Gun Confiscation in Australia: A model for the USA?

The writer below is correct in saying that differences between Australia and the USA mean that what works in Australia would not work in the USA.  He ignores the elephant in the room, however.  America has many blacks who frequently mount assaults of various kinds on whites.  So whites need guns to defend themselves.  Australia has for a long time had almost no Africans so has had much less personally endangering crime.

The situation has however just changed.  Australia has recently taken in a population of Africans as "refugees".  And in one Australian city -- Melbourne -- they have become numerous enough to form gangs of criminal black youth.  These gangs frequently break into people's homes even while the family is home and even use crowbars to defeat security doors.  That is immensely disturbing to the people victimized and leaves them feeling helpless and very insecure.

The response so far is to demand that the police stop the raids but the police clearly have got not a clue what to do about it.  Talk has been the only response so far.  Once the impotence of the police has been widely accepted, Australians too will be demanding guns to protect themelves

In the wake of last October's mass murder by a sociopath in Las Vegas, comes tragic news of another mass murder on a school campus in Florida.

The contrast between the response of two presidents is revealing, one focusing on culture and the other focussing on guns. Despite all the Democrat rhetoric about “gun control," as is the case with their faux rhetoric about immigration, when Barack Obama took office in 2009, Democrats had full legislative control of the 111th Congress. In the Senate there were 57 Democrats and two Independents who caucused with Democrats. In the House there were 257 Democrats and 178 Republicans.

Democrats could have enacted every gun control measure they wanted between 2009 and 2011 – but didn't. Why?

Regarding the most recent tragedy, predictably Democrats and their MSM propagandists have re-warmed their latest batch of lies about the murder of children in order to peddle their political agenda.

The BIG lie this week, in order to bolster the Left's calls for “gun control," is that there have already been “18 school shootings" this year. Even The Washington Post has called foul on that claim, noting it's “a horrifying statistic. And it is wrong." Indeed, it is wrong, but most of the Demo/MSM colluders don't allow facts to impede their political agendas.

However, this is an indisputable fact. There are three things the Leftmedia's saturation coverage always communicates to future mass murder assailants: 1. We will make sure you are famous by devoting all our air time, 24/7, to you! 2. As targets go, a school is best because that will get you the most attention, and nobody will shoot back! 3. Use an AR-15 – they are the most popular gun for the job and we can call it an “assault weapon"!

There are many media myths about gun control being propagated by the Left this week, and by extension, all their lemmings who regurgitate those “facts."

Most prevalent myths in social media forums are calls echoing the MSM's solution: Enact the Australian gun confiscation model. By way of addressing this claim, allow me to repost here a debate with my friend Neville, who is a deeply entrenched liberal from the UK now living in the US, and who has taken it upon himself to reform our nation. Here is an abridged summary of that debate…

Neville:

The time is now to talk about Gun Control! The maiming and death of these children is so pointless, unnecessary and PREVENTABLE. Get rid of the guns. No mass shootings in Australia for over 20 years and counting after a government gun ban.

MA:

The tragic murders in Florida were, indeed, senseless — as are the emotive “solutions" that, predictably, follow such tragic events. I share your grief for these victims and their families, but not your prescription to resolve the culture of violence.

As for your solution … as I am sure you are aware, the culture in Australia has not been conducive to violence in decades. In fact, at one time the culture in America was not conducive to violence either. Not long ago, there were plenty of guns on high school campuses, but no mass shootings.

Yes, Neville, there have been no mass shootings in Australia since the gun ban was enacted, but there were few before then.

In fact, there are few murders in Australia, period. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1996, before enactment of the gun ban, Australia had had 311 murders, 98 by assailants with guns (including the 35 people killed in one mass shooting that prompted the confiscation). In the latest year of record, there were 227 people murdered, 32 by assailants using guns.

I should note here that the population of Australia is only 7% that of the United States, but when adjusting for population size, the number of murders in Australia are still only 20% of the US annual total, of which about 70% were assailant using firearms. But note that, after Australia confiscated all guns, assailants are still using guns to murder people… I guess only law-abiding citizens turned in their guns.

Of course, crime in the U.S. has actually declined more than in Australia over the last two decades. Concurrently, gun ownership in America has increased significantly while homicides by assailants with guns have also declined.

Apparently, more guns, less crime.

So what accounts for the difference in murder rates?

Australia is not plagued with urban poverty plantations created by five decades of failed Democrat social policies, and the resulting epidemic of violent crime. For the record, the top urban crime centers have the most restrictive firearm regulations in the nation. Using Demo-logic, shouldn't these “gun-free zones" be the safest places in America?

As for the “gun problem," if you are NOT a gang-banger or associated with drug trafficking (and Neville, I think you are clear on both counts), the probability of your being murdered in the U.S. falls in line with the probability of your being murdered in your beloved native UK homeland — where most types of guns have been banned for years.

Notably, however, American children are at much greater risk of being killed by a drunk driver than an assailant with a gun. Thus, while I know you favor the finer labels of liquid libation and use it responsibly, by your logic, the government should confiscate it because there are far more deaths associated with alcohol use than firearms — in fact, in many cases assailants using a firearm are alcohol impaired…

As for your sentiments about guns, I would be pleased to provide you with some “Gun-Free Household" stickers so you can broadcast the fact that your home is the best neighborhood option for uncontested intrusion!

Oh, and to put tragic deaths into perspective, there were 6x the number of drug overdose deaths last year, than there were deaths by assailants with a gun, yet I have not seen a single post from you about that…

PS: Your Redcoats tried to seize guns in Concord in April of 1775, and look how the British empire contracted in the years that followed!

Neville:

The preventable death of just ONE child is too high a price to pay for a law, and an ideology, that is long past its sell by date in the modern world. When the right to bear arms was enacted in the 18th century even a well trained soldier could not fire his musket more than twice in a minute. A modern assault rifle can fire 600 times in one minute, which is the equivalent of being fired at by a rank of 300 redcoats. That sort of fire-power has no place in civil society.

MA:

We are too far apart on what ensures “preventable deaths" for reconciliation in this forum, but suffice it to say, the issue is much more complex than your solution. But understand, my views on this matter are not shaped by strong sentiments, but on having defended the lives of others at risk of my own. Thus, I am quite sure you place no greater value on the lives of innocents than do I.

And speaking of “preventable deaths," what is your position on killing unborn children?

As for your aspersions about “ideology," there is one side of the ideological spectrum that is accountable for the slaughter of millions of innocents in the last century — but in every case only after that ideology had disarmed its citizens. And that is the side you are on.

It is for this reason that there is no “sell by" expiration date on the Liberty enumerated in our Bill of Rights, most notably, the Second Amendment, which, in the words of the esteemed jurist Joseph Story, is “the palladium [protective device] of the Liberties of the Republic."

I know that Liberty is a difficult concept for you to grasp, having been inculcated for your lifetime with a statist worldview. But I find that your “solutions," as with those of other likeminded suburban liberals, have an arrogant and undeniable classist undertone that reflects your disdain for common folks.

Tucker Carlson aptly summarized it as follows: “This vital conversation [about culture] has been drowned out and made impossible by mindless screeching about gun control, led by blustery charlatans in the media … and in Congress, whose only real agenda is moral preening. They aren't trying to solve the problem. The calls you're hearing today for gun control have nothing to do with protecting Americans from violence. What you're witnessing is a kind of class war. The left hates rural America, gun-owning America, the America that elected Donald Trump. They call it ‘gun control.' It's not. It's people control. For the left, voters who can't be controlled can't be trusted."

Or as Obama put it in his infamous description about those who Hillary Clinton called “deplorables," those who are “bitter and cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them."

And a footnote: I know you are not familiar with firearms but point of record, the firearm used by the sociopathic killer in Florida was not an “assault weapon." And recall that the most costly mass slaughter of school children in the U.S. did not involve a gun. In 1927, a sociopathic Bath Township, Michigan, school board member detonated a bomb that killed 38 elementary schoolchildren and six adults.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/54196-the-australian-gun-confiscation-debate