OTB,

Funny how the countries with high homicide rates were either very poor or swamped with guns.

The EU countries and others with strict gun control measures recorded homicide rates of about 1/4 of that of the US.

Thank you Shadow Minister. A voice of reason at last.
I think I am probably too passionate about banning all personal use guns... but there is nothing wrong with wishing for less injury and death by guns in an increasingly violent world.

'"Guns don't kill children, Children kill children."

and in the womb butchers kill children.

Shadow Minister,

Once again, stereotyping in lieu of argument. You cherry pick and generalise to arrive at your glib conclusion.

You do not explain for example, why the higher US numbers are attributable to vastly higher crimes rates in the young male African American population and in some poorer districts.

Is it so important to you to defend ex-PM John Howard's failed gun buy-back and white elephant gun registries? Obviously so! Here is Howard's score card,

- A billion dollars plus of taxpayers' money squandered to win and election.
- A smorgasbord of new taxes for legal owners and the ideal environment for unfair trading practices and monopoly in supply and distribution.
- Police commissioners using very broad and poorly drafted delegations to make interpretations and extend regulations without scrutiny.
- Destruction of Australia's small arms manufacturing capacity, including loss of gunsmith skills.
- Wasteful busywork for police handling the mountain of bureaucratic procedures, redundant paper and duplicated weak controls.
- Police recording ordinary citizens as 'persons of interest' on police records.
- Police continuously monitoring ordinary citizens and the power to search the person and vehicle, and the power to conduct random flying inspections within ordinary citizens' homes.

cont..

contd..

Howard's initiatives only affected the 'soft touch', which was ordinary respectable citizens known to be of good character and without criminal convictions. That is, people who can always be expected to comply with laws and get licences, buy legal firearms from legal sources and register them.

It was and it remains political window dressing.

Besides, had Howard done anything to challenge criminals and organised crime with provisions like police inspections in criminals' homes, the Progressive Left and Greens would have been outraged. Howard was strongly opposed to a Royal Commission into the Port Arthur tragedy and his precipitous 'gun control' proposals achieved his purpose of avoiding a review.

The OP proposes a ban on legal firearm ownership in Australia. No argument was put forward outside of the poster's emotional appeal. Like yourself, she has no interest in any national independent university research into violence.

Speaking of which, Howard's wasted billion dollars (well, not wasted for him, it helped him win an election) would have provided for such a study to advise policy, and it would have reinstated some of the mental health facilities that his government and Labor sold off.

OTB,

Bollocks!

I used the link you gave, and compared the homicide rate with countries at similar levels of development, and the contrast was stark. The homicide rate is 4x that of counties in the EU and OECD.

There nothing anywhere that shows that a ready availability of guns reduces crime. While violent crime is predominately higher in countries with guns.