Testimony today on gun control before the Australian Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee

A notice of the public hearing before the Australian Senate later today (5:30 PM EDT US) is available here.

A copy of my testimony is available here.

Victoria (Australia) Police: Banning semi-automatic handguns won't take such guns off the street

This news article misses the point that even to the extent that a ban takes some guns from criminals, that is offset by the fact that victims are easier targets.  From The Age newspaper:

Banning semi-automatic handguns won't take such guns off the street, Victoria Police has told a federal inquiry into gun violence. 

Victoria Police told the submission such a ban "would most likely have little effect on the number of illegally held firearms in Australia". 

"The majority of semi-automatic handguns seized are from criminals who are prohibited persons," the submission says. "It is unclear whether a ban on semi-automatic weapons will diminish their ability to obtain such weapons." 

It also warns that a ban could make it more profitable to import such weapons illegally, potentially pushing the market even further underground. . . . 

"It is likely that 3D printing of firearms will increase, posing a significant risk to community safety and law enforcement agencies," the submission says. . . .

By the way, there has just been an attack where three people were killed in a shooting attack in Australia.  Again from The Age newspaper:

Two men and a woman are dead and a man has been arrested following a shooting and siege north-west of Melbourne that police say was triggered by a neighbourhood dispute.  

Police were called to the property, near Wedderburn and about 210km from Melbourne, about 8.30pm on Wednesday after reports of a minor dispute between neighbours. 

Fairfax Media can confirm that Peter Lockhart, president of the Wedderburn Historical Engine and Machinery Society, his wife Mary Lockhart, and Mrs Lockhart's son Greg Holmes died on Wednesday night. . . . 

Some unusual political parties that hold the balance of in the Australian Senate

Some of these parties won seats with as little as 0.2 percent of the vote because of the strange way that parties can swap unused votes.  From UK Telegraph:

Ricky Muir, Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party 

Muir, 32, supports four-wheel "bush bashing" – or driving off-road in the outback. He posted an online video, which he has now removed, of himself throwing "kangaroo poo" in a garden. "What's the big deal?" said his spokesman. He also suggested on twitter that George W Bush was responsible for the September 11 attacks. 

David Leyonhjelm, Liberal Democrats 

A pro-gun libertarian, Leyonhjelm appears to have won in part because his party appeared first on the lengthy 3.3-foot Senate ticket and because some voters may have thought he represented Tony Abbott's Liberal party. "Looks like I'm going to be the senator for the donkeys," he said, referring to the throwaway votes – or donkey votes – which are likely to get him elected. 

Jacqui Lambie, Palmer United PartyA former soldier who opposes same sex marriage, she said she joined mining tycoon Clive Palmer's party because "I just didn't have the money like the big players did for advertising". 

Wayne Dropulich, Australian Sports Party 

A former member of Australia's gridiron – or American football – team, Dropulich, a civil engineer, said he and some friends came up with the idea for the party several months ago. His party's slogan was: "Are you more interested in sports than politics?" 

Glenn Lazarus, Palmer United Party 

A former Australian rugby league forward, he is known throughout the nation as "the brick with eyes". He once posed naked with a brick to promote a brick company. 

Bob Day, Family First 

Day's Bible-based party supports family values and housing affordability.The party had a previous Senator, Steve Fielding, who was famous for his outlandish stunts, including turning up to Parliament dressed as a beer bottle to promote recycling.

Astonishing poll results in Australia: Labor PM Kevin Rudd behind in his own seat

Is this even possible?  It surely seems hard to believe.  My impression was that the national polls had tightened up and Rudd's seat is supposed to be a very safe seat for labor.  A discussion of the Guardian poll is available here.  An earlier poll from a couple weeks ago showed Rudd in the lead by about 10 percent.

UPDATE: Apparently bettors aren't taking the poll too seriously (see here).

Thanks to Peter Hartley and Damien S for this info.

"New Australian Study Shows More Guns, Less Crime"

I haven't read this study yet, but this has apparently gotten a hold of data showing the increase in gun ownership in Australia that I have been pointing to previously.

New research shows there are more guns but less gun crime in New South Wales, Australia. Although the number of legally owned firearms has increased substantially over the past decade, firearm crime has decreased. 

The study, in press with an international peer-reviewed journal, found that the number of murders with a firearm, shoot with intent to murder offences, and armed robbery with a firearm have all declined steadily despite ongoing rises in legal firearms ownership. 

The author of the study, Dr Samara McPhedran, said “Typically, Australian firearms legislation has been based on a ‘less guns, less crime’ view, which assumes that reducing the number of legally owned guns in society will lead to reductions in firearm misuse.” 

“However, the results from this study suggest there is little, if any, relationship between the number of legally owned guns in Australia’s most populous jurisdiction, and levels of gun crime in that state.” . . .

Gun smuggling in Australia, apparently the criminals are still obtaining guns

Before I had posted a note that legal guns in Australia had returned to pre-buyback levels.  Well, it turns out that the types of guns that were banned are also arriving in significant quantities. From the Sydney Morning Herald.

. . . About 12 to 14 months ago, police noticed it had become much easier to obtain an illegal handgun in Sydney than it had in the past. 

The Commander of the Firearms and Organised Crime Squad, Ken Finch, says, at one stage, there was even a ''glut'' in illegal arms driving down prices on the black market.
Hard work by his squad, including a state-wide audit of every licensed firearm owner and significant busts of importation syndicates, helped to push the price back up to about $15,000, yet he says there are still far too many illegal handguns available. 

''Our intel, particularly during last year … indicated there are a lot of handguns out there,'' Detective Superintendent Finch says. ''There seemed to be an inordinate number come on to the market very quickly.'' 

An analysis carried out by police found handguns were used in 88 per cent of gun crimes in the past 12 months. For public-place shootings, that increased to 94 per cent. 

At the same time, of the 632 firearms stolen from legal gun owners in NSW over the past year, only 10 per cent were handguns, indicating the guns are coming onto the market by other means. 

Last March, three people were charged after Australian and German detectives smashed an international gun-smuggling syndicate that was being run, in part, from a suburban southern Sydney post office. 

It is alleged up to 300 Glock pistols were imported over 12 months through the postal system. 

A German gun dealer had been duped by the trio, who purported to be authorised gun buyers and ordered individual parts in separate packages and assembled them using instructions found on the internet. 

While most of the guns were recovered by police, at least seven have been used in drive-by incidents in Sydney. . . .

Thanks to William Blake for the link.

Australian gun ownership back up to where it was in 1996, doesn't this gut the claims that Australia's gun buyback

This is actually pretty amazing given the threat that the government could actually again try to confiscate guns in the country.  That imposes a real potential tax on gun ownership.

Australians own as many guns now as they did at the time of the Port Arthur massacre, despite more than 1 million firearms being handed in and destroyed, new research reveals. 

A University of Sydney study has shown there has been a steady increase in guns imported into the country over the past decade, with the number of privately owned guns now at the same level as 1996. . . .

Weirdly, gun control advocates are claiming that the buy back is lowering suicides at the same time that they are upset that gun ownership is back to it pre-buy back levels.  One doesn't need a semi-auto to commit suicide.  While Australia's population grew by 20 percent between 1997 and 2011, apparently its gun ownership rate grew by 45 percent.  If they are right, the pattern should have been clear: suicides with guns should have plunged in 1997 and then quickly grown after that.  Obviously that pattern wasn't what was observed.

Note another inconsistency with the claims that the gun buyback lowered suicides: firearm suicides started falling an entire decade before the gun buyback and the rate of decline was the same both before and after the buyback.  So how can it be that the buyback was the cause?

A final inconsistency is that after the buyback the drop in firearm suicides is about the same size as non-firearm suicides.  By what theory would a gun buyback cause a very similar drop in non-firearm suicides?

Note that homicides have almost the same pattern as suicides.  While there is more variability year to year, firearm homicides actually started falling in the late 1980s and both firearm and non-firearm homicides have been falling since the buyback.  Again, how is this consistent with a large buyback followed by increased gun ownership?  There should have been an immediate large drop and then an increase.

The irony is that Professor Philip Alpers, the author of the University of Sydney study, makes my case here:

He said that because of law changes, the new guns were not military-style semi-automatics, which were banned and surrendered after Port Arthur, and that handguns were now harder to import into Australia. But he said: ''It only takes one bullet, and the great majority of gun deaths are domestics and suicides.''

It doesn't take a "military-style semi-automatic" to commit suicide with a gun.  More information on the claims by Alpers is available here.

Some info on the type of guns that can be owned there, semi-autos are allowed if they are less than 40 caliber and magazines are limited to 10 bullets.  Revolvers were not impacted as much.  Information on ownership across Australia is available here.

Some notes on claims about Australia's crime rates

After the attack at the Aurora movie theater, there have been a lot of discussion about Australia's gun control laws.  For example, see this piece at the Huffington Post. 

A decade-long examination of the program in the journal "Injury Prevention" concluded that "chances of gun death in Australia dropped twice as steeply" after the program was implemented. A study by Harvard University in the Spring of 2011 suggested that the program helped reduce, either causally or directly, firearm deaths, gun-related suicides and accidental shootings. The Washington Post, summarizing many of the studies, concluded that there was "strong circumstantial evidence for the law's effectiveness." . . .

Of course, the Huffington Post ignores that more sophisticated research finds no benefit from these laws.  A paper by Lee and Suardi in Economic Inquiry in 2009 does an excellent job of looking at the issue.

Here is the actual data from Australia.  First note that gun ownership exhibits a very interesting pattern that isn't often acknowledged.  There was a large gun buyback in 1996 and 1997 that reduced gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns.  But immediately after that gun ownership increased dramatically and is essentially back to where it was before the buyback.  Why is that important?  Well, if it is the number of guns that is important, you should initially see a large drop in suicides or crimes and then see it increasing.  Yet, in none of these data series do you observe that pattern.

For example, homicides didn't fall until eight years after the laws.  It is not clear what theory they have for why the long delay would occur.  Nor can I even find an acknowledgment of that long lag in the cited literature.   A more natural explanation for the drop at the eight year point would be the substantial increases in police forces that occurred at that time.

Crime can change for lots of reasons besides changes in gun control laws.  One way to get a handle on this is to see how Australian homicides are changing relative to other crime rates.  A single continuous crime data series isn't available, but the two diagrams below show how homicides is falling almost continuously as a fraction of violent crime.  If anything, the drop in homicides relative to overall violent crime was biggest in the 1970s.  

See also homicides relative to overall crime.  Again, it is very hard to see any benefit from the gun control laws.

UPDATE: Comments on the Huffington Post Show today.  Purely cross-sectional evidence in references to the UK, Germany, etc. doesn't mention that homicide rates were even lower relative to the US before they had gun control.  The graph that they showed across countries (at about 12:55) makes it look like the US has a similar murder rate to other countries such as Russia, Mexico, and other South American countries.  For further information see here and here.  

Finally, despite all the claims to the contrary, Australia didn't ban guns, though it did impose stricter criteria for people to own certain types of guns.

UPDATE 2: Ann Coulter has this interesting discussion of a New York Times piece by Rosenthal claiming "More Guns = More Killing":

Rosenthal also produces a demonstrably false statistic about Australia's gun laws, as if it's a fact that has been carefully vetted by the Newspaper of Record, throwing in the true source only at the tail-end of the paragraph:
"After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. ... Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent ...," said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation." . . .
Whether or not the homicide rate went up or down in Australia as a result of strict gun control laws imposed in 1997 is a fact that could have been checked by Times researchers. But they didn't, because facts wouldn't have given them the answer they wanted.
Needless to say, the effect of Australia's gun ban has been extensively researched by Australian academics. As numerous studies have shown: After the gun ban, gun homicides in Australia did not decline any more than they were expected to without a gun ban.Thus, for example, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, the homicide rate has been in steady decline from 1969 to the present, with only one marked uptick in 1998-99 -- right after the gun ban was enacted.
The showstopper for anti-gun activists like Ms. Rosenthal and Ms. Peters is the fact that suicides by firearm seemed to decrease more than expected after the 1997 gun ban.
But so did suicides by other means. Something other than the gun ban must have caused people to stop guzzling poison and jumping off bridges. (Some speculate that it's the availability of anti-depressants like Prozac.)
Curiously -- and not mentioned by Rosenthal -- the number of accidental firearms deaths skyrocketed after Australia's 1997 gun ban, although the law included stringent gun training requirements.
It turns out, until the coroner has certified a death as a "suicide," it's classified as "unintentional." So either mandatory gun training has led to more accidents, or a lot of suicides are ending up in the "accident" column.
Most pinheadedly, especially for a graduate of the Harvard Medical School, Rosenthal says: "Before (the gun ban), Australia had averaged one mass shooting a year. (Since then,) there have been no mass killings."
Mass murder is a rare enough crime that any statistician will tell you discerning trends is impossible. In this country, the FBI doesn't even track mass murder as a specific crime category. . . .
Totally unbeknownst to Elisabeth Rosenthal, Australian academics have already examined the mass murder rate by firearm by comparing Australia to a control country: New Zealand. (Do they teach "control groups" at Harvard?)
New Zealand is strikingly similar to Australia. Both are isolated island nations, demographically and socioeconomically similar. Their mass murder rate before Australia's gun ban was nearly identical: From 1980 to 1996, Australia's mass murder rate was 0.0042 incidents per 100,000 people and New Zealand's was 0.0050 incidents per 100,000 people.
The principal difference is that, post-1997, New Zealand remained armed to the teeth -- including with guns that were suddenly banned in Australia.
While it's true that Australia has had no more mass shootings since its gun ban, neither has New Zealand, despite continuing to be massively armed. . . .

The paper by McPhedran and Baker that Ann might be citing has some interesting facts.  I frequently hear about the mass public shootings in Australia prior to the 1996 law, but it turns out that there were only 4 of them between 1980 and 1996.  8 other attacks were "domestic" attacks.  If you look at total multiple victim-suicide attacks in Australia, the attacks are hardly eliminated after 1996.

Other:

A discussion of Europe is available here.

Mayor Bloomberg's proposals are discussed in the Wall Street Journal here.

So-called assault weapon bans are discussed here.

The importance of gun free zones is discussed here.

Other gun control laws that could impact these public mass shootings is discussed here.
See also ALER piece here.

Major loss for the Australian Labor Party

The election in Queensland is devastating for the Australian Labor party.

With about 70 percent of the vote from Saturday's poll counted, the Liberal National Party (LNP), led by former Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman, has won 78 of the state's 89 parliamentary seats while the Labor government led by Premier Anna Bligh has seen its representation slashed from 51 to 7.
Bligh accepted responsibility for the defeat and despite winning her own seat of South Brisbane, announced her resignation from politics.
That triggers an immediate by-election, further threatening Labor's weak showing in the state. . . .

The sea change in Australian politics:

“Since Labor won the 2007 federal election, it’s lost power in the four most important states, significantly reducing its influence,” said Hughes. “Gillard may be starting to feel a bit lonely in Canberra as she doesn’t have many friends left in the states.” . . .

New South Wales 2011 election

The NSW Coalition, which won more than half the primary vote, is poised to secure 67 seats in a 93-seat lower house, with Labor's numbers more than halved. The ALP is currently on 19, with three independents and four seats undecided. The two-party swing is estimated at 16.5 per cent, with a two-party preferred vote of 63.9 per cent for the Coalition to Labor's 36.1 per cent. . . .

Victorian election 2010 results show Labor could lose 13 seats

A HUGE swing against Labor has brought down many long-standing MPs with the election results expected to see as many as 13 seats lost. . . .

Oldest election

South Australia Election March 2010

In South Australia, with 73 percent of the vote counted so far, Labor suffered a 7.3 percent “swing” against it, compared with the last election in 2006. The Rann government is predicted to retain 25 of its 28 seats, with the Liberals winning 18, and independents 4. Liberal leader Isobel Redmond, however, is yet to concede defeat.
If, as looks likely, Labor again forms government, it will do so having lost the two-party preferred vote. Labor won just 38 percent of tallied primary votes, the Liberals 41.4 percent, the Greens 7.8 percent (up 1.4 percent from 2006), and right-wing Christian outfit Family First 5.3 percent (down 0.6 percent).

Gun permits almost double over last 5 years in New South Wales Australia

Gun control groups in Australia aren't happy with this.

THE number of gun permits issued in NSW has almost doubled in the past five years, sparking calls for restrictions on how many guns people can acquire.
Figures from the NSW firearms registry show 111,792 permits to acquire a firearm were issued in 2009 and 2010. That was 29,427 more than for the previous two-year period. In 2005 and 2006, there were 65,997 permits issued.
The National Coalition for Gun Control, which obtained the latest figures under freedom-of-information laws, says that the increase is linked to the scrapping of a 28-day waiting period for a second or subsequent firearm. . . .

The Australian Election Results

News.com.au has this breakdown for the voting. This one remaining seat in Hasluck may determine everything. The Coalition needs this seat to be able to form a government. The best outcome might be for the Coalition to get 73 seats to Labor's 72, but have Labor form the government. Some seats may yet change and the Hasluck seat may still go either way because of so-called preferential voting, where the preferences of voters lower level choices are given weight when their first choice isn't among the top two finishers.

Looks strong for conservatives forming next Australian Government

Here is a good analysis of the fact that it looks like the conservatives will form the next government.

More on Australia's gun laws

I haven't read the research so I can't vouch for its quality (indeed I haven't seen the paper yet), but the Sydney University journal Current Issues in Criminal Justice has a paper studying Australia's gun laws and finds:

“In the case of firearms legislation, the studies all point in the same direction – no impact on firearm homicide, and no conclusions about firearm suicides because non-firearm suicides were also falling.”

Gun Regulations become slightly loser in one part of Australia

From New South Wales:

GUN ownership is booming again in NSW, with 40,000 new firearms registered in the past four years.

The rise coincides with a deal cut by the State Government and the Shooters Party to water down tough gun laws introduced in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre.

Figures from the NSW Firearm Registry obtained by the National Coalition of Gun Control show gun ownership has risen at the rate of 10,000 a year since 2004 to 687,138 in October this year.

Multiple gun ownership has also soared. The number of people receiving permits to obtain a second or subsequent firearm in 2006 was 32,616.

In the first 10 months of this year, 43,095 such permits were issued. . . .

Despite the worrying figures, the Government and the Shooters Party have quietly agreed to a number of changes to gun laws introduced by former premier Bob Carr after the Port Arthur killings.

Shooting clubs will no longer have their licences automatically revoked for not disqualifying members who have been convicted of firearms offences.

Previously, the police commissioner could immediately revoke a club's licence for not taking action against a convicted member.

In another change, the mandatory 28-day waiting period before a second or third gun can be acquired has also been scrapped.

The Government has also made it easier for men who have previously been the subject of apprehended violence orders to regain a gun licence. . . .

Australian gun regulations on murder

Did the Australian gun regulations reduce murder? Time has this discussion:

"The hypothesis that the removal of a large number of firearms owned by civilians [would lead to fewer gun-related deaths] is not borne out by the evidence." - Samara McPhedran, University of Sydney academic

I wish that they had discussed other types of crime.