Greens working with gun safety advocates have secured a commitment from the Government to establish a National Firearms Safety Council. This is an historic win for evidence-based firearms policy
Australia and firearms: What the evidence really tells us
Dr Samara McPhedran
Responding to MLC David Shoebridge’s firearms piece, Dr Samara McPhedran argues that anti-gun lobbyists privilege some forms of “evidence” over all others, at the expense of proper scrutiny.
Greens NSW MLC David Shoebridge’s call for evidence-based policy towards firearms management sounds good.
Sadly, his statistical cherry-picking shows that politicians use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp-post.
The facts simply do not support Mr Shoebridge’s belief that more gun laws equate to more safety. Nor do the facts back the Greens NSW long-standing policy platform of imposing ever-increasing bans on legal gun ownership.
In 1996, Australia passed some of the most restrictive gun laws in the Western world. This included bans on semi-automatic longarms (rifles and shotguns) and pump-action shotguns, and a taxpayer-funded gun confiscation program costing an estimated half-billion dollars.
Since then, many different research groups have studied the effects of those laws. None of these has found a significant impact of the legislative changes on the pre-existing downward trend in firearm homicide. The decline in firearm homicides in Australia is not unique, with other Commonwealth countries like Canada and New Zealand experiencing similar or greater declines over time, despite having higher density of gun ownership than Australia and much less restrictive legislative approaches to firearms control.Whether or not Australia’s laws affected firearm suicides is uncertain. Some studies find an impact, others find little or no evidence of any changes and/or substitution of other suicide methods. Adding to this complexity, suicides across the board declined after 1997. This coincided with national implementation of a wide range of suicide prevention strategies.
Anti-gun lobbyists often claim that banning private ownership of semi-automatic longarms has prevented mass shootings. However, our close neighbour New Zealand – similar to us in history, culture, and economic trends – has experienced an almost identical time period with no mass shootings despite continued widespread availability of the firearms Australia banned. The absence of mass shootings in New Zealand alongside ongoing use of sporting configuration semi-automatic firearms for target shooting and hunting cannot be reasonably attributed to pre-existing differences between the two countries: data that takes the different population sizes into account shows the occurrence of mass shootings before 1996/1997 was comparable between countries.
Is it true that the more legally-owned guns there are in Australia, the more gun crime we will have? The answer is resoundingly “no”. For example, figures released by the NSW Government show very clearly that although the number of firearm licence holders and legally-owned guns has continued to grow, firearm misuse, as well as firearm theft, has continued to fall.The ongoing administrative costs of Australia’s firearms management regime are unknown, but have been conservatively estimated at around AU$27 million per year, or about AU$75,000 per day. This is more than the average Australian earns in a year and it is a “low estimate” – the real costs may be much higher[2].
Despite this massive price tag, the overall balance of evidence suggests Australia’s gun laws are simply not the “too good to be true” success story anti-gun lobbyists want them to be
So, if Mr Shoebridge and his colleagues genuinely want evidence-based policy towards firearms, it looks like they still have a lot to learn.https://thebigsmoke.com.au/2014/10/20/australia-firearms-evidence-really-tells-u... Dr Samara McPhedran specialises in studying violence more articles from her here-
Dr McPhedran's research expertise includes homicide, suicide, domestic and family violence, gun violence and injury prevention, and firearms legislation and policy.
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Greens Win National Firearms Safety Council (Read 107 times)
