Snopes "debunks" Australian Gun Statistics (Freeper discussion/rebuttal desired)

Snopes.com ^ | 28 January 2004 | Barbara and David P. Mikkelson

[EveningStar]

Old thread worth revisiting. Link at #13 is especially interesting.

[Sleepy2]

This is an interesting issue.

What snopes does here is mix some true commentary with some questionable items. The true stuff (e.g. 171% rather than 300%) provides cover for their shenanigans.

From Snopes:
"The main point to be learned here is that determining the effect of changes in Australia's gun ownership laws and the government's firearm buy-back program on crime rates requires a complex long-term analysis and can't be discerned from the small, mixed grab bag of short-term statistics offered here."

That is very much the case. It is what John Lott did to knock the wind out of the anti-concealed carry folks. There are lots of factors that have an effect on crime, and you have to control for those factors to draw a proper conclusion.

Frome Snopes:
"Australian citizens do not (and never did) have a constitutional right to own firearms..."

Well, that may be so in a technical sense. But everyone on this earth has the right to defend their lives, even if their constitution may not say so. A right to defend life implies a right to firearms, since those you defend it against often have firearms.

From Snopes:
"The piece quoted above leads the reader to believe that much of the Australian citizenry owned handguns until their ownership was made illegal and all firearms owned by "law-abiding citizens" were collected by the government through a buy-back program in 1997."

This is simply incorrect. The article snopes is quoting never mentions the word "handgun" at all, nor does it imply *all* firearms were collected by the government. So this entire paragraph is quite off base.

However if you really want to fault snopes, it is that they don't bother to sample and critique the vast library of urban legends and bogus claims that come from the gun control camp. Any argument out there, that has two sides to it, will have plenty of bogus and questionable claims coming from both sides. So it's not difficult to pick one or two from one side and make them look bad.

Actually snopes doesn't get much into the gun debate at all. This may be because the gun banners traffic mostly in bogus arguments. They wouldn't have much left if snopes started taking them apart. Which is why they don't get into it...