PM shuns US 'slavish love of guns'

ninemsn ^ | Mar 1, 2006 | NA

[neverdem]

Prime Minister John Howard says he tightened gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre because he did not want Australia going down the same path as the United States.

Mr Howard, on the eve of his 10th anniversary in office, said the nation's grief over the 1996 Port Arthur massacre had been a great opportunity to tighten Australia's gun laws.

"I would call that very definitely an extraordinary outpouring of amazement and grief in this country and I knew out of that there was an opportunity to grab the moment and think about a fundamental change to gun laws in this country," he told the Nine Network.

Mr Howard said he did not want Australia to adopt the American stance on guns.

"I did not want Australia to go down the American path," he said.

"There are some things about America I admire and there are some things I don't.

"And one of the things I don't admire about America is their ... slavish love of guns. They're evil."

[Squantos]

What Slim said....

[Fred Nerks]

The Australian Bureau of Statistics counts all injury deaths, whether or not they are crime-related. The most recently available ABS figures show a total of 437 firearm-related deaths (homicide, suicide and unintentional) for 1997. This is the lowest number for 18 years.

[FreeKeys]

And one of the things I don't admire about America is their ... slavish love of guns.

What "slavish love of guns"?

Oh -- and here's Mike Adams' Presidential Platform Plank on the income tax:

I will begin with a proposal to allow Americans to claim their firearms as "dependents" as early as 2009. -- from his column here

Gotta love it.

[CheyennePress]

Yes, to be fair, our murder rates certainly are higher. But we also have certain constituencies of our population who are a lot more prone to kill than others (and fractions of our society that Europe simply does not have). You take those out of the equation, and we're pretty much equal with Western Europe. Even with our guns.

[archy]

I can't believe anyone could be so ignorant. Australia has been there beside you in every conflict I can think of since World War one.

Indeed. And many of them are leaving their homeland to become *septics* here in the USA. Including one former 5th/7th Battalion Royal Australian Regiment officer who is the brother of my fiancee.

[archy]

Well of course you shouldn't trust australians with guns. The country was founded by criminals remember? It was a british penal colony. I wouldn't want an entire continent of criminals running around with firearms either.

More to the point, Australians never threw off the yoke of their British colonial masters the way the United States, Rhodesia and Israel did. The *Prisoners of Mother England* will likely adjust just as well to the eventual takeover of their continent by the Indonesians a few years down the road, all to the applause of their sellout pollys/ politicians.