rstuart

"....the pollies got something right for a change."

Not really. For the cost of the $500 million buyback, the annual death rate from gunshot is claimed to have dropped by about 100 - but another claim says that the murder rate has not.

Now, what could our disasterous mental health service do with an extra $500 million?

rstuart. There has been no change. Stick to your original perception that the pollies can never get it right.

Brian Holden, the statistics you quote do seem to say the $500 million didn't change the "big picture", with respect to total deaths anyway. But you can look at it in other ways.

For example, 100 deaths a year is around 1000 since the laws were past. Looking at the stats, the number of gun woundings is about equal to the number of deaths, so that is 2000 deaths and woundings since the laws were past. That means it cost us around $250,000 per prevented death or wounding, and the gift keeps giving. Before the laws were passed we had one mass shooting roughly every 1.5 years. Since the laws were passed we have had none. (That one statistic blows away the "is easy to get guns anyway" argument, doesn't it?)

When you come down to it, we allowed too many guns into circulation. One consequence was mass shootings. Fixing messes like that costs money. They spent the money, and now we have no mass shootings. In 1996 if you had of asked me: "We currently have 1 mass shooting every 1.5 years. If you give me $500 million, I will fix it", I would of looked at you incredulously, said "you want me to give you $500 million for a solution that probably won't work?". But it did work, and I am now happy they pushed it through. I am not a Howard fan, but credit where credit is due - his pig headiness worked that time.

rstuart

I watched the news today. Washington is throwing out all controls on handguns. I have to admit - that sounds scary. These are large caliber, multiple shot and reloadable

The gun I proposed in the article would have to be registered and the recipient would have to have a good reason to get it. And a single shot, small caliber throw-away weapon which needs a separate key to unlock its mechanism is not much of a menace to society. The idea was that if it is pointed a menacing man, he would have to ask himself if the woman was worth haviong a .22 hole in him which he would have to explain to doctor who would then notify the police.

The thing about a gun is that somebody has to intend to fire it. No change in gun laws will add or substract a single person from the number who like the idea of shooting somone.

I need to check, but the fall in gunshot deaths since the gun laws may have already started before the gun laws were introduced and the fall may be in the suicide rate due to the greatly improved early diagnosing of cancer since 1996 [as many sucicides are due to a diagnosis of terminal cancer].

With 3 million gun still in our society and only 640,000 returned, it does not make sense that there should have been any measurable fall in gunshot deaths. My guess is that the fall in deaths since 1996 has little to do with the new laws.

Brian you are way behind. The claimed savings in lives were suicides, and they were initially MORE than substituted with hangings. Very thin evidence that any significant number of lives were saved at all, and some may have been lost as a result in unexpected ways.

So the 500 million to save 100 lives, or whatever, is more like we pay 100 people to kill themselves with a rope instead, so Australians could have moral self-ragard for 'doing swomething' to avoid being 'like America', in any case a ridiculous cliche.

In the process, harassing and over-regulating about a million other people, with many symbolic expressions of distrust and contempt, is just a bonus because after all, its the Gun Lobby's fault that these massacres happen, right? Or is it? http://www.class.org.au/ideas-kill.htm

The falls indeed started many years before the buyback. No evidence of a rate change, except in papers by anti-gun campaigners including Simon Chapman and Philip Alpers.

Suicide substitution confirmed in a paper by de Leo et al 2003 - which was missed by Leigh and Neill who claimed they had demonstrated saved lives from the buyback.

Brian: "the recipient would have to have a good reason to get it."

No they don't. According to your article, an acceptable reason is "I might, at some stage in the future feel threatened, and I wish to protect myself." Everyone qualifies.

Brian: "The idea was that if it is pointed a menacing man, he would have to ask himself if the woman was worth haviong a .22 hole in him which he would have to explain to doctor who would then notify the police."

But since he would have no trouble getting a gun himself, he could approach her with a gun drawn, and if she threaten to shoot him he could shoot her first. Problem solved! Don't you just love these hypotheticals, eh? Personally, I would prefer if we came up with a solution that reduced the number of people who got shot.

Brian: "the fall in gunshot deaths since the gun laws may have already started before the gun laws were introduced".

I don't know either. It seems unlikely, given the you said earlier the total number of murders hasn't changed. Others think it was the reduction in guns:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17170183

Repeating what I said earlier: guns haven't been banned. I have a 2 friends who live in suburbia who have 50 guns between them, stored in a home made gun safe. Anyone who uses a gun regularly for recreational or work reasons can get any number of the things. What is your problem? Is it that $500 million is too much eliminating mass shootings? Is it you would prefer to live in a gun culture like the US or Iraq has? I still don't get it.