[quote]SimonSays wrote:
All good points.
But comparing America and Australia, Our gun related crime is very low. Guns are very hard to come by even for criminals and our police are just recently considering changing from 6 shot revolvers to semi-auto 9mm.
Wouldn’t the best approach be to limit the amount of firearms within a country?[/quote]
Ok, I got a bit bored, so I did a bit of research using easily accessible statistics from gov’t census. I’m lazy so I didn’t do too much work and I’m certain you could find much updated statistics. The specific yearly details aren’t what I’m interested in. It’s the overall picture you seem to have.
You guys have about the TOTAL population that Texas does. Slightly less, in fact. You also have much less of a heterogeneous culture than we do, in view of the fact that our states are very widely different in socio-economic makeup.
I used Texas to compare Australia against because 1) Texas has very very relaxed gun laws. 2) Texas has a comparable, though slightly higher population that Australia 3) When people think “America” they think “cowboy”.
You don’t get much more cowboy than Texas. It in fact superficially matches the preconceived notions that many people from all other countries have about us Americans.
However, Rainjack, this is not a dig at Texas. I like Texas quite a bit actually. 4) The overall attitude and outlook of these two states/countries–both are very traditionally individualistic and independent by virtue of their history and landscape.
Compared, say to a more collectivist culture like some in western/central Europe. Also, compared to say, Maine or something where the wide open landscape does not encourage rough individualism. Population densities are similar-ish as well…both are large with a whole lot of open land around, more rural-ish areas.
Texas vs. Australia 1996
Total Pop.
19,340,342 vs. 17,267,825
Registered Gun Owners
Australia approx. 750,000 guns (2007 number ), Texas has about …I don’t know. Texans are NOT required to register their guns. a 2001 poll from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey found 36% of respondents had at least 1 gun in the household.
Jim Brown --the legislative director for the Texas State Rifle Association–said “If you take 17 million people in Texas and multiply that by about 3, you’ve probably got that many guns”.
He based his estimate on his experience. Just for the record that is approximately 51 million guns. That’s probably high. But a more reasonable estimate would be 7.5-13 million guns.
Gun deaths, all-inclusive (suicide, accidental, training related, homicide, etc.)
13.52 people per 100,000 vs. 3.03 people per 100,000
but Hold the Phones! That’s not a big deal, and here’s why: having more guns in total use means more accidental deaths, all things being equal.
GUN HOMICIDES
only 5.36 people died per 100,000 people for Texas in 1996, with an ASTRONOMICAL wealth of guns readily bought and sold. And one of the most relaxed gun-law codes in the US. And concealed carry.
yeah, sure, that’s higher than your total gun deaths in Australia. But to put it mildly, I’m pretty sure the amount of guns available to civilians in Texas alone vastly outnumbers the total amount of gun permits you Aussies have held by the citizens by about a factor of 10.
If on a linear scale, that would necessitate a 10 fold increase in gun deaths/homicide based solely on the number of gun owners. This is obviously not the case, so one could conceivably argue that Texans are safer gun owners than Aussies.
I won’t do that, and I wouldn’t agree with arguing that at all, but there you go.
considering Texas could arm it’s own civilian Army with guns strictly sold commercially, I’d say that’s acceptable. 2.3 more people. Fine by me. To me this indicates widespread responsible gun use.
Regardless, I’m sure you can see now that things are not quite as black and white as many would like them to be regarding guns being available to the public. States like New York and places like Washington D.C. have enormous problems with gun crime, much higher than these statistics.
They also have a) different cultures of people, b) much much more restrictive gun laws c) different attitudes of the people.