How much gun ownership was there when Australia significantly changed their gun laws?

Australia’s gun reform was not a success. You can view the empirical analysis here

Highlights from the study:

•This is the first non-USA review examining impacts of gun law reform on firearm homicide.

•Australian studies have not found evidence of changes in lethal violence following gun law reform.

•Empirical findings about Australian gun law reform contradict ‘popular’ views about those laws.

•This review can support more informed and robust international policy development

@JL, I don’t have time to read much research on this, but I hope this helps. I’ve included a couple of links that might add to your understanding.

The first gun buyback ran from 1996–1997 and 600,000 guns were collected and destroyed. In 2003, a handgun buyback was instigated and 70,000 handguns were removed from the community. However, there is no evidence gun buybacks have led to a decline in suicide and gun-related deaths. There hasn’t been a repeat of a mass murder, but deaths because of firearms are still happening.

We do have a very different gun culture to the culture in the US @JL. When Howard instigated the 1997 gun buyback, while there were protests, people were more accepting than has happened in your country. I don’t think we’ve ever had the level of gun ownership that exists in the US either. Any talk of winding back our gun legislation is very heavily opposed. The community are not in favour of that. We don’t want people to have easy access to guns.

This link provides details about the two buyback schemes, stats relating to gun ownership and of gun crime. According to this The Conversation article, gun deaths have been trending downwards since the 1970s, so whether the buybacks led to a decline in gun-related deaths is not certain. We now have more guns in our communities than before Port Arthur too, but they are owned by fewer people. The stats also show that most gun deaths are suicides or accidental shootings.

@Earthbound_Misfit Thanks. I’ll have to read up more on it all. What strikes me is America also has had gun buy back in some states. I know Maryland did it, I guess because I lived there as a child. I just remember the stat being over 10,000 guns were turned in. Maryland is a smallish state in our union, although some cities within the state are quite populated. Back then the state population was about 4million.

Also, it looks like Australia didn’t have gun laws much at all, we do have laws, some states more than others, and there is problems with loopholes.

Semi-automatic and automatic were outlawed in your country I guess, we still lack too many laws regarding this.

You stated accidental deaths and suicides. We also have a lot of accidental deaths and suicides that make up the death by gun statistic. In fact, the accidental death is one of the more horrifying numbers to us. Just a few weeks a cop killed someone accidentally in Florida at a demonstration. A volunteer from the audience was shot when the officer believed he had blanks in the gun and it was a real bullet. Children kill or are killed all too often, because guns aren’t secured well enough. That’s the stuff that gets me the most.

I’m not sure Australia is so different than America in her laws. I’m trying to figure that out. I do think as a culture there is likely a different attitude about guns.

Also, I’m curious whether Australia has less of a poverty and drug problem than America. A lot of our homocides happen related to drugs, and happen in impoverished areas, but not exclusively. Many of the mass murders publicized around the world are middle class people in middle class neighborhoods.

Edit: I found this list of stats by country for gun deaths. I haven’t found stats on gun ownership by country yet, and I’d want to know ownership over the last 40 years.

@Earthbound_Misfit and @JLeslie I’m not sure Americans are much different than Australians either. According to a 2016 Pew Research poll on gun control, 85% of Americans (Republicans 79% and Democrats 88%) favor more anti-gun legislation including expanded background checks and legislation denying the mentally ill from owning guns. Even the National Association of Police Chiefs have come out strongly for gun control

So, what gives?

It’s our gun control lobby headed up by the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) that is preventing the will of the people from taking its course.

@Earthbound_Misfit Do the Aussies have powerful lobbyists like we do? And if so, how are they prevented from subverting the will of the people?

@Espiritus_Corvus Actually, you are bringing up other points that I hadn’t even considered, which I appreciate. If you look up the link on my last post, Australia statistically has much lower gun deaths overall as a percentage to the population than the US. I still think it’s culture more than laws. I’m not sure though. And, the laws might influence the culture, or vice versa, but maybe not.

I still am curious to know gun ownership statistics in each country, and if you can remove guns once the ownership is past what I call the tipping point.

^^Edit Above: Its our Anti-gun control lobby headed up by the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) that is preventing the will of the people from taking its course.

Higher gun ownership in a country does not cause higher crime rates, especially homicide rates. Here is the analysis link

Highlights of the study:
•41 studies of the impact of gun prevalence on crime rates were reviewed.
•Each study was assessed on 3 methodological criteria
•Many weak studies find a significant positive effect of gun levels on crime.
•All methodologically strong studies find no such effect.

@arche it’s not surprising that a study by Gary Kleck was pro gun. Given that most have his pro gun studies have been found to be methodolically weak I wouldn’t trust him to decide what a methodologically strong study was.

Just because something has been published in an acedmic journal doesn’t mean it’s any more trust worthy than Wikipedia.

@Lightlyseared

Your argument is unfounded. There is no publication that shows Gary Kleck’s methodology is weak.

Contrary to what you believe, the very purpose of scientific peer-review communities is to distinguish themselves from websites that are unempirical and biased such as wikipedia. The fact that Gary Kleck’s study was approved by the peer-review community and allowed to be published in the academic journal means it has legitimacy to it and withstands the scrutiny. The same can be said on the study done for Austriali’s gun reform laws.

@rick3 he’s an academic with strong views. Of course there is. And don’t give me the “it was in a peer reviewed journal so it must be right” bullshit. All the studies that Kleck said were weak were also in peer reviewed journals and your happy to agree with the hypothesis that those studies were weak. I’m kind of hoping you see the flaw in your argument. But I’m guessing since you just copied and pasted the abstract without reading the article that critical thought ain’t one of your strengths.

Just because something is published in a peer-reviewed publication does not mean that it is necessarily true, or that it withstands scrutiny. Need I remind you of that infamous case of The Lancet (incidentally published by the same company that published the Journal of Criminal Justice) publishing Andrew Wakefield’s claims of autism being linked to childhood vaccinations (which turned out to be 100%, unadulterated bullshit)?

That is my point @Darth_Algar

There is nothing at the moment that negates these current publications other than unfounded dialogue.

As I wrote earlier, if the study is weak, there needs to be other publications that show the weakness of studies.

If there are other publications with different findings then it means inconclusivity. The topic about guns then becomes a moot point.

Yes but then you said that there were no studies that said your study was weak and that’s patently not true. People are queuing up to point out the flaws in Klecks work.

Show me the other peer-reviewed publications that show the flaws in Kleck’s work? I’m not talking about some news article you read. I’m talking about a respectable review journal.

Klecks most famous for his 94 study showing that 2.5 million people use guns in self defence each year. A figure that’s still quoted today. He got that number by phoning 5000 gun owners and asking them if they used their gun in self defence and then muliplied it to get a national figure. I mean I could cite 0091–4169/97/8704–1430 as evidence that that’s weak methodology but do I need to? Do you think if he phoned 5000 none gun owners he’d get the same number?

@JLeslie If you take the time and look at the gun laws in the US you’ll see that they are both numerous and even a little batty, bordering on lunacy. A good number of the people who agree with gun reform want it the other way, we want them to make sense and not be so open to interpretation. We also want them to be uniform. I’m very firm on my opposition to certain kinds of gun control. Responsible citizens in a free society should have access to arms and capable ones at that.

@ARE_you_kidding_me

Kinda the boat I’m in. I don’t think we necessarily need more gun regulations, but rather better ones.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Yes, I stated the US already has gun laws, whereas the article about Australia seemed to say previous to the mass shooting they had, they didn’t have many laws at all regulating guns.

I asked this Q, because I hear a lot of liberals throw around the Australia example, that they were able to rid the country of guns when people already had them, and I just wonder if we can really compare ourselves to them. If it’s realistic that we could accomplish significantly reducing the amount of guns out there in the possession of our citizens.

Are you kidding me (not @ARE_you_kidding_me)? WTF did I get modded for? Pointing out something odd that may or may not be relevant to the discussion???

@rojo What did it say? I have this in social.

@JLeslie I just pointed out that the two members who posted links to studies showing little or no benefit both have the same icon and when you look them up you find Neptune telling you he couldn’t find the user.