10/24/2006

Australian Gun Buyback Failure

HALF a billion dollars spent buying back hundreds of thousands of guns after the Port Arthur massacre had no effect on the homicide rate, says a study published in an influential British journal.

The report by two Australian academics, published in the British Journal of Criminology, said statistics gathered in the decade since Port Arthur showed gun deaths had been declining well before 1996 and the buyback of more than 600,000 mainly semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns had made no difference in the rate of decline.

The only area where the package of Commonwealth and State laws, known as the National Firearms Agreement (NFA) may have had some impact was on the rate of suicide, but the study said the evidence was not clear and any reductions attributable to the new gun rules were slight.

"Homicide patterns (firearm and non-firearm) were not influenced by the NFA, the conclusion being that the gun buyback and restrictive legislative changes had no influence on firearm homicide in Australia," the study says.


Thanks very much to Brian O'Connor for sending me this link.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks John for keeping up the good work and reporting the facts and the truths that seem to escape the drive-by media and the liberals.

-The Common American

10/25/2006 2:52 PM  
Blogger jack4 said...

our progun shooters political party report
http://www.shootersparty.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36&Itemid=9
# The reforms did not affect rates of firearm homicide in Australia.
# The reforms could not be shown to alter rates of firearm suicide, because rates of suicide using other methods also began to decline in the late 1990’s.

rebuttal
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=14355
“We find reductions in both gun homicide and gun suicide rates that are statistically significant, meaning that they are larger than would have been expected by mere chance,” Dr Leigh said.“Our best estimates are that the gun buyback has saved between 128 and 282 lives per year.”
http://econrsss.anu.edu.au/pdf/DP555.pdf full text

3/16/2008 12:02 PM  

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