DescentBB

We have discussed the potential progression of the gun ban band wagon some countries (most notably Britain) are on. Australia seems to be taking this a bit further. Not only has the Australian Govt. banned longguns and pistols, now they are banning swords:

"Now the Victorian Government is achieving international recognition for protecting Australians from a danger that has been around for far too long: swords. After July 1, swords will be banned and violators will face penalties that previously have been reserved for laser pointers - six months in jail and a $12,000 fine."


http://tinyurl.com/3kb55

Not only swords but the most heinous weapon of all...the laser pointer! Heh, maybe they think someone will mod a pointer into a light saber.
Charge of the the Light Brigade anyone?

is that for real? OMG he's armed with a laser pointer!

I can sort of understand banning swords -- they go right through bullet proof vests, which means they're a very large danger to police, if they're dumb enough to let someone with a sword get close to them.

Are you sure this is a real site and not an onion spinoff?

Outlaw Guns, and only Outlaws will have guns.

John Lott is as serious a professor on the fallacy's of banning guns as you can get. I kinda wish it was a Onion job.

Victoria is nuts. we're still having troubles with blatent Police corruption there.

gun laws here are pretty intense yeah, my neighbour is/was a gun collector/shooter and had to crimp/destory a lot of his collection.

i didn't know much about the laser pointer laws. iirc they came in when i was in highschool, so frankly i was sick of laser pointers at the time

the crime rates, post-gun-laws, are certainly interesting. until now i wasn't aware of the possible causality of the laws to the crime rates. and i sure wasn't aware of australia's amazing violent crime rates until now, perhaps it has something to do with the equaly amazing alcohol consumption rates.

but germany drinks a hell of a lot too, and they hardly have crime rates comparible, perhaps their gun laws are lax? this is pondering material indeed.

thx for the heads up woodchip, you know how i think swords are kickass (remember teh threads?) and was confused as to the laws .
hopefully this (and the laser pointer laws) won't get extended outside of Victoria, i don't live in Victoria.

avder wrote:Outlaw Guns, and only Outlaws will have guns.

it does seem to be that simple. i know with drugs it's the same. also in countrys with lax drug laws, drug use is LESS than in countrys with strong drug laws. the same seems true for guns and violence.

perhaps it's just people rebelling against laws. make a law against common sense, and people will rebel against it, outof spite for the law.

I really pity Australia. What a terrible situation.

What does this have to do with banning the samurai? Or anything else Japanese for that matter?

Pitty Australian's because they can't own guns, swords and laser pointers? Well, ★■◆●.. I don't know how I sleep each night knowing I will never have access to any of those weapons. Honestly, who cares...

XeonJr wrote:Pitty Australian's because they can't own guns, swords and laser pointers? Well, ****.. I don't know how I sleep each night knowing I will never have access to any of those weapons. Honestly, who cares...

You'll care if and when an armed criminal decides to target your house. Tell me: what will you fend them off with? A knife? Can you throw a knife faster than the bad guy can aim and pull a trigger -- and have it kill him? I think not.

As much as the weapons are used for offense, they are used for defense. Taking away the guns from the law-abiders only gives a false sense of security to the scared sheep that so strongly think it to be true.

Skyalmian wrote:As much as the weapons are used for offense, they are used for defense. Taking away the guns from the law-abiders only gives a false sense of security to the scared sheep that so strongly think it to be true.

I'm sorry, but if you need to arm every civillian there is something horribly wrong with crime rates and security.

In Belgium you can't own a gun unless you have a license. Which you need to take written tests for and prove your worthiness at a shooting range. Only a few type of guns are eligible for licensing. Almost no-one has a gun in Belgium. We're not getting overrun by criminals, not even in the problematic areas.

I'm not saying there are no killings, I'm just saying that banning guns has no statistical impact on the need or the ability to self-defend.

I'm sorry, but if you need to arm every civillian there is something horribly wrong with crime rates and security.

It should be a choice, yes. I haven't said to arm the entire population with pistols and assault rifles (though it'd be weird to live in a world where everyone had them). But to deny people the right to have them if they want them and can pass all the tests, like some people want to have happen? That I don't agree with.

banning guns has no statistical impact on the need or the ability to self-defend.

I'd throw actual statistics at you that say otherwise, but I won't bother.

I'm glad to know that Belgium doesn't have a problem. But it's not the same in many, many other places.

The problem with a "right to bare arms" is ANYBODY can lay hands on them regardless of their mental stature. It only takes one nutcase in the mix and you have a big problem. You could also argue a right to bare arms as a means of protecting yourself from these nutcases. Nice paradox that

XeonJr wrote:The problem with a "right to bare arms" is ANYBODY can lay hands on them regardless of their mental stature. It only takes one nutcase in the mix and you have a big problem. You could also argue a right to bare arms as a means of protecting yourself from these nutcases. Nice paradox that

Avder wrote:Outlaw Guns, and only Outlaws will have guns.

Two quotes that symbolize the whole gun debate.
The guns are there, and in the hands of both good guys and bad guys.
Until the day arrive that some Big Brain invents a magic device that will eliminate ALL the firearms on the globe in one fell swope, the good guys are going to need theirs to protect them from the bad guys!
Simple as ABC!

A ninja can

Skyalmian wrote:

XeonJr wrote:Pitty Australian's because they can't own guns, swords and laser pointers? Well, ****.. I don't know how I sleep each night knowing I will never have access to any of those weapons. Honestly, who cares...

You'll care if and when an armed criminal decides to target your house. Tell me: what will you fend them off with? A knife? Can you throw a knife faster than the bad guy can aim and pull a trigger -- and have it kill him? I think not.

As much as the weapons are used for offense, they are used for defense. Taking away the guns from the law-abiders only gives a false sense of security to the scared sheep that so strongly think it to be true.

i heard that in your house you are (18X?) more likely to be killed by your OWN gun than any intruder's gun. is this incorrect or misleading?

australia doesn't have many guns anyway. we just hit and stab eachother. i'm certainly not worried about someone comming into my house armed with a gun (before or after the latest gun laws), i don't think any australians are.

petty criminals just don't carry guns here. perhaps they are too expensive or too hard to come by (i do see a lot of gun stores around).

i can't imagine someone killing someone with a sword, cept in some freak home invasion accident*, but i'll have to look it up. it wouldn't be too common for someone to kill someone with a sword in public, swords are big, how does one casually carry a concealed sword around? ppl dont wear ninja clothes around here.

* see previous guns in the home point. also because swords are so rare, as weapons, i think someone whom owned some swords at their home would probably be safe, even unarmed, against an intruder who for some reason thought it'd be a good idea to steal one and try to attack the homeowner.
swords as weapons require a certain amount of skill.

I just want to shoot my BB gun.

Swords do require a large amount of skill. As a trained fencer, I can definitely say that not everyone can pick up a sword and use it. Unless you've been specifically taught how to use it, you're more likely to hurt yourself than anyone else.

roid wrote:i heard that in your house you are (18X?) more likely to be killed by your OWN gun than any intruder's gun. is this incorrect or misleading?

That is a derivitive of one of the most blatent lies about guns ever!

From here:
* Myth #6 "A homeowner is 43 times as likely to be killed or kill a family member as an intruder"

To suggest that science has proven that defending oneself or one's family with a gun is dangerous, gun prohibitionists repeat Dr. Kellermann's long-discredited claim: "a gun owner is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than an intruder."[17] This fallacy , fabricated using tax dollars, is one of the most misused slogans of the anti-self-defense lobby.

The honest measure of the protective benefits of guns are the lives saved, the injuries prevented, the medical costs saved, and the property protected not Kellermann's burglar or rapist body count. Only 0.1% (1 in a thousand) of the defensive uses of guns results in the death of the predator.[3] Any study, such as Kellermann' "43 times" fallacy, that only counts bodies will expectedly underestimate the benefits of gun a thousand-fold. Think for a minute. Would anyone suggest that the only measure of the benefit of law enforcement is the number of people killed by police? Of course not. The honest measure of the benefits of guns are the lives saved, the injuries prevented, the medical costs saved by deaths and injuries averted, and the property protected. 65 lives protected by guns for every life lost to a gun.[2]

Kellermann recently downgraded his estimate to "2.7 times,"[18] but he persisted in discredited methodology. He used a method that cannot distinguish between "cause" and "effect." His method would be like finding more diet drinks in the refrigerators of fat people and then concluding that diet drinks "cause" obesity.

Also, he studied groups with high rates of violent criminality, alcoholism, drug addiction, abject poverty, and domestic abuse . From such a poor and violent study group he attempted to generalize his findings to normal homes. Interestingly, when Dr. Kellermann was interviewed he stated that, if his wife were attacked, he would want her to have a gun for protection.[19] Apparently, Dr. Kellermann doesn't even believe his own studies.

not very convincing Will, but i'll stop citing the figure, i wasn't confident in the accuracy of the figure to start with.

given the very likely situations arising from having a gun in the home, i still think it's likely that guns would kill or hurt the ppl you are protecting, more often than kill or hurt an intruder.

a sword on the otherhand, if not treated with respect i could definitely see kids being hurt. a kid will get it down from it's display-case and menace his friends with it, very likely. since afterall, it's just a sword.

ok i'm too tired to think.zzzz

not very convincing Will

It's funny how people on the other end of the argument just swipe aside the statistics like they mean nothing.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him think.

i heard that in your house you are (18X?) more likely to be killed by your OWN gun than any intruder's gun. is this incorrect or misleading?

OOOOH, save me from myself! Such a bogus statistic.

australia doesn't have many guns anyway. we just hit and stab eachother.

I thought for sure that without firearms, everyone would be peaceful and hugging with no shirts on like the pink elitists tell us.



The bottom line is, don't pretend to know what's best for me and my family. We choose to be an armed household and everyone in my house knows exactly what do to do and how to do it. If your family chooses otherwise, I'm not going to push firearms on you..The important thing is, we all have that choice.

Peace, love and monkey grease.

roid wrote:... more often than kill or hurt an intruder.

The goal of owning a gun isn't to kill / hurt the intruder -- it's to stop him from killing / hurting you and your family. You don't *have* to kill him to stop him from killing you -- I'd imagine most of the time, you can just scare him away.

So trying to count just based on how many times you actually kill the guy is very misleading. How many times do you scare him away? How many times do you injure him? How many of those times would he have killed you if you didn't have a gun? (Also: How many of the "killed your own family member" statistics are results of domestic violence, where if the gun wasn't around they'd have used a kitchen knife?)

I don't pretend to know the answers to any of this -- but it would be worth finding out. Will has at least given us some idea of where to start. Brushing him off makes me wonder whether you actually care to learn.

i swear, something has been put into the USA water today. what is the cause of all this sudden narkyness? i've had MD call me a moron, waradvoc tell lobber to go die, and you guys pre-emptively ragging on me coz i'm simply not %100 convinced by Will-Rob's cut-paste.

i don't know much about guns. i am introspectively watching my internal conflict between "anti-guns" and "anti-laws", "anti-laws" has a lot of power atm and is winning out, yay freedom . in the past years i may have been more anti-guns, coz frankly it's the obvious knee jerk reaction to be scared of something you don't understand and have had little exposure to. my views have matured. and i have been nothing if not civil, friendly and happy in this thread.

when i earlier asked if that figure was incorrect or misleading, i was NOT being sarcastic. i truly wanted to hear the answer (my gut feeling didn't trust the figure). thx to Will-Rob's first reply i got somewhat of an answer, but at the time it was only enough to convince me to discard the specific numerical figure, not the underlying "A is greater than B" statistic.

you guy's know how much i'm against unnessesary laws. chill.

roid wrote:...i'm simply not %100 convinced by Will-Rob's cut-paste....

I don't expect you to believe just because I pasted it. Go to the link where I got it from. You'll see the original poster lists a lot of sources for each of his statements and you can examine them to decide if you believe it.

i just did.

the statement i stated was comparing death numbers against death numbers. it wasn't comparing accidental injuries of your family members, to purposeful injuries of intruders.

this may make it more clear:

Only 0.1% (1 in a thousand) of the defensive uses of guns results in the death of the predator. (<i>not intruders, and not in the home?</i>)

the question i have is loosely based on this above quote. what is the added percentage of "ALL uses of the homeowner's gun" while in the home that result in the death of a family member (while in the home)?

seperate figures for accidental deaths (family member mistaken for an intruder / accidental discharge), and deliberate deaths (in family murders), would be good.

i have a hunch that the accidental deaths figure would be higher than 0.1%, but a hunch is nothing to go on. do any of you guys have figures for this?

-------
now that i look over the quote again, i realise that that quote isn't even talking about defensive gun use IN THE HOME. it's talking about predators, NOT INTRUDERS.

i'd like to see the numbers of 'accidental in home gun deaths/injuries' plus 'cases when an intruder actually kills/injures you or a family member with your own gun'. this would be the "negative aspects of keeping a gun in your home, for protection".

i'd like to compare those numbers, with the numbers of actual intruders killed/injured/scared-off by your gun at home. this would be the "positive aspects of keeping a gun in the home" correct?

(yes i understand i'm comparing 2 numbers to 3. adding the 'scared-off' number may confuse things, but as Will-Rob says: it's undeniably a positive. it's moral value compared to the "family member killed/injured" value will be hard to guage. also it may be too hard to extract an accurate number for 'scared-off' incidents)

hope that's clear. and if anyone can help me out with the numbers i'd be appreciative.

I think this may provide you with a new 'feeling' for how your question would be answered if we had the statistics broken down into the catagories you asked for:

* Myth #1 "Guns are only used for killing"

Compared to about 35,000 gun deaths every year, 2.5 million good Americans use guns to protect themselves, their families, and their livelihoods - there are 65 lives protected by guns for every life lost to a gun - five lives are protected per minute - and, of those 2.5 million protective uses of guns, about 1/2 million are believed to have saved lives.[2]

[2] Suter E. "Guns in the Medical Literature - A Failure of Peer Review." Journal of the Medical Association of Georgia. March 1994; 83: 133-48. [3] Kleck G. Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. 1991.

Roid, if you think you are safer since Australia passed its draconian gun laws bck in 96, go here for a couple of graphs:

http://www.johnrlott.com/

In fact peruse dr Lotts website for more info.

I guess you missed the scaling, woodchip?
40 armed robberies per 100 000 in 2002 equates to a massive 0.04%! Infact those stats are so menial its impossible to gauge their credibility.

I am definitely going to be needing a weapon for protection with stats like that!

cough*paranoid*cough

If you read the detailed statistics less than 6% are "home" invasions. A further 6% of those, involved guns. The dominant weapon being used are knives( 19.3%). The most common form of invasion is unarmed (over 60%)

Infact these stats actually show a large decrease in gun related offenses across the board since port aurthor!("Crime by weapon" tab)

These statistics certainly do not support the "pro gun" movement or your arguements, woodchip.

You have been BLINGED!

edit* Another thing to take into account is the fact that the population of australia has risen between 3 and 5 million since 1996.

XeonJr wrote:edit* Another thing to take into account is the fact that the population of australia has risen between 3 and 5 million since 1996.

The stats are per capita therefore the rise in population doesn't affect them.
Bling

If as the gun banner's would postulise, we would expect to see a sharp drop in gun related armed robberies. We see a rise instead. While from 2001 to 2002 there was a decline, that was from the sharp "RISE" after the gun ban went into effect in 96. 2002 still see's more armed robberies in 2002 than before the gun ban went into effect.
So Bling back at ya.

bull★■◆●, Woodchip.

The stats in the main graph is of "ARMED ROBBERY RATE OF THE LAST DECADE." Nowhere does it say GUN RELATED ROBBERIES! Download the detailed stats and flick over to "crimes by weapon"!

In 1996 there were 31.7 (per 100 000) firearm offenses used in murder. [1997 has 23.4], [1998 has 18.9], [1999 has 18.1], [2000 has 19], [2001 has 16.1], [2002 has 13.2]

In 1996 there were 9.7 (per 100 000) firearms used in armed robbery. [1997 has 10.3], [1998 has 8], [1999 has 6.4], [2000 has 5.7], [2001 has 6.4], [2002 has 5.6]

Shall I continue?

According to those numbers you haven't got a leg to stand on.

BTW This John Lotts is an incredible moron who likes to talk out his ass.

Don't be too quick to jump all over the sword ban. There have been quite a few incidents in certain ethnic communities of the Vancouver area where machetes have been used in fights. I don't recall any deaths but there was at least one loss of a hand. A machete is just a utilitarian type of sword.
Change subject.
I have lived in the Vancouver area since 1972 and only in the last 5 years have I seen a sudden rise in shooting deaths and injuries. It used to be very unusual if someone died by shooting (knife fights were much more common) nowadays there is a constant stream of gang land killings and every drunken brawl outside a nightclub ends up with some jerk pulling a pistol and spraying the passersby with lead. Last night some guy caught a bullet in the head in his parked car (usually a drug deal gone wrong) and some 18 year old kid took a slug outside a suburban night club. What the h*ll is going on? That used to be a full year's worth of statistics. Can't you Yanks keep those pocket protectors on your side of the border? The good news is that the average person still never sees a pistol in their lifetime since almost all this crap goes on between like minded idiots. But we need to put one enormous metal detector on the border and open every glove box to nip this slide into U.S. style argument resolution in the bud.

Xeon, all I said was "were you safer" since the gun ban was passed. By the graphs the Aussies are not. If you want to parse out guns only just means you are ignoring the whole picture. Here in Michigan violent crimes have been droppin. Of course the press does not mention the relaxed CCW laws implemented 3 years ago and instead cite economy and demographics exclusively.

Woodchip:

f course the press does not mention the relaxed CCW laws implemented 3 years ago and instead cite economy and demographics exclusively.

Maybe that's because only old-right-wing-gun-nuts think more guns reduces crime.

old-right-wing-gun-nuts think more guns reduces crime

And 20 year olds.

Actually even though I decry the growing use of hand guns to kill people here in my part of Canada we, in fact, also have a decreasing overall crime rate and yet the ownership of hand guns by the law abiding is dropping and is more and more restricted while more and more handguns cross the border from the U.S. and into the hands of criminals. Kind of puts a hole in the more guns is good theory.

Guns don't kill people, physics kills people.

So what law is keeping the guns out of the criminals' hands?