Just look at Washington D.C., the only place in the United States where guns are banned. It still has what is probably the highest firearm death rate in the country.

The most important impact of the buyback was that there had been no mass shootings.

i’m afraid i would argue even with this conclusion, since i really don’t see how any study of crime statistics could ever reasonably support any such thing. after all, there haven’t been any terrorist attacks in my home town since i’ve lived there, so did my moving in have an impact on terroristic crime in backwoods upstate Michigan? how would i ever prove or disprove such?

as well, i notice that both the SMH article and yourself use the careful wording of “gun deaths”. that doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all. the old chestnut goes, “would it make you any happier if they was pushed out windows?” — what’s the trend in total criminal homicides (or even overall violent crime) is the question we ought to answer.

Seriously, look at the data, if you take out the two “trend” lines, I challenge anyone to find the *faster* declining rate. It looks like it has been constantly dropping (good job Australia!)

Ah, yes, even the author of the study agrees. Notice the “not statistically significant” portion of what he had to say:

Dr Simon Chapman, another author of the latest study, agreed that the rate of gun homicide was falling before the buyback. He said that while the rate had risen since then, the numbers involved were so small they were not statistically significant.

The most important impact of the buyback was that there had been no mass shootings.

Such programs, whether intended or not, target “illegal firearms” which are responsible for the overwhelming majority of crime.

That said, I think responsible and legal gun ownership in the U.S. is a great thing. Protecting our right to arms while making it easy to turn in an illegal firearm is definitely the way to go.

Still funny how Dick Cheney accidentally shot that guy.

Conversly in the majority of circumstances were local authorities institute strong gun restrictions violent crime goes up in response.

There are exceptions both ways, but generally speaking both statements are true.

But nobody is going to make a crappy graph trying to explain that one. Human lives and sociaty are not governed by simple arithmetic.

In Australia between the time they instituted serious anti-gun laws in 1996 and 2000 homicides went up 3.2% country wide. Assults were up 8.6% country wide. Armed robberies went up 45%. In Victoria gun homicides went up 300%.

That’s the math that most people see.

Before 1996 all of those statistics were gradually dropping. Quite a nasty turn around.

If you want a correlation that is actually valid you want to look at rates of drug use. Areas of illicit drug use and sales have the highest levels of violent crime. (at least in the U.S. statistics I’ve seen).

Now I am not saying gun regulation is bad so much, but you have to be very carefull that when you pass laws that they don’t hurt gun owners that are law-abiding. What happens then is that criminals ignore the laws, while law-abiding people do.. which makes them even more vunerable to criminals.

And Gun buy-backs are pretty decent way of going about doing things as long as everything is voluntary. If a druggie wants money for drugs it’s a bit easier choice between selling his gun for 40 bucks vs holding up a convience store for 20 bucks.

Studies done in Great Britain prove otherwise.

It is not the availability of guns but the empire of law and education (especially good parenting) that ultimately motivates or demotivates a society to shoot each other in the faces.

Shooting another person is almost always bad, except when you’re defending yourself. I’d very much like to have the chance to ward off a robber or assailant than trust them not to shoot me.