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.