This was at Ricochet, behind the pay wall. It’s a reminder of what the Australian Model of “Common Sense Gun Control” favored by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton really looks like.
I’m a legal handgun permit owner in Australia. Owning a firearm in Australia is no longer a right, but is a privilege. I am a member of a local firearms range where I compete in pistol shooting (the only permissible reason to own a handgun). My handgun permit only lasts one year, is a privilege, dependent on my competing in at least 6 competitions a year and being a member of a gun club. The police firearms branch review my license every year and have the right to terminate it if they feel I am not a “fit and reasonable person”.I cannot discharge my firearm outside of a designated firing range. I cannot store ammunition or the handgun in the same part of my gun safe. I cannot transport or store my gun with rounds loaded in the magazine, or a loaded magazine within the firearm. I cannot own a magazine with more than a 10 round capacity.I cannot use my handgun for personal protection, even when within my own home- as this is illegal and would result in a firearms act violation and the termination of my license as well as legal proceedings against me.My firearm is registered by law. The possession of a firearm means that the police have the right to search my entire house and inspect my safe and firearm on any day- so long as they have a “reasonable” cause to do so and arrive at a reasonable hour. [Emphasis mine]
This is strikingly similar to what a Maryland Democrat said when he didn’t know he was being recorded:
Speaking with an undercover journalist, when asked about what type of gun control regime he would impose, Vignarajah replied, “[m]y complete answer, off the record, is that we should ban guns altogether, period.” Elaborating, Vignarajah stated, “[i]f you want to go practice with a gun, you can go to the gun range, pick up your gun at the gun range, fire it there, and then you leave it there and you go home.” Vignarajah then goes on to explain a scheme under which he might allow individuals to keep a firearm in the home, subject to an “extensive licensing scheme,” taxation, mandatory insurance, and “fingerprint trigger locks.”
This is why these people have to be fought, tooth and nail, for every inch of ground.
There’s a huge swath of America where they’d have an impossible time enforcing such laws. Indeed, compliance where gun registration is already required has been estimated as low as 10%. And most of flyover country’s sheriffs would not enforce it.
And that may be what saves our rights in the end, because it’s certain D.C. has no interest in doing so. And we have a duty as citizens to stand against them.
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
Ayn Rand in “Atlas Shrugged”
I fear that is where our Country is headed.
Many folks on the left use Australia as an example of how Gun control can work with strong national laws AND keep traditions like hunting and shooting alive and well.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/14/america-mass-murder-australia-gun-control-saves-lives
“Australia didn’t ban guns. Hunting and shooting are still thriving. But by adopting laws that give priority to public safety, we have saved thousands of lives”
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/world/us-australia-gun-control/
After passing gun control…”The risk of dying by gunshot in Australia fell by more than 50% — and stayed there.” US has “6 times more gun crime than than Australia”
The balance between public safety & individual liberty is something this country has struggled with since its inception (and before!) And the numbers don’t lie, the Aussies gun control measures really worked quite well.
So what’s next? Time will tell. I would wager that since the technology to bring mass death gets cheaper and easier to access we as a people will have to get together and figure this out.
But sticking to Utopian ideals like Ayn Rand and being so draconian there is no reasonable middle ground will just make you lose everything. For example, not every form of gun control is an “attack on gun owners” and reacting like that everytime gets you nowhere.
I cringe when Progressives start snarling about the “gun culture.” You can hunt with Progressive permission if you live off the land and have no other choice. Otherwise, you “cling” to your gun because it is a phallic symbol and you need your phony manhood boost.
Well, maybe Manhattanites need to stay in their closet sized apartments and cook on a hot plate and feed their minds on the great books they can get for free on their Kindles. They can cling to their stairwells and feel ever superior the higher they have to climb to get to their Murphy bed. God bless them, being elite and above the country sheeple is hard duty.
Who is it that is always in search of controlling how other people live? This preoccupation with guns is obsessive-compulsive for way too many liberals. What is eating at them? They disproportionately choose to live near and among the urban hellholes where human predators roam. They hermetically seal themselves off behind deadbolts and bars and don’t address the reality that they live imprisoned by the subculture they will not challenge.
Comparatively speaking, how many bullets rest in the homes and control of gun owners across America for every bullet fired indiscriminately every day? Ditto guns.
Can the border be 100% sealed? Probably not. Can we cut way, way down on illegal immigration? You bet.
Can the ghetto world in Chicago be 100% cleansed of its guns? Probably not. Can a concerted effort reduce the ghetto armed cockroaches to manageable policing numbers? You bet.
But, so long as we can not profile, everyone is fair game. Think about each person being processed by the TSA and getting their toothpaste nabbed not because of an abundance of caution but because of the process. Meanwhile, people on the terrorist watch list are working as baggage handlers out in the belly of the plane.
The Australian saga presented in the post is indicative of the “compelling state interest” gone nuclear. The only thing missing is an official state slur for people who don’t hate guns; something like “carnage zealot.”
Meanwhile, the Statist rats will gnaw away at what bedevils them until they tire of the repetitious pestering and find a new annoyance to suffer.
brownshirt mikey admits that the left likes the Australian model of civil disarmament. “See, it’s ok, we’ll even let you gun nuts keep a few rifles so you can play your little shooting games.”
Queen of Not Getting It, that guy.
So move to Australia, Mike. They have the policy you like, and the US never will.
According to littlemindedmikey, the fascist:
Now, littlemindedmikey, the fascist has mixed his numbers. He switches from “risk of dying by gunshot” numbers to “gun crime” numbers without saying he is comparing apples to oranges.
The Humanosphere [Covering global heath and poverty because we give a damn] site shows assault resulting in homicide by firearms in the US at 3.5 per 100,000 people and about 1/3 of 1 per thousand in Australia. So that is a ratio of 3.5 to .33 for guns.
The same chart shows the homicide rate by all means to be about 5.2 per 100,000 in the US and the homicide rate by all means to be about 1.5 per 100,000 in Australia. So that is a ratio of 5.2 to 1.5.
I do not vouch for anything concerning the validity of these numbers, but you have the link.
This link also shows an interesting map taken from The Atlantic magazine which compares gun deaths in U.S. cities to some of the deadliest places in the world. For instance Washington, D. C. compares to the death rate by gun in Brazil.
What is not surprising is that our gun related deaths are overwhelmingly city centered.
Which political party overwhelmingly controls the government in our cities and has over a long period of time?
Wouldn’t it be instructive to break down the death by gun numbers in the United States into racial and ethnic demographics? For instance, death by guns of whites in the US is equal to all death by guns in Belgium.
So, we return to the constant theme that “figures don’t lie by liars can figure” and the manipulation and intermixing of parts and pieces that predominates in demagoguery and Progressive discourse in general.
The Humanosphere graph linked above does not bother to compare the US to Honduras, Colombia, Guatemala, Brazil, El Salvadore, Mexico, Nicaragua or Guyana. But The Atlantic map does.
Reread that list of high gun death countries. Do we get any immigrants from those places? Wouldn’t it be instructive if littlemindedmikey, the fascist would bother to sort out who in the US is doing gun violence to whom?
We have a rapidly changing culture. How much of this change is for the worse and who is fueling it? Dare we ask? Heck no; that would be profiling.
I find it amusing that mikey actually thinks all Australians gave up their firearms.
Specifically, it is deep-blue, Democrat-run city-centered. In part, for the reasons Kevin Williamson hit yesterday. Democrats won’t prosecute straw purchasers or illegal gun possessions, partly because minorities would be “disproportionately” represented in these prosecutions. Also, Democrats are under pressure not to prosecute minorities for “Non-Violent” offenses.
And, let’s just be honest. For Democrats, it’s a lot sexier to push for more gun laws than it is to enforce current ones.
The real issue about Leftist-Liberal gun-control is inherently one of caste (for lack of a better word). They want to disarm (politically) a predominantly white, outer-suburban and rural law-abiding middle-class when the criminal class is predominantly minority, urban and underclass. They then use the very-occasional outlier Republican-suburb school-shooter as their paradigm as justification for gun-grabbing, while deliberately ignoring the urban criminal class who are low-information voters and supporters of the Left-Liberal political machine. The traditional Democratically-controlled urban in inner-suburban centers of America have become free-fire zones for crimes with (illegal) guns, straw purchases, Felony-possession, homicides and robberies, and jihadism — in-spite of the 22,000 gun laws and ordinances on the books that they refuse to enforce and persecute.
Reasonable gun control is two rounds into the center-of-body-mass and followed by one in the head.
Fortunately, Millennials tend to support gun rights more than gun control. So, the situation is not hopeless.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/429392/young-people-vs-gun-control
Hi Heliotrope,
“The Humanosphere [Covering global heath and poverty because we give a damn] site shows assault resulting in homicide by firearms in the US at 3.5 per 100,000 people and about 1/3 of 1 per thousand in Australia. So that is a ratio of 3.5 to .33 for guns.
The same chart shows the homicide rate by all means to be about 5.2 per 100,000 in the US and the homicide rate by all means to be about 1.5 per 100,000 in Australia. So that is a ratio of 5.2 to 1.5.”
Thank you for the link. It doesn’t appear that either you or others are arguing about the fact that gun related deaths declined significantly in Australia, after the tightening in gun laws there following the Hobart massacre. Is the argument you are advancing that Australia doesn’t have the same mix/%/cultural specificity(?) of a [using Ted B.’s subsequent formulation] “predominantly white, outer-suburban and rural law-abiding middle-class when the criminal class is predominantly minority, urban and underclass”? And so, we cannot compare the two countries, or extrapolate what might occur here if gun laws became more restrictive?
Cas for one …Australia doesn’t have a Bill of Rights. We do. Two, how do you explain this : Obama weeps over gun violence as he instructs his DOJ to stand down on investigation, prosecution and sentencing of illegal gun selling in metro areas with very, very high gun violence rate? Three : remove the stats for the 5 metro areas in the US with the highest gun violence from the US per capita gun violence rates and examine the results. Four : examine the restrictive gun laws for those 5 metro areas. Five : examine the party affiliation of the power structure of those 5 metro areas. Six : what is the likelihood of a mass shooting occurring in Gun Free Zone compared to a mass shooting in a non Gun Free Zone. It doesn’t take an advance degree in statistical analysis to see the correlations.
Cas,
I can’t grasp your meaning. But I will give it a shot.
Australia is hard to compare to the United States. I was attempting to show that littlemindedmikey, the fascist’s figures were suspect and worth examining in a bunch of different lights. I chose to use the Humanosphere numbers, because that group (Humanosphere) cleaves to numbers which support their ideology and therefore should reflect the statistics which littlemindedmikey, the fascist would search out to bolster his case.
As I pointed out in #7, the United States has an almost uncontrolled influx of migrants from Honduras, Colombia, Guatemala, Brazil, El Salvadore, Mexico, Nicaragua or Guyana. Those are countries with extremely high death-by-gun rates. Naturally, only some unknown portion of migrants from these countries are feral homicide-by-gun addicts. But plenty of the drug culture gang associated cowboys come to the US from these countries.
I have no idea of what may constitute a parallel among migrants to Australia. I know that when I played around with the “can you immigrate” machine in the state museum in Wellington, N.Z. that nothing I entered would allow me to permanently settle there. That is to say, New Zealand has a regimen of iron curtain rules meant to keep people out. Whether this is the same in Australia, I can not say. But it sure as heck is NOT the case in England or the United States. Therefore, I don’t think one can really compare types of immigration permitted in Australia with the reality of the open borders in the United States.
The death-by-gun rate in the United States is substantially higher in our cities than in suburban and rural areas. Therefore, I would make the case that the urban setting and aspects of urban culture affect the death-by-gun rates. Australia does not replicate the population clusters found in the United States. I don’t know if the death-by-gun rates are higher in the Australian cities than in the rural areas, but I would not be surprised it that were so. Therefore, in comparing the US and Australia, it would be necessary to factor in the comparison of large population concentrations.
My many liberal European friends are certain that the US gun culture is at the root of our problems. We have millions of firearms in private hands and tons and tons of ammunition in private hands. Those who misuse guns are a tiny minority, but they make a news sensation when they blaze away. The problem, dear Cas, lies not in our guns but in our criminals.
On another thread, KCRob provided a wonderful link:
http://heyjackass.com
I suggest you study it. It absolutely screams for intelligent profiling. From New Orleans, to Boston, to Miami, to Baltimore, to Phoenix, we need police who know generally who the perps are, where they live, and what they are doing. “Community policing” means knowing what is going on in the “hood” and then rounding up the usual suspects when trouble breaks out. But liberals hate that. They insist that the likely to be guilty are innocent beyond a reasonable doubt until proven otherwise. Well, the TSA sure doesn’t work that way. The IRS doesn’t work that way. And neither should the keepers of the peace in places where the death-by-gun rates are inordinately high.
Hi Heliotrope,
Thanks for the reply (and the link to Jackass.com; interesting site). My question concerned whether you could use Australia as an example of what the US could expect if similar laws were enacted and actions taken or whether, the US is a special case based on various kinds of perceived differences. The statistics on gun deaths are not great in this country, so getting clear comparisons are hard, I think. On the urban-rural difference you raise, I also had difficulty in finding something about Australia (rural injuries happen at higher rates in the country than the city in NSW though). I did find this paper on-line comparing fire-arm deaths in rural and urban counties in the US: “Firearm suicide in rural counties is as important a public health problem as firearm homicide in urban counties. Policymakers should become aware that intentional firearm deaths affect all types of communities in the United States.”
As for profiling, I have sympathy for innocent folks caught in its web; I also sympathize with the police who have to do a shitty job, especially when there is evidence that criminal activity is linked to certain minorities and neighborhoods. I would be interested in a smart solution to that issue, though I haven’t seen one yet.
Cas, the innocent people caught in the web of profiling have a choice of how they will respond. If you live among human rats, you already have strategies for survival. Cops good at community policing already know who the good guys are, who the usual suspects are and who is unfamiliar to them. If an innocent person is inconvenienced by profiling in a decaying environment, that person has to choose between cooperating with a pro-active policing system or going all self-centered about being hassled. To be cold about it, maybe the good guys should work with the cops. Maybe the good guys should move to safer ground. Maybe the good guys should have a come to Jesus meeting with themselves.
We just learned of an 18 year old girl walking with her father in a Brooklyn playground. Five guys with a gun told the father to take off. He ran to find a cop and the five 20 to 30 year olds raped his daughter. The father was guilty of what? Not being armed and capable of taking on five felons? The girl was guilty of what? Not staying locked up inside? The cops are guilty of what? Not being everywhere at once? These thugs could have just as easily put a box cutter to the girl’s throat and been just as menacing. The fact remains, some places are more populated with feral people than others. You can thank liberalism for making such places harder to police than is reasonable.
Parts of Europe are starting to resort to concertina wire borders. Why? Because: social order chaos. Soon enough, the protectors of the social order turn to triage as an effective and efficient management style. In doing so, not every decision will be perfect, but in the final analysis something has to be done. That is the principle with underlies martial law.
So, Australia goes about its way of controlling the social order according to its cultural priorities. I seriously doubt that there is any simple, easily implemented, universal prescription for containing gun felons.
I don’t have a problem with your reasoning–as far as it goes, Heliotrope. The issue still remains of what happens when people who don’t live in these “decaying” neighborhoods get caught up in police sweeps because they visit and they “don’t belong.” I find that problematic. One might argue that they are “cruising for a bruising” going there. Second, the issue still remains concerning people and their ability to go into other higher socio-economic neighborhoods (mostly white dominated) where they also “don’t belong.” And, given police perceptions, might also be considered by some to be “cruising for a bruising.” There are two different senses of “don’t belong” here and they are both pretty troubling.
The “gun crime fell in Australia after the gun ban” argument is bullshyte for two reasons:
1) It only talks about gun crime, not overall crime. If knife crime went up, that would escape mention or notice by zealots who obsess over guns as though inanimate objects were causing crimes, not people. I don’t know about Australia, but in the UK most ordinary crime (excluding murders) is in fact worse in the UK per capita than it is in the USA. Has been so for a few decades now too, iiRC. Also crime stats are measured differently in the two countries so for instance the murder rate in the UK is undercounted, considerably, compared to the US rate. If you don’t look at these details to is very easy to deceive or be deceived.
2) It does not look at long term trends. Gun crimes were falling in Australia before the ban, and continued to fall afterwards. In other words, the ban had no effect; gun crime was falling anyway, long before the ban. The ban didn’t cause the drop in gun crime; the two had little to do with each other. You look at gun crime and gun control in the USA and it is the same: crime rates go up and down and it has little to nothing to do with gun laws. Gun crime has been down for decades in the USA but you would never know that listening to the MSM. These gun control zealots are constantly misusing stats in this manner to give an entirely false impression of what is going on. They cite a highly cherry-picked statistic and ignore the bigger picture. It is grossly dishonest.