25 years of Australian gun control since Port Arthur
April 28, 2021 2:23 AM   Subscribe

 
Guns, they really do kill people...
posted by Jacen at 3:31 AM on April 28, 2021 [3 favorites]


Mod note: A couple deleted. We've had a ton of posts about gun control in the US, but this post is about Australia. Please have a look at the guidelines, and try to avoid shifting the conversation to be about the US or comparisons to the US.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:47 AM on April 28, 2021 [8 favorites]


Full disclosure, I read the summary of the study results very briefly. Curious to hear from Australians: are the vast majority of legal firearms imported? Is there some precise certainty re: the nature of illegal arms trafficking (source countries? I imagine these types of arms travel almost exclusively by overseas shipping?).

Australia and Canada have their comparable features, and then the comparisons don't hold. I'm afraid the guns conversation in Canada is likely trending towards similar talking points to the US.. yet another disadvantage to proximity.
posted by elkevelvet at 7:30 AM on April 28, 2021


I don't have vivid memories of this like I do the Aramoana massacre, most of what I remember is from after the massacre. John Howard in a bulletproof vest, digitally altered eyes, demonisation of mental health issues, the outrage that the NRA and American christian groups were supporting efforts to prevent the Firearms Act.

It's good to see that we're continuing the damnatio memorae of perpetrators.
posted by fido~depravo at 11:16 AM on April 28, 2021 [2 favorites]


I'm curios about this quote from the results link: NFA-prohibited gun silencers, whose main advantage is to criminals, are creeping back in.

Silencers are ubiquitous amongst European gun owners and are generally sold over the counter there. They are widely used by hunters and sport shooters to reduce the noise pollution generated when shooting and rarely if ever found to be used in crimes. Does Australia have a different experience with these?
posted by nestor_makhno at 11:37 AM on April 28, 2021 [2 favorites]


I suspect they base it off Hollywood. Silencers or suppressors don't make firearms anything like whisper-quiet like in the movies. You put them on a gun for the same reasons as you put a muffler on your car: To protect your hearing and reduce noise pollution. It's still very obvious that someone has fired a gun in a fairly large radius.
posted by Harald74 at 11:40 AM on April 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


International studies show domestic partner homicides are up to 12 times higher when firearms are accessible; and suicide rates up to 19 times higher.
What does this even mean? The country with the highest rate of suicide where guns are accessible has a suicide rate 19x that of the country without accessible guns with the lowest rate? Are they talking about the total suicide rate or the firearm suicide rate? Surely it's not reasonable to expect that firearms reductions will reduce suicides by 94.7%? I'm sure that this article has been fact-checked and there will be some sense in which this statistic is technically true, but why not quote the more directly relevant statistics: a reduction in firearms suicides by almost 80%, with "no effect on non-firearm suicides or substitution of method" (Wikipedia). Why do journalists feel like they have to fish around for the most compelling statistic? Statistics aren't supposed to be rhetorical devices.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 2:21 PM on April 28, 2021 [1 favorite]


I spoke to a friend who had not been back to visit family in the US for a few years, and we discussed how we just don't see any guns in Sydney and her discomfort at their visibility in Texas. In Sydney, if you see a policeman or security guard - even chance there is no pistol on their hip. If you see a group of police, a couple will have their pistol, but rarely do all of them. Security guards unloading cash - one has a gun, the rest do not.

A friend and her son are competitive shooters. The guns are taken from the safe, they practise, they compete - the guns go back in the safe. A mutual friend stayed at her place during the lockdown for a few months - she NEVER saw the guns during that time.

No land border is a massive help in terms of preventing gun smuggling. And when the buyback took place, there were a lot fewer guns in circulation in proportion to the population than for many other countries. Which led to the positive outcome, that the sales were more valuable to the sellers, but overall the cost was less to the economy.

Most farmers I know are pretty unimpressed with "Hunters and Shooters", they all have tales of the hot water cylinder that got shot out by a hunter, or the cow that was killed, or the solar panel ruined.

I live in Tasmania - and everyone knows someone badly affected by what happened. And we are still really pissed off and we will not forget and we will stay angry to make sure that it cannot happen again.
posted by Barbara Spitzer at 6:21 PM on April 28, 2021 [10 favorites]


Curious to hear from Australians: are the vast majority of legal firearms imported? Is there some precise certainty re: the nature of illegal arms trafficking (source countries?

I wish I could answer this, but because there are so few guns I don't actually know anyone who has one, or where to find out.

And I don't say that to be flippant. The gun control changes were the only good thing that Prime Minister John Howard did. It wasn't easy for him, even though I'm sure it was much easier than it would be in other countries. But he took a position and defended it, and got it done so well that 25 years later its barely had to be changed and there's no appetite for change.
posted by harriet vane at 1:21 AM on May 1, 2021 [1 favorite]


Coming at this thread a bit late;
Curious to hear from Australians: are the vast majority of legal firearms imported?
There hasn't been a civilian firearms manufacturing industry in Australia for many decades, so in effect, all legal and illegal firearms are imported. The last Australian-made weapons that might be circulating are heirlooms and museum pieces, and probably date from before the Vietnam War. Some legal niches still exist—for paintballers, competition (i.e. Olympic) weapons, theatrical armourers, and so on. The big exception is the Lithgow arms factory which makes and maintains weapons for the Defence Force, but these are not ever released legally onto the market, and the factory does not make civilian weapons.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:10 PM on May 26, 2021 [1 favorite]


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