Australia instituted draconian gun control/confiscation after the Port Arthur Massacre in April 1996. Recently, the Land Down Under under’s been held up as a model for “gun safety” by President Obama and Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. The chart above cast doubt on the idea that civilian disarmament has made Australia safer. When examining it, keep in mind the correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation. That said, check out . . .
the way the lines on the first chart form a mirror image.
A dip in firearms related homicides (as a percentage of the whole) in 1993 is concomitant with a rise in knife-related homicides. There’s a similar relationship in 2001/2003. The parallel more or less continues all the way to 2012, where the lines are moving back to their relative starting positions in 1989/1990.
Despite the warning at the beginning of this post, it seems fair to conclude that Australian gun control did virtually nothing to affect the relative percentage of homicides committed by guns or edged weapons.
news.com.au created the graph, They illustrate their story Scary trend in Australian gun crime with more than 200 shooting deaths a year with numerous examples of firearms-related homicides, proving that “gun violence” is still a thing in Australia.
Here’s an interesting data point to add to the mix . . .
While the tightening of gun laws following the Port Arthur massacre drastically reduced the number of guns in private ownership, it’s believed the figure has now climbed to even higher than before the devastating shooting.
There are currently around three million registered firearms in Australia, according to gun control researcher Philip Alpers from Sydney University’s School of Public Health. This compares to less than 2.2 million registered firearms in July 2001. He estimates that there are about 200,000 illegal handguns on the streets, many of them stolen.
It seems reasonable to conclude that the percentage of firearms related homicides in Australia has little to nothing to do with legal firearms ownership, which has increased by roughly 30 percent since the Port Arthur gun control initiatives. It’s the same lack of correlation between gun ownership and firearms-related homicides we’ve experienced in the U.S. in the same time period.
Here’s a chart of the total number of homicides in Australia for roughly the same time period.
Again, there was a spike after Port Arthur-inspired gun control/confiscation. And the number of homicides is decreasing “despite” that circa 30 percent increase in legal firearms ownership. Same deal here in the U.S.: more guns, less crime.
Bottom line: no matter where it’s enacted, gun control doesn’t work. Unless your goal is to disarm law-abiding citizens. And maybe not even then.