"Non sequitur" how?

No gun massacres followed

Howard's gun reforms

Yabby,

There have been multiple shootings and involving illegal guns since Howard. Examples,

2007, triple shooting in Melbourne's cbd
http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/a-biker-a-strip-club-and-a-dead-hero/2007/06/18/1182019032653.html

Just considering university shootings, what about:

1999, La Trobe

2002, Monash

Of course Howard's wasted billion dollars of taxpayers' money didn't prevent multiple shootings. Howard prevented a public inquiry that could have been very embarrassing and turned the tragedy into an election winner.

The example of Martin Bryant remains relevant. Bryant, the "pathetic social misfit" (sentencing judge), a man with marginal IQ and a perceived grudge (treatment of father) and known to authorities and treating medical specialists for the better part of his life, acting illegally without a gun licence obtained an illegal firearm that had been turned in to police in an amnesty previously. He also obtained petrol which he also used, but fortunately not in a crowded area (cf Brisbane's Whiskey Au go Go).

J W Howard's later 'initiatives' would have done nothing, zilch, to stop Bryant. Multiple laws, restrictions, bans and penalties didn't stop Bryant. However, had Howard and Labor not stripped mental health of assets and income, forcing mental patients back onto families without adequate supports in place, maybe authorities might have been able to intervene proactively regarding Bryant.

The same is true today, just ask anyone who has tried to get real assistance - not just the kiss-off with a federal government brochure or a link to a website - for anyone suffering from a serious mental health condition and you will be told that there is absolutely nothing available. If the person suffering the condition is over 18, the message is don't bother.

Multiple killing, is not new or unusual and I have given many examples, including the 170 dead by arson in Victoria recently and family murder-suicides.

We have nothing to lose and everything to gain from a national, co-ordinated, professional study of violence. It is overdue and crucial to advising social policy.

Pew Forum has some interesting US information on this issue:

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1858/gun-control-rights-division-demographics-party-ideology-religion-region-tea-party

That was a public opinion poll. More politics in lieu of proper research into the social problems that cause such drivers as social alienation and isolation. Do we know for example why some people see violence as the preferred means of resolving differences of opinion?

What about Australia where a student known to be suffering personal difficulties will inevitably fall through the cracks of a grossly inadequate, poorly directed and just plain broken help system? Fact is, politics is at the root of the problem and it is just as impossible to get the so-called helpers, counsellors and co-ordinators to eschew their territorial infighting to achieve improvement as it is to get cynical politicians to plan beyond the next poll.

What could government have banned to prevent arsonists killing over 170 people in Victoria recently, or the mother who stabbed her children and set fire to the house killing four?

As I said earlier, just ask anyone who has tried to get real assistance - not just the kiss-off with a federal government brochure or a link to a website - for anyone suffering from a serious mental health condition and you will be told that there is absolutely nothing available. If the person suffering the condition is over 18, the message is don't bother.

As for guns, most people killed by guns in Australia are shot by police and easily 80% of them are suffering from a mental condition at the time. The legal police automatic Smith & Wesson .40cal. solves the problem of lack of mental health resources,

"Most people shot dead by Victorian Police have been mentally ill, research has found.

The study of 48 police shootings found more than 87 per cent of victims had schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses."
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/police-shootings-link-to-mentally-ill-20100513-v1rw.html

We have nothing to lose and everything to gain from a national, co-ordinated, professional study of violence. It is overdue and crucial to advising social policy.

Cornflower <"We have nothing to lose and everything to gain from a national, co-ordinated, professional study of violence. It is overdue and crucial to advising social policy."

I absolutely agree Cornflower.
We should start with tightening up the gun laws, and removing the bulk of them from ordinary citizens and making it almost impossible for anyone to obtain one, so that no mentally ill person can get their hands on a gun and go out and knock off multiple lives.

There is nothing to stop trigger-happy individuals who 'legally' own or go out to buy, a gun, one day becoming mentally ill is there?

We can't do a hell of a lot about matches or cigarette lighters (arsonists), or knives, or petrol, or cars, or any other potentially lethal 'weapon'.

We can, however, do something about the number of guns in our country, which after all, serve no useful purpose other than when used by military, police or farmers.

suzeonline and cornflower

I agree with cornflower that we need to pay attention to the myriad causes of violence and mental illness in our community, and I am not too sure anyone but scared politicians and uninterested 'public' would disagree.

However, if that were a serious enquiry, it would undo completely the current economic paradigm that causes so much angst, as Squeers likes to point out from time to time.

I also agree with suzeonline that the mere 'hankering' for ownership of lethal weapons is not a good enough excuse for vast numbers of Australian people holding them.

But I do not see the need to confuse the two hopes in this thread.

Just because no one wants to enquire into mental illness is no reason to continue allowing guns in the community.

Just because there are far too many guns around is no reason not to support a full scale enquiry into the dysfunctional nature of our economic and social model.

But, maybe part of the reason some people hanker for guns so much, is because they are mentally 'ill' and scared, to say nothing of being scarred, of, from and by, the economic and social system we have built?

I have just read the most entertaining, and pathetically sad, book about guns and America and I do suggest people try to read it, 'Deer hunting with Jesus':
http://www.amazon.com/Deer-Hunting-Jesus-Dispatches-Americas/dp/030733936X

I think Cornflower will revel in some of the interesting pro-gun 'facts' the author offers, but there are plenty of dark aspects to gun ownership raised therein too.