some else' watching and protecting their liberty.

There should be very deep concern where any international private interests, organisations or other countries seek to interfere in Australia's domestic politics and justifiable outrage where they are doing it in secret.

The author of the article, a Labor politician, levels criticism at the NRA who are public in their opposition to Oz politicians like John Howard telling the US how to conduct its affairs.

However the author is silent about the shadowy influences, domestic and international, and probably some activist politicians too that are behind the very flawed thrust for 'gun control' in Australia.

The Australian public are not even being permitted to know what PUBLIC money, other resources and support are being directed to those secret squirrel 'gun control' activists, whoever they are. Are they interfering in other countries and using Australia as a base?

Again, who knows, but the public SHOULD be informed of every detail about the hidden figures behind 'Gun Control'(sic) that rationalises its totalitarian aim of disarming the Australian civilian population (who are licensed, law-abiding and are only about lawful ownership and use), by deliberately conflating those responsible law-abiding citizens with the few criminals who offend.

To say again, there is no comparison between 'Gun Control'(sic) and the reasonable, proven alternative, which is effective, risk-based, regulation and management of firearms that results in evidence-based laws that are effective, efficient and robust.

Good laws enjoy the full support of the public. Good laws do not need to be sold through shameful tactics of fudging numbers and facts. Fear mongering, wedge politics and secret squirrel political deals behind closed doors are not required where laws are based on evidence and fair.

'Gun Control' is the euphemism for the complete disarming of the citizens of the Western democracies. It is about confiscations from ordinary law-abiding citizens by the State under force of arms by the State. 'Gun Control' is totalitarianism.