More Aussie Gun Control

The debate goes on and on over gun control. Then we get something like this.

SYDNEY is in the grip of a wave of gun crime, with a weapon fired or used to menace innocent residents six days in every seven. Police figures show there have been no fewer than 40 incidents involving guns across the metropolitan region since the beginning of last month.

About ten years ago Australia initiated a gun buy back program; by time the program ended in the summer of 1998, over 600,000 firearms were turned in and destroyed. They estimated that there were about 1.5 million firearms in Australia at the time.

The gun crime wave wasn't supposed to happen. The presence of guns in so many recent crimes is at odds with the State Government's repeated insistence that the incidence of gun crime is continuing to fall dramatically.

The armed robbers, carjackers and home invaders have not discriminated between districts of the city, striking everywhere from Double Bay to Sydney's west, from the southern to the northern suburbs.

Then in this report some Aussie social scientists boast how the gun control laws have reduced gun related deaths by one half.

They argue that the risk of dying by gunshot has halved since Australia destroyed 700,000 privately owned firearms. They say, " Not only were Australia's post-Port Arthur gun laws followed by a decade in which the crime they were designed to reduce hasn't happened again, but we also saw a life-saving bonus: the decline in overall gun deaths accelerated to twice the rate seen before the new gun laws."

The Port Arthur laws were designed to reduce the incidence of gun violence. But it looks like that hasn't worked out as planned. Not only has violent crime increased in Aussieland, but now the firearm related content is also increasing. If dangerous guns were removed from the population, then why is this happening?

I suggest that most of the guns turned in, or maybe all, were formerly owned by law abiding citizens. The punks and thugs kept theirs. And they are using them again.

Now that it is alnmost impossible to get a handgun to protect yourself, violent crime in Australia has increased.

Comparing Australia's violent crime stats from 1996 (when these dangerous guns were in the hands of law biding citizens) violent crime has increased 39%, from 145,902 to 202,484. Homicide is down 17% (59 less victims) but felony assaults are up 46%, sexual assault is up 25%, robbery is up 3% and kidnapping is up over 50%.

Since 1994, total victimization has increased by 56,582 people who were seriously beaten, raped, stabbed, robbed or kidnapped. Since 1998 when firearms were restricted, there have been an additional 32,405 victims.

Using a rather basic statistical measure of dispersion, standard deviation, against Australian crime stats yields the following. The arithmetic mean of the ten year period is 181,667 violent crimes. The standard deviation is 19,090.

A large standard deviation indicates that the data points are far from the mean and a small standard deviation indicates that they are clustered nearer the mean. Therefore the normative "bounds" of the Australian violent crime experience should be within one standard deviation of the arithmetic mean, or between 162,557 and 200,757. Anything outside of these upper and lower limits is not normal. The two years prior to the 1998 disarming are the only years lower than the new "normal" crime rate apparently established by the Aussies. The 2005 violent crimes stats have increased beyond the normative range.

This should be seriously worrying the Aussies. It would any copper. But the social scientists apparently don't care.