The efficacy (or lack thereof) of Gun Control

[FriedCFour]

I'd prefer the suppressor being illegal.

Whys that? Their only real use is to make it so that if you are hunting in an area with people within a mile of you you can do so without scaring the hell out of them. A lot of countries with stricter gun laws and legal hunting allow suppressors just fine. If you want to have an illegal suppressor you can make one out of a flashlight and about 40 bucks, and they make a gunshot about the decibel level of a jackhammer.

For reference heres just about the quietest round there is, .22 suppressed and unsuppressed. Not nearly quiet enough to go james bond and still sounds like a gunshot.

 

[Speaker4thesilent]

Whys that? Their only real use is to make it so that if you are hunting in an area with people within a mile of you you can do so without scaring the hell out of them. A lot of countries with stricter gun laws and legal hunting allow suppressors just fine. If you want to have an illegal suppressor you can make one out of a flashlight and about 40 bucks, and they make a gunshot about the decibel level of a jackhammer.

You can do it with a potato as long as you're willing to replace the potato after every shot.

 

[prinCZess]

You can do it with a potato as long as you're willing to replace the potato after every shot.

*to be read in a Boston/cartoon-irish accent*
"Waste a potato like that? Do you want me dear old gram to rise from her grave and beat the tar out o' me with a switch?"

...Why yes, my knowledge of American Irish does come predominantly from The Departed and Boondock Saints, why do you ask?

More seriously, suppressors as a whole could well stand to be shifted off of the NFA entirely and transitioned into items which only require a BGC--especially if we could come to an agreement on instituting a system for those checks than can catch every transfer and apportion liability on those who don't take advantage of it and end up selling to a prohibited person.
Ditto for stocked pistols, honestly. Making a handgun less concealable is something that, statistically, means a lower chance for criminal usage.

Part of the problem with US gun laws is that portions of them run off legacy-laws from the Great Depression, other portions of them run off a 60s fearmongering push that was worried about inner-city blacks arming up, and another portion runs off a 80s/90s stew of some sensibility mixed with hysteria over cocaine-smugglers using legal machine-guns to gun down innocents...And the remainder run off of whatever the ATF presently thinks or, much more questionably (as with bumpstocks), what the President says should be the case--which is perhaps the most baseless basis for law possible.

 

[Speaker4thesilent]

as with bumpstocks), what the President says should be the case--which is perhaps the most baseless basis for law possible.

Honestly, the only reason I wasn’t up in arms about banning them was that, to my knowledge, they represent a safety hazard more than anything else.

 

[Flintsteel]

The only reason bump stocks even exist is because you cannot really buy a legal full-auto (practically speaking). If the registry for full-auto weapons was still open, there would be no need for something as finicky as bump stocks to have been invented.

Typical 'government creating its own problem' really.

 

[ReeeFallin]

But....that's not what the traditional focus has been.

The brady campaign to prevent gun violence used to be called the brady campaign to ban handguns.

 

[Battlegrinder]

*cough* Am from Australia so will dispute that one.

You guys had more mass shootings in a week than we have in a decade.

You gun ban appears to have had no effect on your murder rate, it was trending down before the ban and has continued to trend downward at the same rate, and based on this, the ban no perceivable effect on the prevalence of high profile, high bodycount events.

 

[Comrade Clod]

You gun ban appears to have had no effect on your murder rate, it was trending down before the ban and has continued to trend downward at the same rate, and based on this, the ban no perceivable effect on the prevalence of high profile, high bodycount events.

Allow me to state.

What high body count events? We had one terrorist attack, a handful of shootouts with police and a couple of unfortunate murder-suicides.

Or to be more specific, outside some arso events none of them breached 10 deaths, outside inter-family killings, none in the past 20 years breached 4 deaths.

We're doing positively dandy, unlike the US where mass shootings where more than 20 people were killed have happened about 6 times in the last 2 decades.

 

[ReeeFallin]

Allow me to state.

What high body count events? We had one terrorist attack, a handful of shootouts with police and a couple of unfortunate murder-suicides.

Or to be more specific, outside some arso events none of them breached 10 deaths, outside inter-family killings, none in the past 20 years breached 4 deaths.

We're doing positively dandy, unlike the US where mass shootings where more than 20 people were killed have happened about 6 times in the last 2 decades.

The US also has literally tenfold the population of Australia.

 

[Comrade Clod]

The US also has literally tenfold the population of Australia.

And 50 fold the death count.

(roughly)

 

[Battlegrinder]

What high body count events? We had one terrorist attack, a handful of shootouts with police and a couple of unfortunate murder-suicides.

That list has like two dozen incidents, that's a lot more than "a handful". It's also got roughly the same number of events and same number of deaths as you had before port arthur.

Or to be more specific, outside some arso events none of them breached 10 deaths, outside inter-family killings, none in the past 20 years breached 4 deaths.

"We're doing better now, once we throw out all these data points that say we're doing worse".

We're doing positively dandy, unlike the US where mass shootings where more than 20 people were killed have happened about 6 times in the last 2 decades.

Given the US has 13 times the population you do, I think by that logic the fact you've had one such incident in the past couple decades makes you more violent than us, not less.

 

[ReeeFallin]

And 50 fold the death count.

(roughly)

In shootings specifically?

 

[Comrade Clod]

In shootings specifically?

Yep.

In overall death count its still remarkably high (more guns = more suicides etc)

 

[Battlegrinder]

And 50 fold the death count.

(roughly)

US murder rate is 5.30, yours is 0.80. That's 6 times more, not 50. For a population 13.5 times bigger. Math doesn't appear to be a strong suit of yours.

 

[Comrade Clod]

"We're doing better now, once we throw out all these data points that say we're doing worse".

Nein zats not vhat I said at all.

Mass Shootings in the US only counts the proper mass shooters. Massacres in Australia, the one you linked to, counts all events with more than 4 deaths.

Once you slim it down to what qualifies as a US mass shooting only Port Arthur counts (us list goes down to min of 10 deaths). Just about everything else was either family or arson.

US murder rate is 5.30, yours is 0.80. That's 6 times more, not 50. For a population 13.5 times bigger. Math doesn't appear to be a strong suit of yours.

I didn't do it in my last year of school so you'd be right on that one. What I did do however was history, lots of it.

But then it doesn't seem to be your strong suit either. The population size there is irrelevant in your example given that its a per/100000 people mark (thats usually how these things work)

 

[Battlegrinder]

Mass Shootings in the US only counts the proper mass shooters. Massacres in Australia, the one you linked to, counts all events with more than 4 deaths.

There's no such thing as a "proper mass shooter", the term has no defined meaning. The closest is the FBI's definition of "mass murder", but since they definition it as 4 or more people killed, your stuff counts. Under that definition, most of yours still count.

Once you slim it down to what qualifies as a US mass shooting only Port Arthur counts (us list goes down to min of 10 deaths).

And once we slim our list down to what counts as an El Salvadorian mass killing, we're probably on par with you guys, but that's not a very useful figure, now is it? The point isn't to say that Australia is just as bad as the US (though you've made a good case that in fact you're worse), it's that your much vaunted gun laws didn't change anything, Australia's murder rate and mass killing rate did not change course from what thier trend was before port author.

Just about everything else was either family or arson.

I wasn't aware that being burned to death or killed by a relative means you're less dead than if you get shot at random.

But then it doesn't seem to be your strong suit either. The population size there is irrelevant in your example given that its a per/100000 people mark (thats usually how these things work)

Thank you, I know what "per capita" means. I'm not making a point about rates, I'm making a point about ratios.

You had one mass killings, for a population of 24 million (which we'll call 1). We had, according to you, a half dozen, in a population of 13.5.

1/1 = 1
6/13.5 = 0.44

 

[FriedCFour]

Or to be more specific, outside some arso events none of them breached 10 deaths, outside inter-family killings, none in the past 20 years breached 4 deaths.

You got real lucky with one. Literally stopped by a karate kid who acted quickly, otherwise it more than likely would have breached ten deaths. Cairns child killings killed 8, melbourne car attack killed 6. Why are you ignoring the arson and the family killings? Is a mass killing not as bad when its done by smoke inhalation and burning to death vs a bullet? is it not as bad if its a family being massacred?

We're doing positively dandy, unlike the US where mass shootings where more than 20 people were killed have happened about 6 times in the last 2 decades.

We also have 15× your population. You have to factor that in. That means, all else being equal, we will have 15 mass killings for every one of yours.

 

[Battlegrinder]

We also have 15× your population. You have to factor that in. That means, all else being equal, we will have 15 mass killings for every one of yours.

It's amusing how thanks to varying levels of precision between posters, the difference between the US and Australian population is slowly increasing. First ten times, then 13, then 13.5, now 15.

Wonder how high it'll go?

 

[FriedCFour]

It's amusing how thanks to varying levels of precision between posters, the difference between the US and Australian population is slowly increasing. First ten times, then 13, then 13.5, now 15.

Wonder how high it'll go?

You are correct I over shot it. Thought australia had a smaller pop than it did.

 

[ReeeFallin]

It's amusing how thanks to varying levels of precision between posters, the difference between the US and Australian population is slowly increasing. First ten times, then 13, then 13.5, now 15.

Wonder how high it'll go?

13.300813008130081300813008130081 times to population. Is that precise enough? I just did the math on it.