Gun Enthusiasts Mobilize

[anonemouse 1]

Jack, what I was referring to by "power" was the capability of firing large numbers of bullets. And yes, I do know the difference between revolvers, semi-automatics, and fully-automatics. I took a handgun safety course (certain wildlife biologist jobs and internships require the knowledge of and use of guns) as a PE elective during my sophomore year of college. If I had been 21 at the time, I would have gotten a license.

I'm sorry, I just don't think competitive shooting as a legitimate reason to risk these dangerous (especially in the hands of untrained, inexperienced shooters) fully-automatic guns getting out on our streets. I think they should only be allowed to be used in government and police force situations and training activities. IMHO, I don't think regular citizens should be allowed to own or use these guns, and I don't think they should be used outside of regular training activities or police situations.

I feel the same way about illegal-length sawed-off shotguns. To me, there isn't any use for them that a regular long-gun or handgun couldn't fulfill.

One recent heartbreaking crime about a year ago, was the (disturbed or angry-I never did hear the final call) teenage son of an off duty LEO STOLE his dad's gun shot several people. "Proper storage" didn't help in that situation.

If the kid was able to steal it, it wasn't properly stored.

[susannah 2]

Hey, Gun hater here. Susannah

[DerickM 1]

In 1996, Australia adopted draconian gun control laws banning certain guns (60 percent of all firearms), requiring registration of all firearms and licensing of all gun owners.

One year after gun-owners were forced to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed, including semi-automatic .22 rifles and shotguns, a program costing the government over 500 million dollars, the results are in...

A dramatic increase in criminal activity has been experienced. Gun control advocates respond "Just wait... we'll be safer... you'll see...".

OBSERVABLE FACT, AFTER 12 MONTHS OF DATA:

• Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2%
  
• Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6%
  
• Australia-wide, armed-robberies are up 44% (yes, FORTY-FOUR PERCENT)
  
• In the state of Victoria, homicides-with-firearms are up 300%
  
• Figures over the previous 25 years show a steady decrease in homicides-with-firearms (changed dramatically in the past 12 months)
  
• Figures over the previous 25 years show a steady decrease in armed-robbery-with-firearms (changed dramatically in the past 12 months)
  
• There has been a dramatic increase in breakins-and-assaults-of- the-elderly
  
• At the time of the ban, the Prime Minister said "self-defense is not a reason for owning a firearm"
  
• From 1910 to present, homicides in Australia had averaged about 1.8-per-100,000 or lower, a safe society by any standard.
  
• The ban has destroyed Australia's standings in some international sport shooting competitions
  
• The membership of the Australian Sports Shooting Association has risen to 112,000, a 200% increase, in response to the ban and as an attempt to organize against further controls, which are expected.
  
• Australian politicians are on the spot and at a loss to explain how no improvement in "safety" has been observed after such monumental effort and expense was successfully expended in "ridding society of guns". Their response has been to "wait longer".

[anonemouse 1]

MYTH: The crime rate has been skyrocketing in the UK and Australia since stricter gun control laws were enacted in 1996-1997.

TRUTH: The truth is that the UK police has changed its system for recording crime since implementing new gun control laws. This change in recording crime made it appear that the crime rate went up. The British Crime Survey, which was unaffected by this change, shows a decrease in crime. Go to the section under violent crime in the British Crime Survey. "The increase in violent crime recorded by police, in contrast to estimates provided from the BCS, appears to be largely due to increased recording by police forces. Taking into account recording changes, the real trend in violence against the person in 2001/02 is estimated to have been a reduction of around five percent." (from Chapter 6- "Violent Crime in England and Wales" of Crime in England and Wales 2001/2002- pdf file)

Here is a graph from the British Crime Survey. You can see that the gun lobby's claim that violent crime skyrocketed in the England after their 1997 handgun ban is clearly false.

Source: Crime in England and Wales 2002/2003 (pdf file) (page 3)

Between 1997 and 2002, the overall UK crime rate fell by 27% (source). The claim that following the gun ban Australia experienced big increases in crime has been refuted as an urban legend at www.snopes.com, a website that is devoted to exposing urban legends. "Given this context, any claims based on statistics (even accurate ones) which posit a cause-and-effect relationship between the gun buyback program and increased crime rates because 'criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed' are automatically suspect, since the average Australian citizen didn't own firearms even before the buyback." (source). Australia's homicide rate is lower than the homicide rate in the US and there has been little variation in Australia's homicide rate since their gun buyback (source). Not surprisingly, the National Rifle Association didn't let the facts get in the way of its claims that stricter gun laws had caused an increase in crime in Australia. Attorney-General of Australia, Daryl Williams, pointed out in letter to Charlton Heston that "firearms are being used less often in murder, attempted murder, assault, sexual assault and armed robbery in 1998 compared with 1997." He also stated in his letter, "The 54 firearm-related homicides in Australia in 1998 equate to a rate of only 0.28 per 100,000 people. I have been advised that this compares to a rate which is in the order of 4 per 100,000 in the United States. Now that you have the facts, I request that you withdraw immediately the misleading information from your latest campaign."

Here is the Snopes.com article on the material you posted, Derick.http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp

[DerickM 1]

Snopes is almost as much of a joke as the urban legends they try to debunk.

laurend's info and graphs from: http://www.guninformation.org/

Do you plagiarize for your college papers as well? tsk tsk

[anonemouse 1]

Do you plagiarize for your college papers as well? tsk tsk

Excuse me? I was just using your own methods. I never, EVER claimed that I wrote that. If you happened to notice, I put it in a quotation box, which indicates that I DIDN'T WRITE IT.

Notice anything missing in your own post?

In 1996, Australia adopted draconian gun control laws banning certain guns (60 percent of all firearms), requiring registration of all firearms and licensing of all gun owners.

One year after gun-owners were forced to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed, including semi-automatic .22 rifles and shotguns, a program costing the government over 500 million dollars, the results are in...

A dramatic increase in criminal activity has been experienced. Gun control advocates respond "Just wait... we'll be safer... you'll see...".

OBSERVABLE FACT, AFTER 12 MONTHS OF DATA:

• Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2%
  
• Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6%
  
• Australia-wide, armed-robberies are up 44% (yes, FORTY-FOUR PERCENT)
  
• In the state of Victoria, homicides-with-firearms are up 300%
  
• Figures over the previous 25 years show a steady decrease in homicides-with-firearms (changed dramatically in the past 12 months)
  
• Figures over the previous 25 years show a steady decrease in armed-robbery-with-firearms (changed dramatically in the past 12 months)
  
• There has been a dramatic increase in breakins-and-assaults-of- the-elderly
  
• At the time of the ban, the Prime Minister said "self-defense is not a reason for owning a firearm"
  
• From 1910 to present, homicides in Australia had averaged about 1.8-per-100,000 or lower, a safe society by any standard.
  
• The ban has destroyed Australia's standings in some international sport shooting competitions
  
• The membership of the Australian Sports Shooting Association has risen to 112,000, a 200% increase, in response to the ban and as an attempt to organize against further controls, which are expected.
  
• Australian politicians are on the spot and at a loss to explain how no improvement in "safety" has been observed after such monumental effort and expense was successfully expended in "ridding society of guns". Their response has been to "wait longer".

You didn't write it AND you didn't put it in a quotation box. Next time you accuse someone of an illegal offense, you might want to make sure you aren't the one breaking the law.

[lizrbit 0]

i think that all guns should be illegal to own. period. I think they kill a lot of people who would be alive if they werent so available. I think they are instruments of destruction and should be illegal. I vote. regularly.

i dont care if you disagree with me on this one.

[Persistance 0]

Picture this:

You are home with your children. Everybody is sleeping. You hear a noise and know (No doubt) that somebody ALREADY IS IN YOUR HOME!

What do you prefer, to have a gun or not?

If somebody breaks into a home knowing that people are sleeping inside, is obvious this person is not going in just to steal. He is willing to use force to get what he wants. What if YOUR children are in his plan (rape, kidnapping…etc) .

I rather have a gun.

I grew up around guns.My dad belongs a shooting range club.

He tought us never to touch them if he was not around.

Is incredible that some people go to jail for killing an intruder in their own home!!!!

[anonemouse 1]

By the way, DerickM's little post was apparently cobbled together using a quote from this website and a list of "facts" from this website. Neither cited, if you haven't noticed. And I'M the plagiarist? At least I bothered to put what I found in a quotation box, indicating that I didn't write it.

[anonemouse 1]

“Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. … Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

Very true. Which is why I support the regulation of guns, not the banning of them. Heck, as soon as I get the time and money (and finally stay in a state for more than a couple of years), I want to get a gun license and buy a small handgun. I do think they can be very useful in certain situations.

[anonemouse 1]

Any study that begins by stating the reason for confusion arises from a change in how the statistics were generated is doomed to be convincing to neither side.

Actually, I think it should be very convincing, at least to anyone with math or stats experience, or experience doing experiments. The first thing you do when you get odd-looking data is look at the way it was generated. If you get results that look drastically different from other results that were generated recently, you first look to see what the discrepancy is. If the two sets of results were generated using two different statistical tests, you can't compare the data properly, or at least not in a way that gives you scientifically valid conclusions. In all of my classes, I've been taught that the first thing you do when designing an experiment or project is to look at similar projects that were done in the past, so that you can compare the results that you found with the results that were found in the past. Even if those other projects used statistical tests or methods that would be considered improper today, if you are wanting to compare the results, you have to use those tests.

So to say that there is a whatever% difference between crime rates last year and crime rates today, you need to determine those crime rates using the same methods. Otherwise, your results are practically useless, scientifically.

[susannah 2]

Hi, I live in the state of Victoria in Australia and I can assure you homicides with firearms have not gone up dramatically. It happens here and there but not often. Australia on the whole is an anti gun nation which I believe is a good thing. My brother is a gun fan and he lives in a rural area and goes shooting. When he gets his rifles out to clean them it turns my stomach and I feel very uncomfortable.

Susannah

[396power 2]

I'm not even going to say anything!

[396power 2]

the moerator may not like me if I say what I think about this.

I need to leave this rant and rave thread alone. but it keeps sucking me in

[396power 2]

I came here for information now all I'm doing is ranting