Australia had no School Shootings Before Their Extreme Gun Restrictions

Gun Watch ^ | 27 February, 2018 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

Top 2 lines, blue, total suicides and suicides with guns. Bottom 2 lines, purple, total homicides and homicides with guns

In the presidential listening session where students expressed their emotions to President Donald Trump, about the Parkland school mass murder, one of the students made a comment about school shootings and Australia. Sam Zeif in video from the presidential listening session, February 21, 2018:

In Australia there was a shooting at a school in 1999. 

 I am reminded of the scene from Animal House, where Bluto exclaims:

Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

and a listener replies "Forget it, he's rolling."

But Zeif has much more wrong than Bluto did about Peal Harbor.

Australia did not have any rampage school shootings before 1996, when they implemented their extreme gun ownership and use scheme. 

Zeif then claims that the Australian parliament then "stopped it", and that there have been zero students shot in Australia since their extreme restrictions on gun ownership and use were implemented.

In fact, the closest Australia has had in a rampage school shooting was in 2002, six years after the gun restrictions were put into effect. The events took place at Monash University, not a grade or high school. That shooter did not use a rifle. He used six pistols.

The Australian parliament responded by passing even more restrictions on gun ownership and use.

The next closest Australian mass murder took place in 2000, four years after the extreme restrictions on gun ownership and use were put in place. That mass murder did not involve guns. The murderer used arson to murder 15 international backpackers in Childers, Queensland, in the Childers Backpackers Hostel fire.

Emotional diatribes that have little to no fact behind them are useful to stir up support in an audience. They are terrible ways to formulate policy.

©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch

[marktwain]

Australia had Zero School Shootings before their extreme gun control was instituted in 1996.

[nickcarraway]

Isn’t giving attention to these shooters bad? The potential school shooters see they get the attention they want?

[riverrunner]

It is not about facts.

[gunnyg]

Ask The Real Crocodile Dundee!
Ooopps! He was killed!
***************************

[marktwain]

Exactly right.

http://gunwatch.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/the-media-has-blood-on-its-hands-in.html

[chulaivn66]

Give them what they crave. Televise the hanging.

[dynoman]

I never knew that but it is true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Australia

It’s also true that Australia has more guns no than before the ban.

[Paradox]

apparently the student misspoke, was talking about the 1996 massacre where 35 were shot dead. The gun ban went into effect because of that. And it does look like gun related “massacres” from that list, did decrease after that.

[marktwain]

Yes. They went down in New Zealand as well, which did not enact extreme gun controls.

The murder rate in the U.S. decreased more, over the same time period, than the murder rate in Australia did.

[marktwain]

One of the differences between the U.S. and Australia, was that after the Australian media got what they wanted with extreme gun control, they stopped promoting mass gun murder.

http://www.class.org.au/ideas_kill.htm

In the U.S. the media continues to make celebrities of mass murderers.

http://gunwatch.blogspot.com.au/2018/02/the-media-has-blood-on-its-hands-in.html

[microgood]

What brought about the gun laws in Australia was the Port Arthur, Tasmania Massacre in Mar 1996, which was a penal colony back in the day and is now used for tourism. We went there during our Australia, New Zealand cruise.

[marktwain]

True, it was the event used to institute the agenda.

It was not a school shooting.

The media in Australia practically *begged* for a mass shooting in Tasmania. They triggered the shooter who did it.

[ealgeone]

apparently the student misspoke, was talking about the 1996 massacre where 35 were shot dead. The gun ban went into effect because of that. And it does look like gun related “massacres” from that list, did decrease after that.

However, other forms of murder were used since then.

Point is...bad guys will use whatever means are necessary to kill good people.

[TBP]

You’re not supposed to tell people that!

[dhs12345]

There is something more to it, I think.

I grew up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s and there weren't the frequent events like today. And bullying was very common.

Maybe it is because the country has lost it soul. Maybe broken homes....

[CharlesWayneCT]

IN some ways. Although the 1996 massacre was so large, it skews all the numbers, it’s an outlier.

1991 - 7
1992 - 6
1993 - 5
1994 - 0
1995 - 0
1996 - 41
1997 - 5
1998 - 0
1999 - 3
2000 - 15

After that, they went years before another fire massacre.
But there is no rational basis for crediting a 1996 ban with a decrease in the 2000’s.

Anyway, the “gun ban” included mandatory turn-in, but only 20% of the targeted guns were actually turned in (about a million), leaving millions of Australians as technically criminal.

And the biker gangs proliferated, and illegal gun sales skyrocketed, along with illegal sales of other weapons, including RPGs. Once you have an illegal weapons trade, it expands of course.

[Pajamajan]

These fake statistics outright lies about how.
“peaceful and lovely”Australia post gun grab, are all over Facebook.

[miniTAX]

“One of the differences between the U.S. and Australia, was that after the Australian media got what they wanted with extreme gun control, they stopped promoting mass gun murder.”

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Conclusion (in a sane world): legislate the lying media, not guns.
P.S. we don’t live in a sane world.