A message from "Down Under"

A message from "Down Under"

Edit: Debunked by the guy that has reached "The End of the Internet" several times.

Thanks to the professional surfers out there.

We should be careful not to use false or misleading information for it will ruing our credibility as bad as false and misleading infromation over the years has hurt VPC and the Brady Bunch's credibility.
Australian crime, murders and gun crime seems to have remained the same or actually to have even fallen somewhat since the 1997 gun buy back program. http://www.snopes.com/crime/stat istics/ausguns.asp

I have seen someone repeat some of the statistics in the email over on the Baltimore Sun message board only to be shot down in flames by an actual Australian who challenged the figures and made the pro gun rights cause look preposterous as a result. I cringe whenever I remember that because I knew the numbers did not seem right and I looked them up to discover the Aussie was basically correct.

Looking at the stats from this site shows a steady increase in crime.

http://www.police.wa.gov.au/AboutUs/AboutUs.asp?FactsandFigures

Jas said:

Looking at the stats from this site shows a steady increase in crime.

http://www.police.wa.gov.au/AboutUs/AboutUs.asp?FactsandFigures

Click to expand...

There are about seven territories of Australia and WA has only one tenth of the population of Australia.

I think in this case it might be best to look at the Australian government's own statistics. They have data tracking rates per 100,000 people who had a firearm used against them in a crime. These are nationwide stats.

What their data shows is that the only type of major violent crime involving a firearm which did not increase from 1995 to 2001 was murder, which remained a steady .3 per 100K people.

Attempted murder with a firearm however climbed from .4 in 1995 to .7 per 100K in 2001, almost doubling. Assault with a firearm climbed from 3.7 to 4.5 per 100K. Sexual assault with a firearm doubled from .1 to .2. And kidnapping involving the use of a firearm increased a whopping 400% from .1 to .4.

Robbery with a firearm stayed fairly constant with a slight overall increase, from 8.1 per 100K people in 1995 to 8.7 in 2001. Interestingly though, it showed two significant increases in rates per 100K in 1997 and 1998, the two years following the installment of the draconian Aussie gun laws. The rates for robbery with a firearm jumped from 8.7 in 1996 to 11.8 in 1997. It fell to 10.2 in 1998, dropped for the following two years then jumped up again in 2001.

I looked at all of these tables and it looked to me to show a steady progression in increases, so the data seems to rule out any argument that 2001 was a "fluke" year or something. The only exception was the armed robbery rate which seemed to fluctuate quite oddly.

Not any political organization's figures, the Aussi government's own. And nobody can say they work for a pro-gun crowd. They don't paste well in here but I tried, so here's the link http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article132003?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=1301.0&issue=2003&num=&view=


11.10 VICTIMS OF RECORDED CRIME, By use of weapon in commission of offence

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Victims who had weapon used against them per 100,000 population
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1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
Offence and weapon type rate per 100,000 rate per 100,000 rate per 100,000 rate per 100,000 rate per 100,000 rate per 100,000 rate per 100,000

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Murder
Firearm 0.3 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3
Other weapon 0.8 0.7 0.9 0.7 0.8 0.7 0.7
Total weapon(a) 1.2 1.3 1.3 1.1 1.2 1.0 0.9
Attempted murder
Firearm 0.4 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.6 0.6 0.7
Other weapon 0.8 0.9 1.0 1.3 0.9 1.1 1.2
Total weapon(a) 1.2 1.5 1.5 1.7 1.5 1.7 1.9
Assault
Firearm 3.7 3.6 4.4 3.6 3.4 4.1 4.5
Other weapon 49.5 56.9 61.0 64.7 73.2 76.7 82.9
Total weapon(a) 55.4 63.6 68.3 71.4 79.8 83.1 89.3
Sexual assault
Firearm 0.1 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.2
Other weapon 1.2 1.4 1.4 1.5 1.3 1.3 1.4
Total weapon(a) 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.5 1.4 1.6
Kidnapping/abduction
Firearm 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.3 0.3 0.4
Other weapon 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.6 0.5 0.5
Total weapon(a) 0.3 0.4 0.4 0.5 1.0 0.8 0.9
Robbery(b)
Firearm 8.1 8.7 11.8 10.2 7.6 6.9 8.7
Other weapon 17.4 22.0 32.5 42.3 37.9 39.4 42.6
Total weapon(a) 29.1 34.2 48.9 57.9 49.9 49.5 57.0

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(a) Includes data where a weapon was used but was not able to be identified as to the exact type of weapon.
(b) Refers to persons or organisations. All other offence types refer to persons only.

Source: Recorded Crime, Australia, 2001 (4510.0).

I still say that Australia is a poor example to use for our arguments. The changes are almost statistacally insignificant like the supposed "decrease" in AW crimes (traces) after the federal 1994 AW ban the Brady Bunch claims occured. A .4 to .7 increase of attempted murder is an additional 60 or so attempted murders using a firearm in a country of 20,000,000+ and if we mention it to the general public in support of out gun rights position they may get the feeling we are quibling or grasping at straws.

What can be used for good argument against the antis though is that just like England, the gun crime and overall crime did not go down after stricter gun control laws as was promised and it still continues regardless.

Well I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this one . I would agree with you if we were (doing what the Brady Bunch does) and going looking for one peculiar 'needle in a haystack' statistical factoid to fit our needs, that's not a good or an ethical way to sway opinion. And I agree it isn't a good idea for us because we don't need to do it, we have the real facts on our side. That being said, when the facts are clearly on our side we need to use them.

The problem with only arguing that the crime rate didn't go do down because of gun control is you run into the "if it just saves one life" argument. And while we here might not buy into that logic at all, there are plenty of members of the public who couldn't care less about 2nd Amendment rights, if they even know what that phrase means, and would gladly flush all of our gun rights down the toilet in the name of "if it saves just one life" if someone could convince them it might. So I think the Australian statistics, which to be honest surprised me when I looked them up tonight, serve as not only a good but even a powerful argument.

When you can take 5 out of 6 crime categories and demonstrate all have increases that are not only well over the generally accepted level of statistical significance of 3%, but also range as high as 200% and 400%, across a period of several years and are steadily increasing, then I think that is a sound argument.

But that's just my opinion. We're all on the same side here and its good we all have the ability to share our ideas.

zoostation said:

When you can take 5 out of 6 crime categories and demonstrate all have increases that are not only well over the generally accepted level of statistical significance of 3%, but also range as high as 200% and 400%, across a period of several years and are steadily increasing, then I think that is a sound argument.

But that's just my opinion. We're all on the same side here and its good we all have the ability to share our ideas.

Click to expand...

The main issue with that argument is that it doesn't isolate variables or attempt to control for other factors. It's something that many studies much better funded than our bit of internet research here fail to do as well and can heavily discredit them. Correlation does not prove that something caused an effect. That's usually what we use to refute those "people with guns are more likely to commit suicide" arguments, pointing out that it's much more likely that a desire for suicide caused the purchase of the gun instead of the other way around.

Now a lack of correlation can be used to show an absence of cause and effect. It's easier to tear down an argument than to definitively support one with statistics. While I can't say that Australia's anti-gun laws cause an increase of crime, I can certainly say they haven't done anything to lower it. It's an important distinction, especially if you have to talk about this with other people who have studied statistics or science (the latter being relevant due to isolating variables and setting up a control experiment being standard scientific practice).

As for the "if it just saves one life" people, I usually point out how the number of times a firearms is used in response to a crime outnumbers the times one is used to commit one even when using the most conservative estimates of the former. It's been a while since I've had to bring that up though and I probably should refresh myself on where to pull that data from.

Australia was never a armed state. The population never revolted, and was a bunch of convicts anyway. Gun control has always been in Australia, and only the select few have ever been allowed to own firearms anyway.

The trends in crime in Australia have nothing to do with America.