Adam Sesslar on Fox News

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• Overall, the number of victims of homicide has been in decline since 1996. In 1996,
there were 354 victims of homicide in Australia compared with 260 in 2010. This is
a decrease of 27 percent.
• Since 1996, assault has been the category of violent crime with the greatest number
of victims annually. In 2010, 171,083 people were the victim of assault in Australia.
• The number of victims of robbery in 2010 is the lowest on record since 1996, with
14,582 victims. Robbery victim numbers peaked in 2001 with 26,591 victims.

Source: Australian Crime, Facts & Figures, 2011, Australian Institute of Criminology.

Here is a graph of total gun deaths In Australia from 1986-2010, from gunpolicy.org, note the downward trend. Full disclosure:
GunPolicy.org is hosted by the Sydney School of Public Health, the University of Sydney.

I took a screenshot but it came out all squished...


Their statistics are from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Australian Institute of Criminology, you can click any point on the graph for more information about that year and a direct link to the ABS/AIC data.

 

It would seem that we were mistaken on there not being mass shootings since the Port Arthur massacre: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting

Homicide rates have continued their decline over the past several decades, but overall violent crime has increased. The same Australian Crime Institute that you linked to also shows that assaults have increased by 40% and sexual assaults have increased by 20% since the gun ban.
Source: http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current series/tandi/341-360/tandi359/view paper.html

 

This came up in another thread on this topic, for the purposes of classification, a massacre was defined in the Harvard study as having four or more fatalities, the Monash University Shooting had two fatalities.

 

That's not the point though, the point is that you still have madmen roaming the streets (or in this case, college campuses), going on killing sprees, even with your gun ban. This is all just a distraction from the real issue though, which is freedom.

 

Why can nobody see that rap music is the real culprit here? Where is the rap control lobby? If the kids stopped listening to that infernal racket, they would spend more time on wholesome activities, as well as wearing their trousers at the appropriate height.

 

If a 'whatever it takes' approach is used here, shouldn't every possible culprit - including rap music and video games - be looked at Harbs? Surely listening to 'Cop Killer' over and over "cannot possibly do your brain a heck of a lot of good."

Here's a 2008 study from the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research which finds that "the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates."

http://www.ssaa.org.au/capital-news/2008/2008-09-04_melbourne-uni-paper-Aust-gun-buyback.pdf

 

Wouldn't that be like treating the symptoms instead of the problem? Rap music glorifies violence, rape and gangs; but instead of banning rap music, shouldn't we try to change the hearts and minds of the kind of people who think this way, including those who produce rap music?

 

I can get pretty strident from time to time as well, in the manner ArcticDaishi mentioned. But I'm trying to pull back once I start seeing liberals in my breakfast cereal!

That said, IMHO, liberals are to the left of the political spectrum as devised by the French government, with those in favor of the current social order sitting on the right, and those in favor of change on the left. Therefore, to me (on my strident days), leftists are destructive individuals who wish to destroy the institutions that keep civilization from being smashed into smithereens. Needless to say, I try to pull back from that sort of polarized thought, but it's there from time to time.

On the concept of guns, as I have mentioned before, the hullaballoo about them lies in the great danger they represent to some people. These people, who tend to be liberals, see the removal of guns from the population at large as a valid and defensible reaction to the violence that plagues the USA. They think that's what governments should do, and that the dismantling of the institution that allows guns to be held by private citizens is a worthy goal.

Conservatives focus on the millions of law abiding gun owners. They do not blame the object, but the user of the object. They support the existing institution and do not think that a change in it is a worthy goal.

Me, I think there is validity on both sides. However, I object to the idea that a gun is like the One Ring, magically corrupting people and changing them from law abiding citizens into psychotic killers. I think a better use of government resources is ensuring that mentally unbalanced people are identified as soon as possible, and then treated appropriately. Now that implies funding health care, which is a change of institutions currently in place in the US and thus more of a liberal concept.

I will never accept the idea that taking guns away from people like my father, my friends, and the millions of owners who have not committed a crime will solve the violence that is occurring. Seriously. If Timmie shoots a spitball in class, is the solution to take paper away from everyone? NO! The idea is to take Timmie outside and punish him for what he did with the paper. This too goes to the liberal mindset, which to me seems to be to make a million excuses for little Timmie rather than hold him accountable for what he did. That's "new", avant garde thinking, and I go more for the old conservative institution of demanding certain socially accepted behaviours from people.

Now I acknowledge that there are some other ways to cast the con/lib dichotomy, one of which is the amount of government intrusion into the lives of citizens. I also acknowledge that some lib and con positions are really hard to reconcile with their ostensible principles. But when it comes to guns, that's my position, and I don't think its unreasonable to allow law abiding people to keep their property.

 

It's been a long time since my statistics courses, but even a casual glance at every graph charting deaths over time from guns included with that research (which stretch as far back as 1900, but only as far forward as 2000/2001/2002/2003) shows a downward trend at the tail.
I had a look at the most recent version of the research, as found in:
Contemporary Economic Policy; Jan2010, Vol. 28 Issue 1, p65-79, 15p, 3 Charts, 4 Graphs, publisher, the experiment still relies on data that only reaches the first couple of years of the 2000s.
While the original conclusions were that the null hypothesis (Firearms buyback would not have an effect on rates of gun deaths) was sustained, the statistical gymnastics that were required, leading to lower than usual confidence intervals (90% as opposed to 95%) as well as the miniscule values in play (page 8, deaths per 100,000 ranging from 0 to 2), as well as the fact that there is another 9-10 years of data out there where the downward trend in gun deaths continued that isn't included, doesn't lend a lot of weight to the study's claims if made today.

 

Rand just released a report on the correllation between violence and child behavior. Interesting report. Not really about media violence.

http://www.rand.org/health/feature/children_violence_exposure.html

If you want to read it you'll have to buy it.

 

I'd be happy if we just change the way they wear their trousers. And probably their caps as well. And use real instruments in their music.

 

I do not own a gun. I have never owned a gun. And I do not foresee any set of circumstances in which I would want to purchase a gun. However, having grown up in a rural area in which hunting was a popular activity, I know a LOT of gun owners.

While no number I can list here would pass as anything other than anecdotal evidence, it seems far beyond coincidental that ALL of the gun owners I'm aware of are responsible gun owners. I know exactly zero irresponsible gun owners. I know exactly zero people who have used a gun to commit a crime. I know of exactly zero people who have used a gun to commit an act of violence against another perosn (deer? - yes, but not people).

It seems to me - and again I admit this is anectodal - seem to be the type of people who use guns responsibly and there's no reason they should not be allowed to own one. As a result, I'm not in favor of instituting any type of a ban on firearms. I don't think that's the answer.

Having said that I have a real problem when people start pointing a finger at video games and movies as a possible culprit. If placing restrictions on REAL guns isn't the answer, how is placing restrictions on FAKE guns the answer? And I say this as someone who doesn't own any FPS games, nor as someone who finds such games to be entertaining. Just because you don't like something isn't a reason for it to be illegal for others to have or enjoy. I also have a hard time buying that playing a FPS game is going to give you any real knowledge of how to properly operate a real gun in the first place.

 

And I get that too. I'm just saying that even if you are desensitized, that is just one in a whole bunch of other steps that you'd have to progress through before you start shooting up a room/movie theater/whatever full of people. You'd actually have to get the gun/ammo, learn how to use it, etc. Seeing pixelated carnage is pretty far down on the list for me.

 

I seem to recall that I mentioned this before in a related thread from the distant past and had it debunked, but I'll repeat it for the sake of discussion: after playing Grand Theft Auto years ago (III, Vice City, and San Andreas halfway through up to the damn flying missions), I developed a casual disregard for red lights.

ed. - real life red lights, lol. My disregard for them in-game was more than casual.