From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Jan 15 2003 - 20:54:28 MST
--- avatar <avatar@renegadeclothing.com.au> wrote:
> I know it's not a popular topic to reignite, so I'm not going to
> correspond any further on this, but living in Victoria and having
> received some comments on guns deaths/law and order (which I didn't
> pursue too far then once I became aware this debate has become
> counterproductive) I still have to mention in light of the Ollie
> North letter and reply as to its urban myth status, the snopes site
> also mentions Victorian gun deaths as a false myth of the urban
> variety.
>
>
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/ausguns.htm
>
> Excerpt:
>
> Then we have the claim that "In the state of Victoria alone,
> homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent." This is another
> example of how misleading statistics can be when the underlying
> numbers are not provided: Victoria, a state with a population of over
> four-and-a-half million people in 1997, experienced 7 firearm-related
> homicides in 1996 and 19 firearm-related homicides in 1997 (an
> increase of 171%, not 300%). An additional twelve homicides amongst a
> population of 4.5 million is not statistically significant, nor does
> this single-year statistic adequately reflect long-term trends.
The original publisher of those statistics did not refer to gun related
homicides, but homicides in general. Homicides of all types are up
300%.
I might also add that in the same period, my home state of NH, which
has one of the highest levels of private firearms ownership in the
world, posted the lowest murder rate in the US, and on a par with
Switzerland (it is referred in Fodor's travel guides as "The
Switzerland of North America", partly for this reason). A law abiding
citizen here can own machine guns, silencers, and obtain destructive
devices following only federal tax regulations.
In the period referenced for Australia, NH's murder rate went from
comparable to Britain down to comparable to Switzerland.
> Moreover, the opening paragraph mixes two very different types of
> statistics -- number of homicides vs. percentage of homicides
> committed with firearms. In the latter case, it should be noted that
> the Australia-wide percentage of homicides committed with firearms is
> now lower than it was before the gun buy-back program, and lower than
> it has been at any point during the past ten years. (In the former
> case, the absolute number of firearm homicides in Australia in
> 1998-99 was the lowest in the past ten years.)
Yet as has been warned by gun-rights advocates, criminals simply
switched their weapons of choice, and more of those killed have been
innnocent citizens who are now unable to defend themselves with their
now confiscated firearms, rather than criminals dying justly in the
commission of their crimes.
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