When Australia began enforcing their nationwide firearms ban, they paid all gun owners to take their weapons, or so I’ve read.
Needless to say, the US Government would be rendered incredibly poor if they did that, and there’s no way to enforce it nearly as effectively as Australia.
A gun buy back wouldn’t do any additional damage. It would just slop a little more debt on the top.
^ On top of the current 16 trillion dollar hole, you mean. It’s a lot easier to suggest such a thing if you don’t live here. The small business sector has all but collapsed where I live due to the crushing amounts of debt, the ridiculous tax rates, and the clout of national chains.
As for Australia’s gun ban, I recently read an article that crime rates initially spiked under the ban, then settled to what they were, meaning there has been no actual reduction in violent crime since the ban. Seems a bit pointless of an expenditure to invest in, don’t you think? Melting down and buying back all those guns costs money…
k3nny: You don’t live in the United States, do you?
As for the Australian gun “ban”, could I see some sort of evidence for this?
I live in the independent sovereign nation of Colorado.
"The Australian gun buybacks of 1996 and 2003 were compulsory compensated surrenders of newly-illegal firearms.
The 1996 Buyback took 600,000 newly illegal sporting firearms, including all semi-automatic rifles including .22 rimfires, semi-automatic shotguns and pump-action shotguns. The publicity and use of the misleading framing ‘automatic and semi-automatic’ term gave the impression that the main target was what are called in the US media ‘assault weapons’, but almost all were sporting rimfires and shotguns. Because the Australian Constitution prevents the taking of property without just compensation the Federal Government decided to put a 1% levy on income tax for one year to finance the compensation. The buyback was predicted to cost A$500 million and had wide community support.
The 2003 handgun buyback compensated the confiscation of about 50,000 newly illegal pistols, the majority being target arms of greater than 9mm calibre (generally used for IPSC competition), or smaller handguns with barrels less than 4" such as pocket pistols, which were mostly licensed for target use as since 1996 licenses cannot be issued for self-defense in Australia. Even anti-gun activists criticised this exercise as pointless because almost all of the confiscated firearms were immediately and legally replaced with others that met the new rules."
Source: Wikipedia.
Following the 1996 ban, the number of homicides in Australia decreased from 104 (year of ban) to 47 in 2001 (-54.81%) to 30 in 2011 (-71.15%). They still have 3,000,000 firearms. The ratio is 1 death every 100,000 weapons.
By comparison, the number of deaths by firearm in the US in 2011 was 9,146. The ratio is 1 death every 29,521 weapons.
As you can see, the difference exist. And it’s also non-linear, but a 3-and-1/2-fold increase.
Source: Australian Institute of Criminology (table 1) and The Guardian.
What?
:brow:
Check The Guardian’s link
That’s 9,146.
Why the hell do some places reverse commas and periods in numbers? It doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t think it was debated that the reduction of guns would result in a reduction of crime lethality. The raw data is there.
But there are a number of other problems associated with trying to remove guns… And nearly all of them stem from the fact that the original amendment was put in place at all when the Bill of Rights was written.
But the period is a full stop and the comma isn’t. It makes sense that the period should be used for the the decimal point because it’s a meaningful stop, but the commas are just there to make the numbers easier to read.
yeah other cultures fuckin suck
merica yeah can’t touch our skooL shootinz
Uh’murrikahhh!!!
Well, to finish this off: We can all safely assume that NOTHING is going to happen in the US regarding gun regulation, and North Korea is going to keep testing and developing WMD. After all, forbidding them to do so, would go against the bill of rights.
Whoa, where did that come from?
A saving throw at changing the topic, I guess.
Whatever. I’ve gone to shooting ranges with friends before, and weapons are perfectly safe in the hands of people who’ve been trained in proper safety, and are of solid psychological constitution. Besides, guns are fun to shoot. I had a lot of fun with my friend’s Mosin. Thing kicks like a mule, though.
And don’t act like gun safety is a huge training program you have to take with LE pros. A few common sense rules is really all it’s about.
I think the problem in the US are the hundreds if not thousands of indian burial grounds. Native Americans who were murdered by the white man are coming back for revenge.
that is so completely beside the point it’s hard to muster the words
@kenny
Now THIS man’s got the right idea.
^ Well then what was the point? This thread has just meandered back into “MERICA” bashing, as is the case whenever this sort of thing happens.
As for the zombie Natives, well, there’s your 2012 theory.
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