Gun laws and control

[Billy Underdog]

With resent events it's easy to once again wonder "what the hell are the Americans thinking?"...
In which situation do anyone need to go to a 7-Eleven to buy a gun? When do anyone need a semi-automatic weapon at all? Can you really not see the relation between the liberal laws and crime and deaths connected with guns? Or the fact that other countries with alot more strickt laws more often than not have less of these? I really need some answers here.

I've grown up in a hunters home, i've been shooting both for sports and hunting, so i know my way around firearms. And i've come to the conclusion that they're completly unnecessary. We don't need to hunt for food, however much tastier wild game is. As for sports, laser simulation have become a more than good enough substitute. Self defence..? Well, what if there wasn't anything you need to defend against? There is a correlation between gun crimes and how available guns are.

"It's not the gun that kills, but the person firing it", i hear them say. That's just as stupid as saying it's the victim fault for getting in the bullets way. Without that gun, that person wouldn't have anything to fire.

We've got more than enough ways to kill each others anyway, it would just be a tiny bit harder...

[Zzzptm]

I'm with you, Billy. Australia decided it had had enough of mass shootings, so it outlawed classes of weapons and engaged in a buyback program. Gun ownership in Australia is one-fourth the rate of gun ownership of the USA and its incidence of gun-related violence, including crime, self-inflicted, and accidental, is one-fourth that of the USA.

I see a pattern.

[Typhon]

^^^^^^
^^^^^^
Sorry gentlemen, but you are both misinformed.

https://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/comparing-death-rates-from-mass-public-shootings-in-the-us-and-europe/

[Vyn]

Gun ownership in Australia is one-fourth the rate of gun ownership of the USA and its incidence of gun-related violence, including crime, self-inflicted, and accidental, is one-fourth that of the USA.

Australia: 25 million people

USA: 327 million people

So, Australia has one fourth of the reported gun related crime than the United States, with one thirteenth of the population?
 

[Jack the Stripper]

Worth noting that Australia had one of the highest percentages of mass shootings per capita in the world pre 1996.

Post 1996
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australian-gun-deaths-slashed-since-1996

Statistics don't lie...

[Vyn]

Statistics don't lie...

True. But people do, and sometimes they're very subtle about it. For example, the article you linked to is true. But, what is it trying to convey? That firearm-related violence is continuing to decrease in Australia? Or that firearm-related violence is continuing to decrease in Australia due to the National Firearms Agreement of 1996?

There's a difference. And if it's the latter, it a lie. The rate of gun violence in Australia was decreasing along the same slope in the seven years prior to the enactment of the NFA as it has since then. Correlation is not causation.

Furthermore, the article mentions that there have been no mass-shootings in the past 20 years, whereas prior to that there were plenty. Well, yes and no. Let me explain:

If I was a government agency, and I changed the definition of "homicide" from "killing someone" to "alien invasion", I could issue a report stating that there had been no homicides in the past year. Magic! Doesn't mean people weren't getting killed.

Specific to the article's portrayal, they're not using a government definition of mass-shooting (which is 4+), they're using someone else's definition (more than 5). That changes things.

And when someone writes an article using disparate statistics to make their point, without pointing out that there has been no centering or normalization, the casual reader is going to come away with knowledge based on a lie. Even though the numbers themselves aren't made-up.

None of this is meant to disparage, diminish, or dismiss the hard work and care and concern people have put into to try and deal with a very serious issue. But people can be shit sometimes and it doesn't matter what side of the argument it's on. It still stinks.

[Typhon]

Gun ownership in Australia is one-fourth the rate of gun ownership of the USA and its incidence of gun-related violence, including crime, self-inflicted, and accidental, is one-fourth that of the USA.

Australia: 25 million people

USA: 327 million people

So, Australia has one fourth of the reported gun related crime than the United States, with one thirteenth of the population?

Exactly !
Population size has to be taken into consideration.

[Jack the Stripper]

Statistics don't lie...

True. But people do, and sometimes they're very subtle about it. For example, the article you linked to is true. But, what is it trying to convey? That firearm-related violence is continuing to decrease in Australia? Or that firearm-related violence is continuing to decrease in Australia due to the National Firearms Agreement of 1996?

There's a difference. And if it's the latter, it a lie. The rate of gun violence in Australia was decreasing along the same slope in the seven years prior to the enactment of the NFA as it has since then. Correlation is not causation.

Furthermore, the article mentions that there have been no mass-shootings in the past 20 years, whereas prior to that there were plenty. Well, yes and no. Let me explain:

If I was a government agency, and I changed the definition of "homicide" from "killing someone" to "alien invasion", I could issue a report stating that there had been no homicides in the past year. Magic! Doesn't mean people weren't getting killed.

Specific to the article's portrayal, they're not using a government definition of mass-shooting (which is 4+), they're using someone else's definition (more than 5). That changes things.

And when someone writes an article using disparate statistics to make their point, without pointing out that there has been no centering or normalization, the casual reader is going to come away with knowledge based on a lie. Even though the numbers themselves aren't made-up.

None of this is meant to disparage, diminish, or dismiss the hard work and care and concern people have put into to try and deal with a very serious issue. But people can be shit sometimes and it doesn't matter what side of the argument it's on. It still stinks.

I think it was probably an oversight on the writers behalf in using 5+ constituting a gun massacre or mass shooting. I've only ever heard government and law enforcement officials using 4+ as the criteria for what constitutes a gun massacre, in which you'll find the statistic wouldn't be any different anyway.

Botton line is Australia hasn't had one gun massacre like we've seen in the United States since the gun amnesty of 96. The average Joe Blow on the street would find it next to impossible to get their hands on a semi/fully automatic weapon unless they had ties to the criminal underworld or outlaw motorcycle gangs, in which the cost of obtaining one would be astronomical anyhow...Let alone for a 15yo school boy.

[Billy Underdog]

Exactly !
Population size has to be taken into consideration.

Don't you think those numbers might be in relation to the population.

Australia is one thing, but what about a country closer to the U.S. both geographically and culturally? Canada, f.ex? A country that most definitely have a strong hunting tradition.

And all stats aside, there's still no good arguments to why guns should be so easily available, or that semi-automatics should be available at all... Or why we even need any of them in the first place.

[Typhon]

^^^^^^
Banning those guns is irrelevant.  The fact of the matter is that the country with the highest death rate per million people from mass public shootings from 2009 to 2015 is NORWAY. 

When something tragic happens in the U.S., it gets more publicity and more air time in world news than most countries.  This leads people to believe that the U.S. has the larger problem.  This simply is not true.

[Sabbabbath]

Why focus on mass shootings in the first place? Why not talk about murders in general, which happen much more frequently and regularly?

UNODC murder rates (per 100,000 inhabitants) (Most recent year UNODC has published)
USA 4.88 (2015)
Finland 1.60 (2015)
France 1.58 (2015)
Sweden 1.15 (2015)
Denmark 0.99 (2015)
Australia 0.98 (2015)
Germany 0.85 (2015)
Norway 0.56 (2014)

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Clearly, gun control is not the only factor. I guess social security and/or social equality is very important too, and surely there's much more to take into account.

[Billy Underdog]

Banning those guns is irrelevant.

Why?

The fact of the matter is that the country with the highest death rate per million people from mass public shootings from 2009 to 2015 is NORWAY. 

If that's a fact, we did have one incident that's pulling the stats. Overall there's very little gun violence at all here.

When something tragic happens in the U.S., it gets more publicity and more air time in world news than most countries.  This leads people to believe that the U.S. has the larger problem.  This simply is not true.

Good to know that you're more informed about what's on Norwegian news than i am...


So, how about those arguments, though?

[Zzzptm]

Gun ownership in Australia is one-fourth the rate of gun ownership of the USA and its incidence of gun-related violence, including crime, self-inflicted, and accidental, is one-fourth that of the USA.

Australia: 25 million people

USA: 327 million people

So, Australia has one fourth of the reported gun related crime than the United States, with one thirteenth of the population?

Exactly !
Population size has to be taken into consideration.

Both my numbers are rates per 100 people for gun ownership and gun deaths per 100,000 people. Apples to apples. Sure, Oz has a smaller population, but the rate per (X) people is something used to compare one nation to another. In this case, Australia's total guns equals the US total, divided by 13, then divided by 4. But the rate per (x) people is what we compare, and Straya's got one-fourth of both rates.

[Sabbabbath]

^^^^^^
The fact of the matter is that the country with the highest death rate per million people from mass public shootings from 2009 to 2015 is NORWAY. 

This is a good example of a statement that is true but misleading.

The first replier on the following webpage put it pretty well IMO, so I will quote them:
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-death-rate-from-mass-public-shootings-higher-in-Europe-than-the-USA-despite-restrictive-gun-control-in-the-EU
"Moreover, several of the countries on the list are so small (Norway) that a single incident makes a big impact on the overall rate.
Here's what I think are the significant lessons of this data:
    There's actually very little difference between any of these numbers. The rate in the US is .089; the rate in Britain is .027.  Egads, we're four times as high, right?  Nonsense. These are deaths per million, and both rates are well under one per million.   In one country it's rare; in the other it's extremely  rare.  Norway's is almost 2 per million, but they only had one attack -- it just happened to be an extremely effective attack,  and they're a tiny country."

Generally, statistics only work with high numbers. You know, if Person A rolls 2 dices 2 times in her entire life, and the results are "4" and "3 respectively", while Person B rolls 2 dices a Million times and her average result is "7", it would be statistically correct yet totally insignificant to say that that Person B's average result is twice as high as Person A's average result. Accordingly, since mass shootings are a relatively rare type of crime (especially in a country like Norway), statistics about them can be extremely misleading. That's one reason why I think that limiting a discussion of gun control to mass shootings is a very bad idea. Murders in general happen MUCH more frequently than mass shootings, so statistics about murder rates are much more likely to yield meaningful results. The second reason is that rates of mass murders seem less likely than rates of 'normal' murders to be affected by gun laws. That's because mass murderers can be assumed to be pretty determined people - probably determined enough to find a way of getting an effective weapon even if access to guns is difficult in their country. In contrast, the rates of more common types of murders would seem, I think, much more likely to be reduced if, as Snagglethooth put it, "the average Joe Blow on the street would find it next to impossible to get their hands on a semi/fully automatic weapon".

[Sabbabbath]

When something tragic happens in the U.S., it gets more publicity and more air time in world news than most countries.  This leads people to believe that the U.S. has the larger problem.  This simply is not true.

Well, if something tragic happens in the US, than it gets more publicity in world news than if something of the same proportions happens in Kongo, Iraq, Syria or Turkey - yes, that's most certainly true. But is the same thing true if the comparison is between incidents in the US vs. France, Norway or Germany? Not in my world. On German news, when e.g. terrorist attacks of similar proportions happen in France and Norway, the attack in Norway will get at least as much media attentian as the US one, likely more - simply because (a) Norway is closer to Germany, (b) it is a part of Western Europe, and (c) a terrorist attack is much more unusual in Norway than in the US. The attacks in France received HUGE media and public attention all over Europe. If, again, something of the same proportions happens in Kongo, Iraq, Syria or Turkey, European news are MUCH less interested in it.