A serious discussion about the need for more gun control

what actually happened in australia when the buyback occurred is that the guys sold their old stuffed 'family treasure' guns, pocketed the money then almost all went out and bought a new rifle with the money.

I love my old family treasure too much to bother trading it up.

Stealth Pilot

He meant semi-auto. Which it was (they were).

Bah!

(look at the stats since)

Hehe. Correct. Sales of short lengths of 6" PVC pipe and screw-on end caps skyrocketed. But - they're not much use under 4 feet of dirt. Whole arsenals slowly coverting to iron oxide.

Well, let's see when that happens.

Not as simple as that. You can't apply a USA mindset to an Australian situation. Chalk and cheese. One could compare our relative per-capita gun crimes and gun-related death stats, but that would just start a pointless tit-for-tat argument, with "only free people own guns" being the Godwin's Law equivalent.

Fact is, we Aussies like it like this, and so it will stay. YMMV. (If fact, of course it will.) Who cares? We don't wear mattress-like suits when playing football; we speak and spell English, not 'Merkin; we don't call our national sport event the "World Series." Vive la Différence!

We're never going to convince you that our way is better, and you're unlikely to convince many of us that yours is better. Some locals would like much-relaxed gun laws here. Most of wouldn't. Works for us. So be it.

-- Jeff R. in Sydney (don't press ; don't press ; don't press ; ---- D'Oh!)

No, he didnt mean semi-auto. The wanker meant automatic weapons. He obviously doesnt have a crew.

Yes indeed. You had no massacres before, and none after. Yet. Gun crimes continued to go down (it was falling before the ban) and has crime with other weapons has continued to rise. Now gun crime is rising again.

Why would you say that? You mean that folks dont know how to properly store things underground?

What will they do?

It was low before hand, and still remains low compared to the US. But the fact remains..ours is falling, yours continues to rise, and the sheep have no ability to protect themselves from the wolves.

True enough. Propaganda works, doesnt it.

True indeed. On the other hand...if you enjoy status as sheep, so be it.

Gunner

I have always thought that a handgun was what you carried when you were not expecting to need a gun. Easy to carry when on horseback. Good enough for shooting snakes and good for putting down horses or cows when it had to be done. A handgun is not the weapen I would prefer if I encountered a brown bear, but I would sure rather have it than nothing.

Handguns are not all that great for killing humans at close range. I would much rather use a shotgun if I needed to defend myself. But they are good for target shooting. I was on my college's pistol team.

Bit of a difference between Ned and the Minute Men. The Minute Men won. Possibly why Americans have a different culture about armed citizens. You might also google on " Patrick Ferguson ". He was the British Officer who threatened to go over the Blue Ridge Mountains to wage war on the Watauga settlements. The settlers decided to cross the mountains them selves and wage war on the British using their hunting rifles. Final score: In all, 225 Loyalists were killed, 163 were wounded, 716 were taken prisoner. 28 Patriots were killed and 68 were wounded.

Dan

I doubt that. Most folk with no interest in firearms will call a semi-auto an automatic. What's a 1911 .45 Colt pistol? An "automatic". And so on.

Hehe. Alone, is he?

Not true. Depends how you define "massacre". (No, I'm not being Clinton-esque.) We've had quite a few, but Port Arthur was the worst. The proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

Marginal. Statistical blips. Utterly irrelevant to the man in the street (or home).

Yup. Its a mindset thing. Not universal, but present.

Specifically, let's chart massacres over the next decade or three.

Not true - just different means. We are not defenceless.

I guess. I only know about the USA what I read. I what I experience and read here in Australia.

Similar to your situation, 'round the other way, yes?

Your perception. Your insult. Saying it doesn't make it true, or even accurate.

It doesn't take a gun to be an effective defender.

I'll stop in this thread here, Gunner. I don't have the patience to keep responding in ever-increasing circles to this perpetual argument.

We don't even have to agree to disagree. Fact is, we disagree, and tough s*it if either of us don't accept that.

This is one of those shades-of-grey things that simplistic arguments back-and-forth will never resolve.

BTW, I would never, not in a million years, suggest that youse Yanks should do anything like what we do, in terms of legislation. I readily concede that would be absurd in the USA. You have guns in large numbers in your environment-forever. Sanctioned by the Bill of Rights. We don't.

Hooroo for now.

-- Jeff R.

Like I said..he is ignorant. No..a 1911 is a self loader, or semi auto.

Chuckle..mea culpa...well..it passed the spell checker...

The other two were motorcycle turf wars. This of course is not counting the genocide of the abos.

Chuckle...long term rises is hardly "statistical blips"

Hummm ..then you are saying your people are stupid?

The majority or the minority? Stupid by and large, or just a few Ozites are stupid?

Lets chart them to the present in Oz, as well, shall we?

An armed man will kill an unarmed man with monotonous regularity. I thought you learned that at Port Arthur?

Ayup..the propganda did work.

We still manage to hold out to our Liberty tools.

Not an insult, an objective opinion. One based on fact.

An armed man managed to kill 35 people over the course of almost a full day, while surrounded by 500 people, and is still alive.

Denial is not a river in Egypt.

Frog gig against pump shotgun?

True indeed.

True indeed as well. Our Founders were very smart men. Yours were convicts. Shrug.

G'day Mate.

Gunner

Speak for yourself ya tool its bad enough the goverment tries to speak on my behalf without being asked

And you read the what comrade Jeff?

What can't find facts to back up your arguments?

Its absurd anywhere except where the gov controls totally maybe move to China or Burma should be happy there moron

Well Jeff you must live in a utopian part of Australia and don't have tv or radio. We are having an increase in armed crime. There is an increase in violent crime and it has only become worse since the last byback. Other than having to hand in my pistols (all legal) I still have my rifles never was one for semi auto rifles but do miss my pump shotgun. How many members of the criminal groups gave up theirs. Why did martin survive? Because of our goverments pathetic belief that all can be cured by talking to them. Jeff you are a tool. Pete

Pigs fscking arse it is.

Now, local gun crime is in the two local newspapers every week.

Last week, it was a double knee capping in the next suburb over.

Well said! Mile in the other's moccasins and so forth. Different isn't wrong if it works.

RCM only

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:19:34 +1100, with neither quill nor qualm, Terryc quickly quoth:

Doesn't that, even in the slightest bit, say to you that the Mafia (Sicilian, Russian, Aussie, Tong, etc.) has taken over since your government disarmed you? Perhaps more attention on your part is necessary, wot?

G'day.

-- Some days, it's not even worth chewing through the restraints.

========== Chairman Mao was largely correct when he observed "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun," although not in the way he meant it.

INMSHO the real question is the ability and desire of the people to act decisively on their own behalf as required when the government either can't or won't.

For one example of how this works in practice click on

for the downside (and liberal view) click on

To see the futility of "gun control" [as opposed to criminal/crime control] review the UK papers for "gun crime."

Indeed, things have reached such a sorry state there that a Scottish homeowner was just imprisoned for longer than the burglar after he awoke and beat the crap out of a burglar he discovered in his and his wife's bedroom when he was awakened.

These problems will continue to grow as long as the socio-economic groups that generate most of the criminals continue to increase as a percent of the population, whether due to mental capacity/lack of education, and/or immigration status, and/or "luck of the draw" in the economic sweep stakes.

A metric called the GINI index or coefficient measures the distribution of wealth [and the method is often used to measure the distribution of other items such as health care.] The range is 0 indicating perfect equality to 1 indicating perfect inequality, i.e. one person has everything.

The US has the highest GINI of any of the OECD nations, and it continues to rapidly increase approaching third world levels in the national aggregate, and is well in to 3rd world values in many large urban areas such as Los Angeles and Washington DC.

Statistically, quality of life metrics such as the rate of crimes against persons and crimes against property are *HIGHLY* correlated with the GINI income [inequality] index. IMNSHO the US is dangerously near the "tipping point" as indicated by the experiences [and GINI indexes] of Brazil, Argentina and Columbia. Their situations took generates to create and will most like take generations to correct.

You'll change your tune when the Chinese army arrives.

If you weren't trying you wouldn't bother with the insults.

You're just arrogant and naive.

So, how do you like it?

Handguns are handier than long guns in some situations that do not involve killing humans. If a water mocassin (very aggressive poisonous snake) drops out of a tree into your boat while fishing a river in the southern US, a rifle would be quite unwieldy so a handgun is a much better choice. The risk of shooting a hole in the boat is strongly preferable to being fanged by a cottonmouth because the bitten will expire long before the boat sinks.

There are handguns sufficent for dealing with brown bear at close range. They're prudent to have for folks who might encounter an aggressive bear while fishing or camping where bears be. These would be folks with no intent of killing a bear, because those intent on killing a bear would use a suitable rifle. Black bears are almost never aggressive, but browns, grizzlys and kodiaks can be. We have all three species in various parts of the USA. There are no bears in metro areas, but there is still a lot of the USA that is way far from metro.

Long guns are best for hunting game but a handgun is handier for dispatching a lamb or pig for a cookout and/or mercifully dealing with a terminally suffering animal.

I have no desire to influence your opinion nor change your mind. Pick yer pony, take yer ride, do what works for you and y'all.

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:14:31 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm, Gunner quickly quoth:

It seems like it's that time again, but nobody is revolting except our fearless gov't officials (from the ground up), and I don't mean "revolting" in a political way.

--- Chaos, panic, and disorder--my work here is done.

On Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:45:39 -0600, with neither quill nor qualm, Don Foreman quickly quoth:

I grew up in Arkansas, where the Air Police used shotguns to kill the cottonmouths at the perimeter of the LRAFB lake. I never heard of a cottonmouth rattler or water moccasin in a tree. Have you seen them displaying this behavior, Don?

And I sure would't want to shoot a hole in my boat there. Dem cottonmouths live in de water dere.

--- Chaos, panic, and disorder--my work here is done.

================ Even if you don't have a black market in guns (and even if guns didn't exist) you would still have problems. For one example (out of thousands) click on