Remember the Port Arthur massacre which claimed 35 lives. This happened on the 28th April 1996 at Port Arthur, a popular tourist site in Tasmania. On that dreadful day Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded 37 others. Later that year because of the events that occured, John Howard introduced the gun buyback scheme which forced people to surrender certain firearms including shotguns and semi-automatic rifles. Naturally there was some opposition to this but Howard who always has the good of Australians in mind stuck to his guns :grin1_ee:
Research by Professor Simon Chapman, from the University of Sydney says of the buy back scheme:
“So this has been a dramatic turnaround in a spate of mass killings we were seeing throughout the 1990s and they seemed to have stopped.
When you take 700,000 guns out of an adult population of 12 million, it stands to reason there are going to be far less opportunities for people to get access to those guns – whether it be for suicide or for homicide purposes.
There are far less guns available to be stolen in robberies, that go into the criminal sub-class, and that indeed seems to be what has occurred.
So I would say that it has worked and that maybe the Americans should follow the same road.
Hmm – I wouldn’t take Chapman’s word for it…a quick google reveals that he was the coordinator of the coalition for gun control back in 1996…hardy unbiased! Google also throws up this indicator of how far we can take Chapman’s word – http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lawreport/stories/2006/1776336.htm
True, but he would be a fool if he didn’t have the stats to back up his claims.
He doesn’t – I’ve checked the paper. The stats were done by two of the authors, the discussion is being done by the other two. The conclusions don’t follow from the results. See Dr Weatherburn’s comments on the law report about the claims Chapman made in April that were completely incorrect.
So in the long run, anything that quotes statistics is a lot of bull as you can almost make statistics prove anything you want. Even so I reckon the buy back scheme was a good idea and after reading the article
I would put my money on Simon Chapman instead of the female do-gooder. I see no need for people to own semi-atomatics, I mean why not just give them a sub machine gun?
Meh, I’ll put my money on Weatherburn, he’s the only one without a vested interest.
But what is Chapman’s interest other than standing for what he believes. I can’t see him getting any monetary gain from all this.
Maybe not the right word choice then – how about “the only one without an obvious bias one way or the other”? Which is why I’m inclined to believe his interpretations of what has happened rather than either of the other two.
I suppose what it really boils down to is that if semi automatic and other guns of that calibre are taken out of the equation, then a repeat of the Port Arthur massacre is less likely to occur. I reckon that was the intention of the whole exercise. All the arguing back and forth seems a mute point except for those who are trying to score points against the present government.
The purpose of the laws, and I’m quoting John Howard here, was to “reduce the number of firearms in the community and make Australia a safer place” – not a word about preventing mass shootings, that’s only become the “purpose” of the laws in the last couple of years as it’s become apparent that they didn’t do any of the things Howard DID promise they would!!
Would you be able to give me the source of that quote, I’d be interested in reading the whole thing rather than a little snippet.