In 1996, his first year as Prime Minister, John Howard tightened Australia’s gun laws, following the Port Arthur massacre.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/a-shot-at-safety/2006/04/27/1145861484114.html?page=fullpage

16 years on, can we see a difference?

< Resoundingly, yes. In the decade up to and including Port Arthur, Australia experienced 11 mass shootings. In these 11 events alone, 100 people were shot dead and another 52 wounded. In the 16 years since 1996 and the new gun laws, not one mass shooting has occurred in Australia. >

Meanwhile, in the US……

Your thoughts…

Luddy old mate, I thought you wanted to keep the population down.

This is yet another example of how our laws are there to control the 1%, who do the wrong thing, rather than allow the 99% to enjoy their lives without constant governance from big brother.

Guns don't kill people.

This is what I love about this forum. First, I thought 'you know, Ludwig is right!'. Then my thoughts were disrupted by a belly laugh as I read Hasbeen's reply. Not that I think with my belly.

Back on topic, though, I tend to agree. I had my doubts at first, but was quite young and easily swayed by the anti-establishment press. I know that there are certain people in our society for whom guns are necessary, and I respect their right to carry firearms. I still don't understand, though, why semi-automatic weapons were so necessary.

There's always the argument that criminals don't respect the law and gun controls will only take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens who need them, either for their work or for their protection. But at the end of the day, it is now much harder to get my hands on a gun if I go all loco and want to kill a few people. That can only be a good thing, if you ask me.

If you could find one thing Ludwig that Howard got right, this was probably it. It may have even been for the right reasons for once, instead of some pure ideological or political form of motivation.

Beyond that Ludwig, when comparing ourselves with the U.S. situation, one would have to say that the U.S. wasn't really comparable with Australia in lots of other ways, before Howard, but after, it was, and still is, and those ways have detracted from the purity of our democracy and the balance that existed in our economy. Howards main achievement was the redistribution of the countries wealth to the upper middle (his constituent )class.

Changes to cross media ownership laws by Howard (for 1), has changed our political landscape, shifting power from the public to the private sector. Those with enough financial grunt to control the flow of information, now control and manipulate/inspire the public's imagination, instead of balance being guaranteed by edict, a right for all, we now now find public media so underfunded, that their news service largely repeats feed from other commercial sources, lacking any funding to produce or supply their own information or entertainment.

For these things alone, we can thank John Howard, and without having the time to go into the detail Ludwig , it goes without saying that their is plenty more.

Be grateful we are not America, and be grateful Howard acted as he did.
His party if it continues to be lead in its current direction may change all that.
We however have disarmed, as it should be,many.
But criminals in increasing numbers are using guns we once never saw here.

Rehctub,

You're right. Guns don't kill children: - Children kill children.

I totally agree with Ludwig.
I believe the two best things about the Howard era were the gun laws and the GST.
I don't have a lot of good to say about him, but for those two things, I thank him.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

Gun Law is needed but not as many would want a total ban. I can't see any justification for high powered automatic weapons in the recreational arena. For self defence in the bush or for target shooting or vermin control any ordinary gun will totally suffice in all but extreme circumstances.
The fact that some morons can procure an arsenal is not the moron's fault.
The other fact is that you can't legislate against stupidity & insanity. But, if we were to keep the academics out of everyday life policy making we would achieve sensible policies towards a better society.
Most suicides by gun aren't brought on by the weapon, they're brought on by academic based bureaucracy making life unbearable for sane people.

Former Prime Minister Howard definitely did the right thing in seeking to control guns in Australia. But it seems that we are still being flooded by guns sneaking into Australia from overseas illegally. The real problem is the international manufacture and trade in offensive weapons. Until this is controlled by international multilateral means then the problem will persist. We need more effective international controls to limit the manufacture and trade in guns, as part of multilateral disarmament.

Crikey, this hang-up about academics that you have Indi, and Hasbeen as well, really is unfortunate. Of course there are going to be views from some academics that you’ll disagree with, but to lump all academics into the loopy la la bucket is just going a might too far.

Thank goodness for academics! Where would we be without them? Where would we be without experts in all sorts of fields, who can advise our decision-makers and give them a much more informed basis on which to make all manner of decisions?

Where would we be if all decisions were made purely by people in government, with very limited knowledge let alone expertise in the fields in which they are making important decisions, without consultation of experts, and with only the vested interests of one or two lobby groups influencing them!

Again, thank goodness for academics, and for those in government who bother to consult them.

.

Ooow, I think I’m aiding and abetting the hijacking of my own thread here!! ( :>|

So um, in an attempt to get back on-topic::

Indi, do you know to what extent academia was or wasn’t involved in Howard’s decision to implement the gun buy-back scheme, or in the broader arena of fire-arm access in Australia?

Guns in the wrong hands do kill people and if they're
made as easily available as they are in the US - then
of course there's going to be problems.

I am grateful to Mr Howard for his legislating stronger
gun control laws in this country. It was a wise move.
And I'm sure that it did not have a huge impact on
responsible hunters.

Lexi mate, that is not true.

I was given my first gun at about 10. All my mates had rifles. We went rabbiting, & carried our rifle over our shoulder, but rarely used them. Most rabbits were caught by digging them out of their burrows.

We rarely used the rifles, a magazine of 8 rounds could last a year. The beauty of having a rifle was that as a common place item, we felt nothing special about using them.

Today there is a mystique about guns that makes just a few of them much more dangerous than the many ever were. They attract the wrong people with that mystique.

We will never again be able to raise an easily trained milita, as was used on the Kokoda track in WW11. It takes months to get todays kids able to hold a rifle, let alone hit something with one.

I think Howard was great, but taking guns off honest people, rather than locking the nut cases up for ever, was his worst mistake.

Lexi, the laws did have a huge impact on responsible hunters, as not only did they now require a liciense but a condition of getting a liciense was have permission to shoot somewhere, othrer than a registered range.

I don't mean to be racist but I would bet there has been a spike in gun related crimes that coincides somewhat with our push for multi culturallsim.

Also, auto weapons are illegal full stop. As a land owner I am entitled to have a semi auto, which I don't, as a timber cutter, I am also entitled to carry a side arm, which I dont.

When I was a kid, around 17" my brother and I both had loaded guns, sitting on the gun rack on the rear window of our cars, and thought nothing of it. Nor did the police for that matter.

My son now uses my guns, but under strict supervision and the very first thing I explained to him was the importance of gun safety.

Another problem is that all criminals can rightly assume that most residential areas have no guns, which makes easy picking for them.

Of cause I would never shoot anyone, but if they threatened my family, while I was present, I may well, but I would never shoot to kill, except in very extreme circumstances.

Dear Hasbeen,

We have done this conversation before but it is worth a timely rehash.

It is a sobering fact that even many 10 year olds nowadays have spent literally 100s if not thousands of hours in gaming situations and making 1000's of 'kills', many of them head shots. This is similar technology used to train US troops, in fact some of it is paid for by the military and made accessible to the public.

In the Winnenden school shooting in Germany a 17 year old student shot and killed 16 people including 9 students at his former school. The majority of these were killed by head shots with a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol which is actually an extraordinary feat of marksmanship. He had been a avid player of Counter Strike and was playing Far Cry, another first person shooter game the day before the real shootings.

“In the study "Boom, Headshot!": Effect of Video Game Play and Controller Type on Firing Aim and Accuracy" researchers had 151 college students shoot at mannequins, as a test of aiming accuracy.  Each student was ordered to shoot 16 bullets at the target, and some students were first prepped with 20 minutes of gaming in a violent video game.”

“Students who were prepped with the gun controller hit the target 33 percent more often, on average, and hit "headshots" 99 percent more often.”
http://www.dailytech.com/Study+Violent+Video+Games+Prep+Gamers+for+RealLife+Headshots/article24742.htm

I would say without a shadow of a doubt that we have a more highly trained, desensitised, teenage populace than at any time in our history so if the need to arm them arose I suggest they would bring skills that would serve us well.

However there is no way a sane person would want a population of highly trained teenagers having any easier access to weapons than what we have in this country.

I would love to return to a time when kids, as I did, could enjoy their guns, but until we marry it with a complete ban on first person shooting games I'm not having a bar of it and neither should you.

Steely I don't know where your statistics come from, no doubt some fine academic establishment, but I am talking horses mouth, from real life. I am also talking real guns, that go bang emitting a projectile, not an electronic impulse.

I accept there are many marksmen who have polished their skill with electronic training aids, but many gamers have never actually touched a gun.

My son is currently conducting introductory training courses for officer cadets, before they go to Duntroon. He had a group in fits recently describing the antics of some of these.

I could be wrong, but I would have thought that those who are going to sign on the dotted line & join up to become defence force officers would be the type likely to have played bang bang games.

He suggests that many are quite loath to get really close to a bang bang gun. Many when shooting prone, would not pull the butt into their shoulder, instead digging it into the mound under their shoulder. As they could then not use the sight properly, some did not get a single hit on a target all day.

This was the boys, he said, the girls are even worse, except for one nurse. He reckoned she would be able to drive a nail at 100 yards, & was the only one in the last four groups he would like to fight beside.

He is not the kindest of instructors, & if he had his way, less than half of them would ever experience the hazing endured in the first year of Duntroon

Csteele,
Using Gun Controllers would skew the study since it replicates the action of firing a pistol, few gamers use those peripherals and they only work with a very small number of titles, military training simulations use this technology to train soldiers identify targets and to fire their weapon reflexively.
The most common controllers used by gamers are dual stick joypads which are held in the lap with both hands or the keyboard and mouse, this set up is nothing like firing a weapon and the games themselves do not in any way realistically represent the firing of real weapons.
Martin Bryant, a man with an IQ of 60 who couldn't even properly maintain a rifle managed to pull off one of the most incredible feats of shooting ever seen, it puts him in the same league as U.S Navy SEAL marksmen or the top shooters from the top counter terrorism squads.
If you have a strong stomach you'll be able to find the police crime scene video of the Broad Arrow Cafe online, watch it, observe how he managed to shoot so many victims in the head and neck in such a short time, you can also see a video shot on the day at Port Arthur which captured the sound of his rapid fire fusilade, bear in mind that every shot heard on the tape represents a precisely aimed headshot, it's astounding.
Video games have nothing to do with these massacres and sometimes people just fluke these incredible feats of marksmanship.

"Guns don't kill people"
Yes, but people with guns kill people.

How right you are, Wobbles.
And I would add, that people with guns can kill LOTS of people.
A nut with a baseball bat or a knife can maybe kill one or two people before he/she is stopped.
A nut with an automatic weapon with a 100 round magazine can kill 12 people and injure 52 in a matter of seconds.
As we've just discovered.
That's the difference.
The nut cases will always be with us; they're part of the human condition.
But the damage they can do can be limited.
And one way is by limiting access to guns, especially high powered, large magazine automatic weapons.
Fortunately here in Australia, we've done that, and we are so much the better off for it.
I really feel for the millions of Americans who really want to see gun control, but are no match for the NRA's well oiled political machine.
Anthony
http://wwwobservationpoint.com.au

Dear Hasbeen,

Just taking that little extra time when reading a post might be useful. The study used real guns and real bullets.

Dear JoM,

Unfortunately 'flukes' seem to abound.

In 1997 14 year old Michael Carneal took a pistol into a prayer meeting and with eight shots hit eight moving targets killing three. Other than a few practice shots he had never fired a real handgun in his life.

Dave Grossman, an army psychiatrist and retired US Army Ranger who studied the case said “Nowhere in the annals of military or law enforcement history, can we find an equivalent achievement.”.

He goes on; “one state police study in an assessment of the accuracy of their officers across several years found that the average officer, in the average engagement, at the average distance of twenty-three feet, hit with 13 percent of the rounds fired.”

This was borne out when the following year four New York City cops, all very experienced, shot at one unarmed Amadou Diallo, firing forty-one bullets from barely fifteen feet away; fewer than half hit their mark.

Grossman writes “Michael Carneal . . . had fired thousands of bullets in the video game “murder simulators.” His superhuman accuracy, combined with the fact that he “stood still,” firing twohanded, not wavering far to the left or far to the right in his shooting “field,” and firing only one shot at each target, are all behaviors that are completely unnatural to either trained or “native” shooters, behaviors that could only have been learned in a video game. . . . These kind[s] of video games provide the “motor reflexes” responsible for over 75% of the firing on the modern battlefield.”

I think I'm happy taking the assessment of an ex Army Ranger as a good reason to stick with my stance.

Butcher,

Not all people kill people. Not all guns are used to kill people. But many people are killed by a combination of guns and people, people using guns to kill other people. Wobbles has got that right as usual.

Occasionally, a person uses his or her car to run someone else down, and in that sense cars kill people: cars in the hands of people.

So yes, guns in the hands of some people, kill other people. And pretty efficiently and quickly too. A bit more so than bare fists alone.

Cheers,

Joe

Joe, while I agree with you, and many other posters, the problem still remains, that being that we introduce laws to control less than 1% of the population, (nutters) while ignoring the rights of the remaining 99%, which are law abiding citizens.

Dear Butcher,

Poppycock.

Lets talk about rights if you like.

The gun buyback scheme impacted less than 200,000 Australians or less than 1% of our population.

The rights of the other 99% of us to not be constantly fearful of or even potentially be involved in a mass shooting in places like Hoddle Street or while holidaying with our families at places like Port Arthur were the ones served by Howard's actions. He recognised it, so should you.

I have owned and used weapons for hunting for over fifty years, I took no pleasure from the killing aspect but thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of hunting in natural surroundings.
So, from a basis of some experience I also support effective gun control if, as it seems, mass murder is eliminated.

Just a word though on behalf of the Americans. They do maintain a sense of balance, they are at "worst" consistent. They not only cultivate a gun culture which which allows for such obscenities as mass murder within their own country but they export the culture by example as well. Thirty-one thousand people die of gunshot wounds each year in America with another sixty-seven thousand being seriously injured.

America is reported to maintain a global military- industrial complex greater than the rest of the world combined with some nine hundred military bases spread around the world. What a waste one might say, but no all is not as it might seem. They maintain a balance, they murder people in other countries as well. Of course their innocent victims are actually only non-people and these actions are justified as collateral damage in the name of security and the priority of American interests. Don't you love them cowboys and boy don't it make you feel safe!

Anthonyve you do realise that GST. only came into existence because de-regulation reduced this country's tax base through the reduction of tarrifs and the loss of income tax from the three hundred odd thousand Australian's who subsequently lost their jobs. Sorry if I harbour a degree of cynicism but somebody commented recently that we had been supporting inefficient and uncompetitive industry and to an extent this would be true. But I ask are we more competitive now given that we are up against the volume of output from Asian free trade zones which employ slave labour at $2 a day?
Den71

DEN71,
You raise perfectly valid points.
I left the military and became a manufacturing executive a bit after the tariff barriers came down so I do not have first hand experience.
I support the GST because it just seems to me to make more sense to tax consumption than to tax effort.
Under an income tax, the harder we work the more tax we pay, which is punishing behaviour we want more of.
Under a GST, we can reduce income tax, and so do less punishing of behaviour we want more of, and tax consumption, over which each person has a degree of control. I can choose to buy a $2000 suit and pay $200 GST or a $200 suit and and pay $20 GST. (Okay, there aren't many $200 suits around, I'll grant you that.)
I know I'm oversimplifying, but with limited space, I'm just touching on why as a matter of principle, I prefer a GST.
I didn't like Howard as a PM and I'm slightly left of centre in my political views, but I do think our gun laws and the GST are the two great legacies he left behind that left Australia a better place than he found it.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.au

If there were too many guns in Denver,then why did not someone have a gun in the audience to stop the assassin? We have strict gun control in Aust,yet in Sydney we have daily driveby shootings by criminals.

Our Govts have always been the perpetrators of mass murder by far.Hitler 6 million Jews.Starlin 20 million Russians.Mao 60 million Chinese.180 million killed WW2.If the the citizens were armed like the USA,then these atrocities would not have happened.

Never trust any Govt.Especially ones controlled by large financial interests.They view the world as been too over populated and destroying their planet.They refer to the masses in their circles as ," Useless eaters".

History repeats in the most unexpected ways.

Arjay,
In order to be irrelevant, it's not necessary to be absurd.
Not one of the governmets you cited meets the criteria required to legitimize the use of the word, 'our'.
They were indeed governments but they weren't 'our' government.
Anthony
http://www.observationpoint.com.a

Anthonyve.Ever heard of the Patriot Act,Preventative Dentention,Legalised assassination,Defence Authorisation Act and now the fact that Obama has control of all media in the USA? We have similar laws here.

See Naomi Wolf's 10 easy steps to fascism.They are they all done bar, "suspend the rule of law." Where is your logic?

Arjay,

"....If the citizens were armed like the USA, then these atrocities would not have happened."

America's gun carnage is one long drawn out atrocity.

Here's an article that examines the deaths of 474 people shot in one week from May 1-7. ("This year more than 30,000 others will share their fate")
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,152220,00.html

"Yet more Americans die of gunshot wounds every two years than have died to date of AIDS. Similarly, guns take more American lives in two years than the entire Vietnam War....."

That's "every two years", Arjay.

"....But in the end, there is a sense of embarrassment, and even shame. How can America think of itself as a civilised society when day after day the bodies pile up amid the primitive crackle of gunfire across the land."

Correction - should be 464 people shot.

csteele, I don't have a problem with gun laws, it's just that they have, in my opinion, gone too far, in that ordinary decent people are denied the right to have a gun.

I can legally, and do, have guns. Why, because I own land. I don't always live there, but I can still have guns.

Now on the other hand, let's say my brother, who doesn't own land, can't have a gun, unless I, or some other land holder give permission to shoot on my land.

Thats where the law is wrong. Recreation shooters should be allowed to have guns, provided they abide by the laws, such as, where and how they are stored, and of cause, where they are discharged.

I'm surprised it took this long for the 'if only other people in the audience had guns' argument to come up.

Let's play that one out. You're in a darkened cinema. Suddenly, someone starts shooting. You pull your gun. So do thirty other people. Which of those people do you shoot? And with thirty guns going off in one cinema, how many more innocent people will be shot?

I'll take my chance with one nutter with a gun, rather than one nutter and a roomful of well-meaning but inexperienced shooters.

Arjay, that's not really true, for example the White Army behaved just as atrociously as the Reds in the Russian civil war and completely alienated the people, the Communist death squads who opposed the Wehrmacht also robbed, raped, tortured and liquidated hundreds of thousands of their own people, the Anarchists and Communists committed horrific atrocities on the "fifth column" in the Spanish Civil War and between the 1960's and the end of apartheid the ANC killed twice as many Black South Africans as the SA Security forces.
You could in theory raise responsible fourth generation armed groups and force detente with a Western style state but merely arming citizenry who are already distrustful of and alienated from each other would be a disaster, as it's proven to be in the U.S, South Africa and elsewhere.

Anthonyve -"I support the GST because it just seems to me to make more sense to tax consumption than to tax effort. Under an income tax, the harder we work the more tax we pay, which is punishing behaviour we want more of."

Fair enough, I agree that on the face of it this appears as a good rational, however I don't recall at the time that it changed the amount of my take home pay. I repeat that rather than reducing existing tax rates the government imposed GST. to make up the shortfall caused by de-regulation. I regret that I cannot substantiate this premise with facts and figures but it is worth noting that the U.K. and N.Z also introduced consumption taxes soon after embracing the tenents of neo-liberal free market ideology.

A more cynical view suggests that the Hawke-Keating regime knew that de-regulation would put many people out of work and so along with tarrif reduction reduce the tax base but that this was of no consequence because ultimately a GST. would be imposed to make up the shortfall.
Den71

Crickey, only away for two days & all these posts ?
Ludwig,
I don't have a hang-up about Academics. In fact I don't think I have any hang-ups at all. Why is pointing out facts a hang-up ? Do you what a hang-up actually is ?
Loudmaouth,
Not all people kill people. Not all guns are used to kill people. But many people are killed by a combination of guns and people, people using guns to kill other people. Wobbles has got that right as usual.
What exactly is then that doesn't include cars in those statistics ? I have yet to hear the do-gooder brigade burr up about cars, after all, they kill & maim more people that just about most civil wars.
For your info, there are more idiots with cars legally on our roads than there are registered gun owners idiots & responsible combined.
get your perspectives right people.

Indi, you wrote::

<< if we were to keep the academics out of everyday life policy making we would achieve sensible policies towards a better society. >>

Sounds like a hang-up to me.

I don’t wish to get offside with you, my good OLO mate, but you have basically condemned all academics as d!ckheads, which really is a tad extreme… and which does suggest a certain degree of hanguppedness!

<< Let's play that one out. You're in a darkened cinema. Suddenly, someone starts shooting. You pull your gun. So do thirty other people. Which of those people do you shoot >>

Interesting thought, Oto.

If other people in the cinema had had guns and they’d felt the need to draw and fire them, they’d be doing it directly because there was someone down the front shooting at them, in this particular instance.

The target would be very clear. There’d be no confusion. No one in the audience would have any doubt that any other shots from within the audience were directed at the gunman at the front, presumably.

If people in the audience had had guns, the outcome could have been very different.

However, I can envisage a very different situation where someone in the audience takes a shot at someone else. The audience is watching the movie, so no one sees who fired the shot. Then some well-meaning person draws his gun, is seen by someone else and promptly shot. The person who shoots is then thought by others to be the gunman and is shot by five other people!

So, the right to bear arms, especially in dark places like cinemas, is fraught with danger.

It may have saved the day in the Century 16 movie theatre in Aurora. But I can’t imagine that it would have a net positive effect in the bigger picture.

Ludwig, thanks for expressing so clearly what I was trying to say in such a muddled way. I'm not sure if my post suggested that I was supporting the right to carry guns - I actually intended the opposite. The 'what if they all had guns' argument is one I've seen when satisfying my guilty pleasure of reading the comments attached to news articles on websites. It's one that has annoyed me for the reasons you addressed in your post.

It's certainly true that, on some occasions, the rules get in the way of a positive (or less negative) outcome. It's certainly true that a well-meaning, gun-carrying private citizen COULD have neutralised the situation quickly; it's also true, though, that the same citizen could have escalated things even further. There are plenty of places I shouldn't go if I don't want to get shot. The streets of my suburb are not (or should not be) among them. We take our chances when we leave our houses; thanks in part to Howard's gun laws, though, the odds are stacked slightly further in our favour.

Ludwig,
The right to bear arms does not automatically mean that everyone carries a gun wherever they go. Well, not in my book anyway. This right means that if you want to go to a shooting event or go Bush or shoot vermin on a big property then you're able to do so without having to be treated like a criminal. If you carry a gun whilst attending a Cinema etc then you should be treated like a criminal because then you are one.
No different to drink driving etc.

basically condemned all academics as d!ckheads,
Ludwig,
Steady on old lad not all, only the majority. By my experience there are more people in our judiciary who'd be less qualified to carry a gun than the average licensed gun user. Just look up the many insane verdicts in many court cases. All Law people came via courtesy of Academia. The odd ones who mange to free themselves from the academic yoke are the good ones we hardly ever get to hear about.

John Howard was right, as Ludwigs first comment stated. Please note that today in the Melbourne Age (1-8-2012) John Howard has another erudite article spelling out more detail why.

"Brothers in arms ,yes, but the US needs to get rid of it guns".

An excellent ending to this discussion I think.

Thanks PEST.

Here’s the article. Well worth reading:

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/brothers-in-arms-yes-but-the-us-needs-to-get-rid-of-its-guns-20120731-23ct7.html

Yep. Howard was right.

And amazingly, Labor has finally realised this:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/immigration/labor-caucus-backs-expert-panel-on-asylum-policy/story-fn9hm1gu-1226449423972

While Howard did the right thing with respect to onshore asylum seeking, he certainly didn’t with fly-in visa overstayers and asylum seekers, and I was always very strongly opposed to his policy of very high immigration.