Gun laws and murder rates in Australia

[2020hindsight]

http://andrewleigh.com/?p=1193
Anyone remember Port Arthur - and the Gun Laws that followed. ?
Back when Johnny Howard was in his honeymoon period. ?
(people with long term dementia needn't answer)

Speaking of slightly mischievous portrayal of statistics...
I find the pommie article discussed in this article misleading.
http://andrewleigh.com/?p=1193

I agree with the author of the article when he conculdes ...
"Just because gun buybacks don’t lead to negative gun homicide rates [relative to long term trend], it doesn’t follow that they don’t work."

I've added the [relative to long term trend] bit.

But
a. the trend is still heading down folks, and
b. it's heading down slightly faster than the extrapolated projection of pre-1996 days (95% confidence limits as they say).

Did the gun buyback reduce gun homicides or suicides? According to a new paper in the British Journal of Criminology by Jeanine Baker and Samara McPhedran, it didn’t. (The two have been criticised for their affiliations to the gun lobby, but I don’t think that invalidates their study.)

The paper’s methodology starts from an important insight: since gun homicide and suicide rates have been trending downwards over recent decades, we should compare the efficacy of the gun laws not against the pre-1996 rates, but against the extrapolated trends.

Like the best papers, this approach can be shown with a simple graph. The dashed lines in the chart above (figure 4A in the paper) depict 95% confidence intervals for the trend in gun homicides from 1979-96, extrapolated forwards. The solid line is the actual gun homicide rate.

If the buyback cut gun homicides, we should have expected the solid line to break through the bottom dashed line. This would tell us that fewer gun homicides happened than the extrapolated trend. This didn’t happen, so Baker and McPhedran conclude that the buyback didn’t work. As Jeanine Baker said on the AM program yesterday:

In 1996 we were told that taking the… buying back those civilian firearms, off those licensed firearms owners would make society safer and it would reduce firearm deaths. The evidence isn’t there to support that.

But let’s just look at that graph again, and see what would have had to happen for the gun buyback to work. In 2004, the bottom dashed line hits zero. For the solid line to go below the dashed line, the gun homicide rate in Australia would have to be negative in 2004, and extremely low in earlier years. (Ironically, one of the reasons that their statistical test has so little power is that the mass shootings of the 1980s and 1990s made the gun homicide rate extremely volatile, and the 95% confidence band very wide.)

In other words, Baker and McPhedran have set the gun buyback an impossible test. Just because gun buybacks don’t lead to negative gun homicide rates, it doesn’t follow that they don’t work.

Presumably this year we have about 2 x 20 mill = 40 deaths due to firearms per year?

 

[2020hindsight]

Re: Gun laws and murder rates in Aus

Heck there are no doubt fewer accidents in the home as well.
- kids looking for spiders down the barrels of rifles/guns not put away properly.

Gun Control Australia
http://www.guncontrol.org.au/

Gun Control Australia formed in 1981. It is a voluntary non-profit organisation which is committed to raising awareness about the gun problem, the gun lobby and issues associated with gun control in Australia

.

This from 1998 http://www.guncontrol.org.au/index.php?article=57

Port Arthur - We are Three Years Wiser - Tuesday 28th April 1998
Three years after the Port Arthur tragedy we can assess the strengths and weaknesses of the post-Port Arthur gun laws said Gun Control Australia (GCA). We call upon all Australian governments to remember the suffering and correct the blatant weaknesses in the present gun laws as a means of protecting the public from future gun massacres.

'Despite gun lobby claims to the contrary, stricter gun laws do work' said GCA spokesperson Randy Marshall. 'Although there are still some major weaknesses in our gun laws, there are encouraging signs that multiple gun killings have been reduced'. 'In the decade before the new gun laws 13 people on average died each year in multiple killings, but in the three years since Port Arthur that figure is 5 killed per year', said Mr Marshall.

Despite this we have seen many gun tragedies and an increasing propensity to handgun use. ' GCA has called on all chief police commissioners to support the formation of a handgun problem study group to be formed within the Police Ministers Council' said Mr Marshall. 'We must tackle the handgun problem before Australia starts taking the American path'.

'Stricter gun laws over the past decade have seen the annual number of gun deaths reduced from almost 700 down to 450'. 'Stricter gun laws have thus saved many hundreds of lives' said Mr Marshall. 'We ask our political leaders to enact even better gun laws by greatly increasing the demands on training and testing of shooters, so the annual gun deaths are reduced to no more than 300 in the first year of the new century' said Mr Marshall. This is still a high figure, but If it can be achieved the deaths at Port Arthur will not have been in vain'.

PS you wonder whether USA gun control will feature in the upcoming US election?

 

[2020hindsight]

Another trick with statistics is not to use log graphs.
I mean, graphing gun-related deaths per 100,000,
...
it's a much easier task to get from 0.5 to 0.25 pa
than it is to get from 0.25 to 0.0 !

So you'd have to think (referring to that graph in post #1), that we are doing bludy fantastically - at least at the time that data was plotted.

PS I once did a graph of my times in the City2Surf. - plotted for a couple of years after and including a particularly bad year back there a bit when i did a muscle - but hobbled through nonetheless (but not before that year).
I was improving at 10% pa. - The graph proved conclusively that I was gonna win in just a few years time ... 2010 I think it will be.

PS in the exact same way as that graph in post #1 (or rather a mischievous reading thereof) would have us believing that gun control would be bringing people back to life - in about 2010 as well. (by which I mean that the y axis would have to be extended into the negative to pick up the trend.)

 

[metric]

took my first red deer with a bow on thursday morning. who needs a gun?

 

[2020hindsight]

metric, Did I read somewhere that when the Normans invaded England, they insisted that bows bigger than theirs were banned... (crossbows DEFINITELY banned) etc - some things never change - i.e. these days only the SWAT teams are supposed to have the fancy weapons etc ( except probably in the USA where everyone seems to be armed to the teeth - sheesh)

got a bow here somewhere that my dad made - black apple. (no not Black Adder lol)
In the middle ages they used to play archery I guess - before they invented tungsten darts ?

(and Atomic bombs etc)

 

[storchyman]

farmers

 

[metric]

this is the wrong forum for a NWO discussion....perhaps.

 

[Wysiwyg]

took my first red deer with a bow on thursday morning. who needs a gun?

Who needs a bow? Play fair.

 

[metric]

buy a shovel then. mine your own gold...

 

[happyjack]

If the reduction in suicides is being used as a reason for tighter gun control then the argument is flawed,

All any one who is absolutely determined to top themselves has to do is jump in the old holden and go find a truck.

This happens far more often than most people would realise, tourist buses are good too, What we need are stats of people who have recently insured their lives and then been tragically mowed down by a truck. (Surviving)Truckies should be able to sue the estate for damage

Happyjack :shoot:

 

[metric]

All any one who is absolutely determined to top themselves has to do is jump in the old holden and go find a truck.
Happyjack :shoot:

i knew a bloke that actually did exactly that...

 

[2020hindsight]

seriously? look for a truck!
- what's wrong with a tree? or a cliff?

But you're ight, maybe no change to suicide rate.
I was thinking more of the murder rate - mass murderers in particular.

At least in Aus their names fit on a few foolscap pages

This website points to other factors besides guns in violent deaths btw..
http://www.c-l-a-s-s.net/Christie-medicalview.PDF
alcohol and drug abuse
poverty
mental illness
throw in the violence in "entertainment" etc

They (these doctors) seem to conclude that doing something about firearms in isolation will not be particularly helpful. Mind you, the gangs in Sydney sure as hell have more pistols than a healthy society should accept. Damned if I'd pick a fight (or tell my kids to do so) in town these days. .

 

[2020hindsight]

Here's another blurring of the facts ...

"1,140 drivers with criminal or traffic records have been registered to drive taxis in Brisbane"

So what they saying here? -
1139 had speeding tickets,
and 1 was a murderer?

or the other way round??

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/articles/2008/01/30/1201369203863.html

Convicted murderers have been handed taxi licences in Queensland, the state government has admitted.

Queensland Transport figures show 1,140 drivers with criminal or traffic records have been registered to drive taxis in Brisbane since January 2006 - almost half of the 2,400 licences issued during that time.

Only 459 would-be cabbies were rejected after background checks.

Queensland Transport executive director of passenger transport Paul Blake said people who had been convicted of a sex crime or any offence against children were barred from applying for licences.

But he said convicted murderers could be eligible - depending on how long ago the offence occurred.

''Murder is a conviction that you can qualify after a period of time,'' Mr Blake told ABC radio today.

 

[happyjack]

Originally Posted by metric
took my first red deer with a bow on thursday morning. who needs a gun?

wysiwyg replied "Who needs a bow? Play fair".


He is right metric, You should be ashamed!!

couple of good dogs and a sharp knife, all anyone needs,

ask the girl friend

Happyjack :shoot: