Yabby,

Entry level gun safes were never as dear as $400, but like your claim that a gun safe is also required for ammunition it is your anecdote, your story (but the regulations say different).

Similarly, referring to another of your anecdotal stories, you have yet to explain precisely why available law at the time couldn't deal with the "whole lot of 'country people'" who in your "dark days" made a habit of getting drunk and "shooting off the back of utes". Yet you would have us believe that Howard's buy-back "cleaned up a lot of them". How? As if a country cop wouldn't have snapped up all of their guns and bounced them into court, what a story.
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=4217&page=28

On our farm and the surrounding district there were never were problems like that (and a number plate to the police would have fixed it), more like town people dumping cats, letting their dogs loose at night to worry stock and tourists in hire campers filling the public toilets with their rubbish. I guess it takes all sorts and you can't blame the substantial majority who do the right thing by the few who will not, despite laws and penalties.

Years of research have failed to find any practical positive outcome from Howard's buy-back and regulations and it will stand as a monumental waste of public money. The regulations were poorly targeted and are are littered with weak, redundant controls, not surprising given the lack of a competent risk analysis. States like WA have been slow to develop computer systems (police probably have better things to do like chasing criminals). However, if Howard rocks your boat so be it I guess and it did win an election for him.

The public has a right to expect evidence-based policy, robust measurement of results proof that value for money is being obtained. That should apply to all legislation.

Reducing violence should be the goal, not political diversions like 'gun control'. The government should grasp the nettle by instituting a national study of violence, co-ordinated and conducted by properly trained professionals.

http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/01/18/ac.kids.guns.new.law.cnn?iref=allsearch

Cornflower, I watched this today, on CNN. Something like 5000
kids are injured or killed in the US, by guns in the home. Now
that fanatical gun lobby want to jail doctors who ask kids about
guns in the home. Gun fruitloops are seemingly never satisfied.
Its got to be bigger, longer, more dangerous. The Howard gun
buyback ended the discussion on guns here, we did not become another
US. Hooray to that.

If you bother to read my posts, you'll find that I was not even a
Howard fan. But I was overwhemingly for the gun buyback. All those
guns in homes are simply not required.

The gun cabinets that I am quoting, were the ones sold here, in this
town, by farm supplies stores. They were around the 375$ mark,
then you needed somewhere to lock up your bullets. Bogans with
guns would think twice, before paying that.

In the 10 years leading up to Port Arthur, 112 people were killed
in Australia in 11 mass shootings. There have been none since.

Removing all those automatics and semi automatics, clearly made
sense and the Australian public seemingly agrees with me.

Bad luck for you Cornflower :)

I'm no Howard fan

But he did the right thing in

Buying back the guns

Congrats Yabby, on the subject of gun ownership and control, I think you have made a very strong case :)

Thank you for explaining alot of things I didn't really know about regarding guns.

Now I can go on being an anti-gun advocate with much less 'emotional' ideas, and more informed ideas.

Shintaro, am loving your no-nonsense, minimalist style on OLO :)

Cheers,
Suze.

Yabby, "In the 10 years leading up to Port Arthur, 112 people were killed in Australia in 11 mass shootings. There have been none since."

We haven't had any Panthers in the back yard either.

But you are excluding for instance, multiple murders such as the more recent Melbourne gangland murders simply because all did not occur at once.

On the other hand arsonists murdered 170 people in Victoria just two years ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7878106.stm

That and the examples given previously of murder-suicides involving families demonstrate the obvious limitations of blaming multiple killings on simplistic causes, for instance a "gun culture". Mass murder only takes an evil will and opportunity. Attempted risk avoidance through bans and restrictions doesn't work.

Government is always enthusiastic to accept a simplistic, convenient explanation rather than allow public inquiries and professional research, which can get out of hand. Howard moved smartly to block the public inquiry that should have been conducted into the Port Arthur slayings and ensured that buildings were quickly removed.

The limited research done overseas on multiple murderers has found multiple homicide isn't a recent development and offenders may share some shared characteristics. Further study is needed.

'Criminologist Fox speculates that the increasing popularity of workplace killings, and public shootings generally, may be partly due to decreasing economic security and increasing inequality. America increasingly rewards its winners with a disproportionate share of wealth and adoration, while treating its losers to a heaping helping of public shame.

“We ridicule them. We vote them off the island. We laugh at them on ‘American Idol,”’ Fox said.

But there has also been an erosion of community in America over the past half-century, and many scholars believe it has contributed to the rise in mass shootings.

“One would think that there’s some new component to alienation or isolation,” said Jeffrey S. Adler, a professor of history and criminology at the University of Florida.'
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18249724/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

There is nothing to be lost and potentially a lot to be gained from funding nationally coordinated research into violence to advise future social policy.

Cornflower <"There is nothing to be lost and potentially a lot to be gained from funding nationally coordinated research into violence to advise future social policy."

I absolutely agree. However, I imagine there is already plenty of evidence and research from the police and government departments that violence happens in our society?

How much more 'research' do we actually need?

We could make a really good start in decreasing the violence, by reducing the number of unnecessary guns in the community though.