Back in the 40s & 50s, before myxomatosis Australians ate a lot of Rabbits. Butchers carried & displayed them. My mother tells of "rabbitos" driving a horse & cart around Balmain, [Sydney suburb] & elsewhere selling dressed rabbits.

I was about 11 years when I was allowed the family 22 to go & shoot dinner in the paddocks around Bathurst. If we were going down by the river, where the soil was sandy & soft we would take a mattock to dig out the burrows instead of the 22. That is what a rifle was, a tool like the mattock, for harvesting dinner.

I also carried a hunting knife on my belt, to butcher & clean the rabbits, most did, but no one would ever think of using their knife as a weapon, the public would have dame near killed anyone who did. About half the cost of the new bike I bought myself aged 12 came from the sale of rabbit skins.

We never heard of knives or guns used as weapons in civilian life, the use today can be put down to migration & certain ethnic preferences for the use of such as weapons in preference to fists to settle arguments. The old controlled punch up out the back of the pub was the Ozzie way, with a ring formed of cheering spectators.

This weapon culture has now percolated down to to the more violent Ozzie youth of today, the ones who's stomach would churn if offered rabbit to eat, but think nothing of sticking a knife in someone elses stomach.

David Leyonhjelm claims that several academic studies suggest that Australia’s gun control laws had no effect on crime rates. He doesn’t cite or reference any one of them. In any event, crime rates are affected by lots of factors other than access to guns, and except for gun-related crimes they are largely irrelevant.

David Leyonhjelm claims to respect facts not emotion. Here are some relevant statistics. Unlike Leyonhjelm, I’ll even provide sources.

In the 10 years up to the government tightening gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, Australia averaged 575 gun deaths a year, or 3.4 deaths per 100,000 people. In the 10 years to 2019, we averaged 216 gun deaths a year, or 0.9 per 100,000 people.

In 2019 the USA recorded 36,682 gun deaths, or 12.09 per 1,0000 people – more than 10 times the rate in Australia. Vermont, whose example the author would like us to follow, had 10.74 gun deaths per 100,000 people.

Both the number and the rate of gun deaths in the USA have trended upwards in recent years. In Australia they trended down to about 2011 but have since levelled off.

https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/

In Australia mass shootings are very rare – less than one a year on average - and are most often family murder-suicides.

https://www.news.com.au/national/courts-law/inside-nine-of-australias-worst-modern-mass-shootings/news-story/08e777d0678e51fbbb9ba23696aa3256

The USA has recorded 17 mass killings so far in 2023 with a loss of 88 lives.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/mass-shootings-in-u-s-on-a-record-pace-in-2023-so-far

The odds that the absence of mass killings in recent years is a coincidence not a result of changing gun laws are 1 in 200,000

https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2018/03/13/gun-laws-stopped-mass-shootings-in-australia.html

Gun-related death rates among American children and teenagers have risen particularly sharply – from 2.4 deaths per 100,000 in 2019 to 3.5 per 100,000 in 2021.

<https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/06/gun-deaths-among-us-kids-rose-50-percent-in-two-years/>

Firearms are now the leading cause of death among American children, exceeding motor vehicle and other injuries.

https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/issue-brief/child-and-teen-firearm-mortality-in-the-u-s-and-peer-countries/

I was never a great fan of John Howard, but will always admire his courage and conviction in reforming Australia’s gun laws

I’m waiting for a PM to reform the mentality of the indoctrinated leftist Australian which would prove the greatest life saver of all !

ttbn,
Many murders in Australia are not committed by Australians !

Why is that, whenever the idea of Australian's having more guns is discussed, its always assumed by those of a certain leaning that we'll become the US? Why couldn't we become Switzerland?

The problem, it seems to me, is that there is a segment who have a very low opinion of their fellow Australians and will always think the worst of them. They ought to be ignored.

Just a couple of points about US gun deaths

* the majority of US gun deaths are suicides. (54%). To make a proper comparison, we really ought to be looking at comparing suicide rates since in Australia those who want to commit suicide generally don't have the option of a gun. FYG, suicide rates in Australia - 12 per 100,000. that changes the comparison dramatically.

* the vast majority of non-suicide gun deaths in the US are gang related. Estimates range from 70% to 85%. That is why gun deaths for teenagers in the US is so high. Australia does have a gang problem but nothing like that of the US and in any case, gangs here don't seem to be having problems accessing illegal guns.

Just taking a few numbers from each location and assuming they tell the whole story is never right. The differences in those societies need to be considered but never are when the anti-gun crowd get on their high horse.

Personally I don't care one way or the other. Even if they were legal I wouldn't have one because I have no need. OTOH I don't mind borrowing a friend's when I occasionally visit his outback property and we go hunting feral pigs, goats and dogs.

Cultural relativism leads ignorant Australians to believe that looser gun laws in Australia would lead to massacres like those in America.

Just because Americans speak English doesn't mean that they are like us culturally.