[quote]blazindave wrote:
There is a conflict of ideas, culture and status in the united states on a level that australia cannot comprehend… THAT will be a cause for crime, NOT guns.
[/quote]
Very good point.
[quote]AndyG wrote:
I can walk down any street in Australia and feel safe. How about you?
[/quote]
We don’t have to walk, we drive cars over here. Really nice ones. You guys still riding kangaroos down there?
[quote]dhickey wrote:
AndyG wrote:
I can walk down any street in Australia and feel safe. How about you?
We don’t have to walk, we drive cars over here. Really nice ones. You guys still riding kangaroos down there?
[/quote]
coughobesitycough…
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
I mean, we killed a lot of the aboriginal peoples on our continent with smallpox-contaminated blankets…[/quote]
Not this myth again, Varq.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
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?
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.[/quote]
Nice work.
[quote]orion wrote:
dhickey wrote:
AndyG wrote:
I can walk down any street in Australia and feel safe. How about you?
We don’t have to walk, we drive cars over here. Really nice ones. You guys still riding kangaroos down there?
coughobesitycough…[/quote]
coughnoclevercomebackforaustriacough…
coughsomebodyhelpmeoutherecough…
[quote]dhickey wrote:
orion wrote:
dhickey wrote:
AndyG wrote:
I can walk down any street in Australia and feel safe. How about you?
We don’t have to walk, we drive cars over here. Really nice ones. You guys still riding kangaroos down there?
coughobesitycough…
coughnoclevercomebackforaustriacough…
coughsomebodyhelpmeoutherecough…[/quote]
Australia is the fattest country in the world.
[quote]ukrainian wrote:
dhickey wrote:
orion wrote:
dhickey wrote:
AndyG wrote:
I can walk down any street in Australia and feel safe. How about you?
We don’t have to walk, we drive cars over here. Really nice ones. You guys still riding kangaroos down there?
coughobesitycough…
coughnoclevercomebackforaustriacough…
coughsomebodyhelpmeoutherecough…
Australia is the fattest country in the world.[/quote]
We beat you by 1 percentage point.
Ironically, the world’s fattest nation also has the worlds second longest average life expectancy.
Aragorn, first you must have done some sneaky work with your stats. You picked 1996 which was the year the Pt Arthur massacre occured and 36 people were killed. Of course the homicide rate is going to be drastically increased soley due to that.
Secondly our gun homicide rate is at about o.4 per 100 000. I’m not sure about your 3.03 figure for gun related deaths for us either.
Your figures are astronomical compared to ours. I don’t care that lots of people are responsible gun owners the dead people don’t care either. The fact is more guns = more dead people.
I’m not sure why you guys are so worried about defending yourselves against your government. They’re too busy shooting everyone else to worry about you.
[quote]AndyG wrote:
Aragorn, first you must have done some sneaky work with your stats. You picked 1996 which was the year the Pt Arthur massacre occured and 36 people were killed. Of course the homicide rate is going to be drastically increased soley due to that.
Secondly our gun homicide rate is at about o.4 per 100 000. I’m not sure about your 3.03 figure for gun related deaths for us either.
Your figures are astronomical compared to ours. I don’t care that lots of people are responsible gun owners the dead people don’t care either. The fact is more guns = more dead people.
I’m not sure why you guys are so worried about defending yourselves against your government. They’re too busy shooting everyone else to worry about you.[/quote]
more guns=more gun suicides compared to other methods.
[quote]Regular Gonzalez wrote:
ukrainian wrote:
dhickey wrote:
orion wrote:
dhickey wrote:
AndyG wrote:
I can walk down any street in Australia and feel safe. How about you?
We don’t have to walk, we drive cars over here. Really nice ones. You guys still riding kangaroos down there?
coughobesitycough…
coughnoclevercomebackforaustriacough…
coughsomebodyhelpmeoutherecough…
Australia is the fattest country in the world.
We beat you by 1 percentage point.
Ironically, the world’s fattest nation also has the worlds second longest average life expectancy.
[/quote]
Wait, never mind. He asked for a comeback against AUSTRIA.
[quote]AndyG wrote:
Aragorn, first you must have done some sneaky work with your stats. You picked 1996 which was the year the Pt Arthur massacre occured and 36 people were killed. Of course the homicide rate is going to be drastically increased soley due to that.
Secondly our gun homicide rate is at about o.4 per 100 000. I’m not sure about your 3.03 figure for gun related deaths for us either.
Your figures are astronomical compared to ours. I don’t care that lots of people are responsible gun owners the dead people don’t care either. The fact is more guns = more dead people.
I’m not sure why you guys are so worried about defending yourselves against your government. They’re too busy shooting everyone else to worry about you.[/quote]
I can absolutely assure you that no “sneaky work” was performed whatsoever. I like being honest, even in a place as anonymous as teh interwebz. I was just bored, and picked 1996 as it came up in a google for australia and I wanted all the stats to come from the same year, and I was just too damn lazy to look for 2007 stats. I had no idea until a while after I’d posted that 96 was the year that happened. Hell, I didn’t even realize that had even happened. I don’t keep up with Australian news headlines.
Of course, the moment I realized that was also the same moment I read that you guys came into peoples homes and confiscated about 600,000 firearms that were previously legal. That, my friend, is why people in america are unhappy with various aspects to gun control.
I put some time into it, but it wasn’t what I’d put into doing something I actually would put into a published article or something. For crying out loud it only took me like 15 minutes. I suppose I COULD put a few hours into a post, but really, I don’t get paid for that time.
Second, the 3.03 is for ALL gun related deaths, as I clearly label it. This includes suicide, accident, etc. It is NOT gun homicides. In addition the 3.03 was derived from an Australian gov’t article. These ‘astronomical’ stats are also figures for the state, not the country, you realize? I don’t think I’d call them astronomical at all. Least of all the gun homicides. Higher, sure. Alarming or indicative of some sort of concern? nope.
Of course, if you’re talking specifically about the texas all gun deaths, as I imagine you are, it’s only about 4 times your gun death stats, and they have 10 times the guns you do, probably much more than that. More guns necessitates more accidental deaths, which might be expected to go up relatively linearly across a population. Also, suicides play into that. Easily available guns mean an increase in gun related suicides, which is not necessarily linearly related to the raw number amount of guns present.
So googling 2005 death stats for Texas (which are the most recent I can find with reasonable effort) yields the following:
4.40 per 100,000 for gun homicides for Texas. So, it went down. As did overall gun deaths. Despite approximately 4 more million people and more guns available.
I really don’t care anymore. I think my overall point—which is that if you look at the gun friendly, gun ‘crazy’, “cowboy”, crazy american state of texas you find that gun deaths are anything but ‘astronomical’. And in fact very reasonable.
4.4 per 100 00 in Texas.
0.4 in Australia.
Not astronomical at all!
[quote]AndyG wrote:
NateOrade wrote:
AndyG wrote:
The other Australian wasn’t particularly impressed with the argument that if everyone has guns you can just shoot back.
Americans have an ingrained attitude that the righteous always wins and that grannys are going to blow away hardened crims.
Of course the idea of making guns less available to crims has no merit. They always make themselves known so that everyone else has a chance to shoot first.
I have a three year old. It’s very difficult to take away her toys too.
Funny how you make up crap while when presented with FACTS in the other thread…you don’t reply. It was shown that areas with less scrict gun control have less gun violence. It was shown this was true even in cities. It was shown that INCREASING gun control in cities INCREASES gun violence.
When this was shown you said nothing.
Like I said there. Read the statistics on gun crime and let the adults speak.
Since your foolish country has been awash with firearms I daresay there will be a lag between gun control measures and the effect being seen.
Criminal statistics are in general notoriously unreliable. Gun mad internet people even more so. Sites like gun facts are hardly going to be independent. One exception is the number of homicides. In Australia we generally figure out why someone dies. You guys probably don’t so the homicide rate is probably even greater than I quoted.
I might consider the argument that gun control is impossible now but could have been the answer 50 years ago before there were as many about as there are now.
I can walk down any street in Australia and feel safe. How about you?
[/quote]
do you even know what you are talking about?
you make it sound like someone ends up dead in a house and the police say “yup chalk that up to another murder” and dont investagate.
not everyone is walking around with guns in there pockets and this is not the wild west.
I can tell you though,taking away a peoples freedoms in order to protect them is not right.
tha twould be like locking you up in your room as a child.
you never got to do anything outside that room,but you never got hurt either now did you.
thats what gun control or any “control” basicly is
I don’t make it sound like that at all. If the cops say, chalk it up to a murder it goes in the stats. If someone goes missing then it isn’t counted.
People’s freedoms are taken away all the time, otherwise you’d be able to smoke, swallow or inject whatever you want. You don’t have the freedom to spend all your money however you want, you have to pay tax. The list goes on.
[quote]AndyG wrote:
I don’t make it sound like that at all. If the cops say, chalk it up to a murder it goes in the stats. If someone goes missing then it isn’t counted.
People’s freedoms are taken away all the time, otherwise you’d be able to smoke, swallow or inject whatever you want. You don’t have the freedom to spend all your money however you want, you have to pay tax. The list goes on.[/quote]
But, thanks to the NRA the US government can go fuck itself when it comes to guns.
Plus, several wrongs do not amount to one right.
[quote]AndyG wrote:
4.4 per 100 00 in Texas.
0.4 in Australia.
Not astronomical at all![/quote]
Would you please tell me your source?
And
It’s still linear. So, assuming your number is correct, it’s still on par with Australia as Texas has at least 10 times as many guns. So in other words, the lack of severe gun restrictions hasn’t hurt them at all. If your number is correct, my example isn’t as dramatic as I would like it to be. However, my example is still valid.
[quote]Aragorn wrote:
So googling 2005 death stats for Texas (which are the most recent I can find with reasonable effort) yields the following:
4.40 per 100,000 for gun homicides for Texas. So, it went down. As did overall gun deaths. Despite approximately 4 more million people and more guns available.
I really don’t care anymore. I think my overall point—which is that if you look at the gun friendly, gun ‘crazy’, “cowboy”, crazy american state of texas you find that gun deaths are anything but ‘astronomical’. And in fact very reasonable.
[/quote]
2005 marked the 10 year anniversary of the Texas Concealed Carry law - and gun related homicides actually decreased.
I think your estimation of how many guns we have is way low, especially if you count rifles. I would say that there are at least 3 guns per person in the state - and that would be conservative.
My father-in-law has no fewer than 30 guns. Our district judge has 2 gun cabinets full. So you have a guy that’s just salt-of-the-earth, and a guy that is a highly respected professional. They will never run in the same circles - but they both have guns. Lots of them.
I personally don’t know anyone that doesn’t have at least 5 different firearms. That’s not just in the small town where I live. I have a college buddy who lives in Dallas that puts my father-in-law’s collection to shame.
I’ll take 4/100,000 all day long over having the 2nd amendment abolished.
Australia, and their nosy fucking busy bodies can go fuck themselves.
[quote]ukrainian wrote:
Regular Gonzalez wrote:
ukrainian wrote:
dhickey wrote:
orion wrote:
dhickey wrote:
AndyG wrote:
I can walk down any street in Australia and feel safe. How about you?
We don’t have to walk, we drive cars over here. Really nice ones. You guys still riding kangaroos down there?
coughobesitycough…
coughnoclevercomebackforaustriacough…
coughsomebodyhelpmeoutherecough…
Australia is the fattest country in the world.
We beat you by 1 percentage point.
Ironically, the world’s fattest nation also has the worlds second longest average life expectancy.
Wait, never mind. He asked for a comeback against AUSTRIA.
[/quote]
What is the difference?