Posted on 06/06/2019 1:35:49 PM PDT by marktwain
Those who pushed for the severe restrictions on guns in Australian society can no longer claim the one success they had touted as a result of their expensive, intrusive, experiment.
They claimed there had not been any mass murder with firearms since the law was passed.
The latest mass public shooting/murder occurred in Darwin, Australia. From the west.com:
Four people are confirmed dead and police are investigating five crime scenes after a mass shooting in Darwin tonight.
Northern Territory Police said four men are confirmed dead and one woman has also been taken to the Royal Darwin Hospital with gunshot wounds, in a stable condition, a Northern Territory Health spokeswoman said.
NT commissioner Reece Kershaw said this evening that the alleged offender, who has since been arrested, was on parole at the time.
The murders happened over much of Darwin over several locations. I had traveled near those locations only two weeks ago. I recall driving by the Buff Club. From 7news.com.au:
The five crime scene locations were The Buffalo Club, Gardens Hill Crescent, the Palms Hotel, at a Coles Express and at the Peter McCauley Centre, NT Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw confirmed.
Those who push for a disarmed society, used to claim, although suicides had not declined, and the gun restrictions had not affected the homicide rates, at least there had been no mass public shootings since PM John Howard pushed the extreme law through, in an emotional media blizzard, in 1997.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
“The third mass murder by gunfire in Australia since they passed their extreme gun laws in 1997.”
You mean to say that the bad guy didn’t turn in his gun like the good guys do????? Shocked, I say, I’m shocked. Sarcasm....intended. Goes to show you the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
“The third mass murder by gunfire in Australia since they passed their extreme gun laws in 1997.”
You mean to say that the bad guy didn’t turn in his gun like the good guys do????? Shocked, I say, I’m shocked. Sarcasm....intended. Goes to show you the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
No guns = No crime!
(Dumbasses)
Oh, wait....
I’d love to live in a country that only had three mass shootings in 22 years. If anything, this is red meat for the gun grabbers, not a repudiation.
The thing is, you shouldn’t need to pick a single data point out of the pack to prove a logical point. The mass gun confiscation in Australia was admittedly performed as an emotional act and likely it made a negligible change in shooting deaths since mass shootinns were already quite rare and a lot of people still kept their guns, particularly the criminal class.
Australia had a low rate of shootings to start with because it’s a big place with not too many people living there. Australia is practically the same size as the continental US and has less than 1/10th of the population. The population isn’t nearly as stratified ethnically as the US, and even though school shootings get the lions share of the press, most mass shootings occur in high crime and economically depressed areas filled with drugs and corrupt democrat-led government. Even if there were as many shots fired per capita, there aren’t nearly as many targets and they’re more spaced out.
Australia has 1/14 of the U.S. population, and has never had a school shooting.
For many years the people who push for a disarmed population crowed about there being *no* mass murder by shooting in Australia since 1997.
Former PM George Howard even lied about it to push that narrative.
Australians are very law abiding and have been since the European colonization.
Constant warfare, homicide and cannibalism were the normal course of events before the European colonization.
The primary driver of mass murder by shooting is the media coverage. Media coverage in Australia went from predicting a mass murder by shooting *soon* a few months before Port Arthur, to crowing about how no more mass shootings would be done by Australians after the Media pushed through the extreme gun laws.
Sorry if I missed it, but how many “mass shootings” (define, please) did they have before 199y?
I understand that the Port Arthur shooting was a false flag, and suspect that the recent Christ Church NZ one was, too.
The definition was four people other than the killer, killed, by shooting.
I do not know the number of mass murders, precisely, but there are several that have been done without guns.
I do not think Port Arthur or the Christchurch shootings were false flags.
I think they are events used by the Media to advance their agenda. They very carefully stress certain aspects, and ignore and censor others.
The Buff Club? Is that like Man’s Country?
It appears people are more afraid of a mass killer than a serial killer who will rack up a bigger score over a longer period of time.
Go figure.
How long until Trump thinks this is a grand idea, like banning bumpstocks, suppressors, and supporting red flag laws?
That's incorrect.
There are what I would consider valid statistical and criminological reasons for the claim that Australia did not suffer a single gunman spree killing between 1996 and 2019 - and that is the actual claim made, although it's sometimes simplified to 'no mass shootings' , but even if you discount those reasons, this is not the third such incident.
It's the fifth.
Oakhampton Heights, New South Wales, 20th March 2005 - Sally Winters shoots dead her husband and two children before killing herself (three murders, four fatalities (including the perpetrator)).
Hectorville, South Australia, 29th April 2011 - Donato Corbo shot and killed three people and wounded three others in an attack on his neighbours, and subsequent siege by police. (Three murders, three woundings, perpetrator arrested).
Lockhart, New South Wales, 9th September 2014 - Geoff Hunt shot and killed his wife and three children before killing himself (four murders, five fatalities (including the perpetrator))
Osmington, Western Australia, 11th May 2019 - Peter Miles shot and killed his wife, granddaughter, and four great grandchildren, before killing himself (six murders, seven fatalities (including the perpetrator))
I actually do think there are reasons why the Australian statistic is cited the way it is - none of the above were spree killings and that is what the Australian statistic relates to even if some people misrepresent it by simplifying it in their reports - but if you're going to use the measure I think you are using (and I think I'm interpreting you correctly - and it is a valid and truthful position), then you should probably be talking about four previous incidents not two.
Note - I am not including in this the Monash University Shootings, because only two were killed, the Wedderburn Shootings, because only two were shot and killed on that occasion, although a third victim was murdered by stabbing, or the Moorabbin Police Murders, because only two were shot and killed - none of those reach the (admittedly somewhat arbitrary) definition of three shot and killed, that is used to define a mass killing. There could also be other cases where two were shot and killed that I am not aware of.
I am using a metric of four people killed, other than the shooter.
That is why I only come up with three.
Thanks for the overview.
Definitions are important. One way to lie with statistics is to change the definition, or use different definitions for different data sets.
Most people can't visualize themselves ever becoming the victim of a serial killer. Serial killers tend to target people on the fringes of society; prostitutes, drug users, homeless people. The Ted Bundys out there snatching up college students are extremely rare.
Mass shootings, on the other hand, can happen anywhere and anyone can be a victim.
But they do matter. And I think part of the problem is the definitions have been blurred.
I was living in Australia for most of the period between 1987 (Hoddle Street and Queen Street) and 1996 (Port Arthur) and I remember very clearly the horror and bewilderment in Australia that a type of crime we had basically never experienced before - men randomly shooting up public areas and killing significant numbers of people - the single gunman spree killing - had suddenly become almost commonplace. This was not business as usual. This was something different and new.
Yes, there were other types of gun crime and other types of murder too - but this was a different thing.
And Port Arthur was - until this week - the last time that type of thing had happened.
And, honestly, even as somebody who is about as fervent of the rights of gun owners in Australia, as you get, it's difficult for me to say that the changes made under John Howard's leadership didn't go a long way to solving that problem. Even with this weeks incident, it's been 23 years since it last happened - between 1987 and 1996, it was well over an average of more than once every twenty three months.
It's a type of crime that basically appeared here from nowhere - and then virtually vanished.
Now, yes, some people have blurred the distinction between the fact we're talking about one very particular class of crime, and have used the term more generally.
And some people have tried to make use of this outside of the Australian context to make changes elsewhere.
And I think in both cases, that's unreasonable and often dishonest.
But we are talking about something very specific in the Australian context, and most people who talk about it here do know that context.
Yes, a very unusual crime for Australia.
It was not caused by semi-auto guns, which were easily available in Australia since at least 1945.
What caused it? In my opinion, the media hype, who used it to push their gun control agenda. The copy-cat effect is and was well known. Rebecca Peters did a "documentary" on how easy it would be for someone in Tasmania to do a mass murder with semi-auto guns just a few months before Port Arthur.
Since then, the Media in Australia has crowed about how it does not happen in Australia, so you have had the opposite effect, a kind of anti-copy cat effect.
I cannot prove it, of course, but the media coverage as cause is a better fit than the availability of semi-autos.
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