A gun can cause you to commit collateral damage, whereas with a knife/fists your attacking just the people you want to, unless someone tries to be a hero.
That's a statistically irrelevant statement. Most murders happen in pretty secluded areas. And those that don't are usually by organized crime groups that could just as easily get access to bombs, or lighter conflagration devices like Molotov cocktails that would more likely cause even more damage. I doubt you could find even 10 people in the past year who have been shot by accident while a murder attempt was taking place.
Also while we are on the point of Australia. They never banned guns. You are allowed to buy them as long as you have a 'legitimate reason' to do so, which is basically anything from pest control to sports shooting. Literally the only way you could be denied a gun is if you are a criminal or if you literally said I'm buying this gun in case I need to shoot someone.
Also while we are on the point of Australia. They never banned guns. You are allowed to buy them as long as you have a 'legitimate reason' to do so, which is basically anything from pest control to sports shooting. Literally the only way you could be denied a gun is if you are a criminal or if you literally said I'm buying this gun in case I need to shoot someone.
How many major metropolitan areas does Australia have with populations of more 250,000 people?
Now, how many are filled with poverty and drugs?
I'm tired too of people trying to compare statistics of the United States to their country. If we gave you Detroit, Chicago and DC, you'd look like a violent madhouse too.
I live in Detroit area and our murder rate is comparable to Somalia. This does not reflect the majority of the United States, but it does throw the stats off quite a bit when you take all the ghettos we have and add them in to the national average.
Which would suggest that the problem is not guns, it's too many poor people with too much drugs with too little to live for and very little respect for life, packed much too closely together. You're gonna have a bad time.
This right here pretty much wins the thread. The situation in the US is radically different from other countries with enormously successful gun laws, and just banning guns isn't going to solve the problem.
Head of the Virginia Citizens Defence League Phillip Van Cleave made the comments during an interview with correspondent John Oliver that aired on the Daily Show last Friday.
After Mr Van Cleave said that it was impossible for gun control to ever work Oliver suggested the example of Australia disproved his point ? prompting a bizarre answer from the firearms advocate.
"It's not the United States. It's some other planet: different people, different everything ... but in the real world, with human beings, it's not going to work and gun control isn't going to work. "
When Oliver told him that Australia had not had a single shooting massacre since gun laws were reformed in 1996 the lobbyist first dismissed the evidence as a "statistical anomaly" before saying that Australia experienced very few mass shootings anyway.
Oliver then showed him footage of the implementor of Australia's gun laws, former prime minister John Howard, saying that the nation suffered 13 massacres in the 18 years before guns laws were reformed but had not seen a single one since 1996.
April 16, 2013: Australia has been described by Daily Show reporter John Oliver as "comfortably racist" during his Bugle podcast.
Mr Van Cleave then backed himself into a corner by saying "unless you can get rid of 100 percent of crime, it's not worth doing anything at all."
When Oliver pushed him on it the gun advocate changed his analogy to swimming pools.
"There are more drownings in backyards where they have swimming pools," he said.
"If they don't have a pool, there are no drownings in backyards, okay? So if the US has a very high number of guns, therefore, there's going to be more chances for somebody to be killed with a gun."
"That?s my point," Oliver replied.
The episode segment was the first of three that Oliver has filmed while on assignment in Australia, and has since been widely shared online.
Last week the English-born reporter made headlines and provoked outrage when he described Australia as the most comfortably racist place he had ever visited in his Bugle podcast.
This coming from a gentleman who lives in a nation where sadly there have been many massacres directing his comments at Australia... a nation that has had great success with gun control...
1) Australia's crime rates were falling before the gun laws, and fell at the same rate afterward(not faster, which would be the case if they helped).
2) Australia has had a mass shooting since the law, Monash university. This shooting saw very few casualties, not because of the gun laws(considering that the shooter was armed with half a dozen hand-guns similar to those used at Virginia Tech and Lubby's Massacre), but because the shooter was stupid enough to try and switch weapons within arm's reach of two men, one of whom was a martial arts instructor. Comparing this to the 2 shootings before Port Arthur in the same time frame, a difference of one is not statistically significant.
Also, Australia has too few mass shootings for 17 years to reveal any meaningful correlations. Interestingly enough, if you look at mass murders, and not just mass shootings, Australia has had more casualties from mass killings in the 17 years since Port Arthur(and subsequent gun laws) than in the 17 years before it.
Also interestingly, the majority of mass shootings that occured in Australia were perpetrated with shotguns, even before the semi-automatic rifle ban, meaning that the majority of the killers would have been unaffected by the current "successful" law.
3) Australia is basically a different planet when it comes to guns, there are an estimated 300 million legally owned firearms in the USA, and god knows how many illegal ones. The number in circulation is too high for any kind of ban to remove the firearms from the hands of criminals. Australia also has far lower population density(which even the anti-gun people admit is a far far higher predictor for violent crime than gun ownership), and much less gang activity. Australia also lacks the second Amendment. This makes any comparison of the two on ground of gun laws a logical fallacy of false analogy. However, anyone who is willing to look at the discussion objectively knows that drawing conclusions about crime rates from comparing two countries is a logical fallacy of generalization, since two data points is not enough to draw a meaningful conclusion.
4) Australia did not see 13 massacres in the 18 years before the law, there were 4: Surry Hills, Strathfield, Central Coast, and Port Arthur, and in the Strathfield massacre one of the primary weapons used was a knife.
5) I don't know why the gun guy was so horrifically bad at arguing his side, probably because the government is interested in keeping us divided over this so they wouldn't want to use the actual facts(because they instantly prove the folly of gun control) but instead continue to make it look like an even fight to divide us. However, the pool analogy is a good one, several times more children in the US drown each year than are killed in firearm homicides and accidents combined. And also, there's no point in reducing gun death is overall death isn't reduced. Dead is dead, and I assure you the family members of the victims will not be satisfied by "well at least he was stabbed to death and not shot to death."
"Last week the English-born reporter made headlines and provoked outrage when he described Australia as the most comfortably racist place he had ever visited in his Bugle podcast."
However, the pool analogy is a good one, several times more children in the US drown each year than are killed in firearm homicides and accidents combined.
Exactly the same reason I keep saying we should all be allowed to buy incendiary grenades, but no-one takes me bloody seriously!
OT:
I don't think we should take anything of this too seriously. They person interviewed clearly wasn't very good at getting his point across and is not representative of the views of other people pro-firearms. It's like damning all atheists for those few who just use their view on the subject to dispense insults out to strangers with different views over something they should, by all rights, not give a shit about.
Put a ban on assault weapons? Why when we can make the news world wide monthly on mass shootings. I don't think people outside the US get that we need to look like action movies as much as possible, gun battles are EVERYWHERE here. Even getting ice cream here in new york involves helicopter crashes 4/10 times.
I don't have much input on the gun laws because I've never fired one, I do think it's a bit needless to own a assault rifle that fires body armor piercing ammo at 900 rounds per minute but maybe deer have started wearing kevlar.
However, the pool analogy is a good one, several times more children in the US drown each year than are killed in firearm homicides and accidents combined.
But...but those are easy-to-obtain home items and I'm thick and lazy, can't I have a gun instead? They're a whole lot easier than making your own bombs, I hear.
I'll just be over here enjoying my comparatively low murder rate and complete absence of gun massacres in a country where someone firing two shots (from a bolt-action rifle) into someone else's garage door is enough to make the papers.
Dude, are you kidding? Mechanical Engineers get PAID in Australia, move out to the north west, get a job in Oil, Gas or Iron Ore industries, and you will be making +$200k ($AUD - which has been trading higher than $USD for over a year).
You'd be set over here mate!
Also, when you don't have everyone packing guns, it makes the few people with guns (criminals, bikie gangs etc) scared to use them. Our police SWAT team equivalents get really bored and will break out the armor transports and shotguns if even a single handgun makes an appearance in a threatening manner (Note: Appearance, you don't even have to fire it)
I don't have much input on the gun laws because I've never fired one, I do think it's a bit needless to own a assault rifle that fires body armor piercing ammo at 900 rounds per minute but maybe deer have started wearing kevlar.
Assault weapon =/= assault rifle. Assault rifles have automatic fire capability, assault weapons do not. Civilian owned assault rifles are relatively rare and hard to get a hold of in the US.
We've had this conversation before though...
Post Sandy Hook there was a thread here discussing gun ownership.
The responses to similar questions were alot like the senator.
There was even a poster that mentioned Australian laws and the responses he got were... Hang on... I won't call out the usernames...
"I imagine it's very different in Australia, since you're an island with the vast majority of the land mass being a giant inhospitable wasteland, but outlawing guns in the US just means only the criminals will have guns."
When presented with the fact that Australia has had no mass shootings since 1996...
"Get this through your head: We are not Australia.
To assume that just because something works for you, that it will also work for us is very narrow thinking. So your first point right out of the gate is bunk.
I am soooo tired of all the foreigners in this thread who arrogantly think they know better. (The ones who think we can buy SAWs by the dozens are also rather irritating.)"
Ok, so my personal thoughts...
Dear America,
It is clear that the staunch defense of your right to bear arms has grown out of control and is leading to too many deaths.
Whilst I understand that the constitution is the foundation for your country it is not written in stone. It is possible to change a constitution without a whole country falling apart.
In fact you aren't the only country with a constitution.
England has one, as does Australia...
And they are not immune to change, most countries have made amendments to allow for all races and genders to be treated equally.
Iceland rewrote theirs as recently as 2009 in response to the nations financial crisis, removed their politician and vted in a new government.
I am asking Americans to reconsider their positions on firearms for the safety of their children.
The more people who own guns (including legitimate owners) the more likely there are to be shootings each day.
A physicist could liken this to one of the laws of thermodynamics... I forget which one.
Your belief that you are somehow special and what has worked for many other countries could never work for you sounds a little retarded.
Sincerely Me, and only me, one voice in many.
Oh and before you reply saying that tighter laws won't change things...
Go back on the list of mass shootings, look at where the signifigent majority of the perpetrators obtained their weapons.
Oi, u wna go m8? Cum ovr ere an say that 2 my fac, cheeky c*nt.
No but really, I sort of agree with Mr. Van Cleave. Switzerland has a massive level of gun ownership because the vast majority of people undergo compulsory military training and can keep their guns afterwards. Not quite the same percentages as the USA, but drastically lower gun crime. Which means basically that there are countries with both attitudes towards guns that manage to be fairly peaceful. The difference is that people are less sensible with them in the US than they are in Switzerland. You can't copy paste methods from other countries to sort out your own national problems, you need a tailored approach.
It is pretty hilarious though that the "criminals will get them anyway, why not Zoidberg everyone" approach, taken to its logical conclusion, is you might as well legalise everything because criminals don't follow laws.
He's vaguely correct, in the sense that one country's policies and successes may not be transferable to a different country's culture. Though that doesn't seem to justify not trying at all. Though Australia may not be the same as the US (no one is saying it is), are they really so dissimilar? You have people on here acting as though Australia is just a desert without cities, gangs, or urban poverty.
Also, the thing with Switzerland's high level gun ownership is that it still comes with a high degree of gun control - they do after all have to go through military service before they get to take those automatic rifles home, and even then, those guns have to be stored in a highly specific way, with the ammunition limited and sealed. Can you imagine Americans being required to go through the same process, just to get an AR-15?
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