Russell, et al., In fairness, the Port Arthur shooting was far worse that most such events in the US (I don't want to compare specifically with the current one). Also, Australia's population in 1996 was just not quite 18 million. The population in the US is currently over 314 million. Just looking at those numbers, rare events, such as might occur once every 20 years in Australia would be expected to occur annually in the US. This is not to make light of the problem. It is to point out that we are not very rational in determining relative frequencies, and that we often have unrealistic ideas about how controllable people are, practically speaking.
Owen, While I agree with you that no one ever has a need for an AK-47, that isn't really the issue. I would love to live in a world in which such weapons don't exist. However, given that we live in a world where they do exist, there are still deep questions about how to restrict who does and does not get them. I suspect that if we were really able to effectively restrict gun ownership in this country, you would still see the occasional crazy person go on a killing spree. You don't need a gun to kill people, and most of the events involve weapons quite limited in comparison to an AK. For the record, I don't own a gun, and I am not against reasonable gun control. I am, however, highly suspicious of snap judgements made in the face of tragedy. Eric On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 01:02 AM, Russell Standish <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 09:17:51PM -0700, Steve Smith wrote: >> I know we have some Aussies on this list who may be able to keep me >> honest, but an Australian friend of mine, in response to this debate >> and this incident claimed that until 1996, the Australian gun >> ownership was not that much different than our own. > >Gun ownership here has always been much less than in the US. > >I grew up in WA (that's Western Australia, not Washington), and there >the highest calibre rifle that was legal was the .303, and only by >licensed shooters and farmers. Other people could only own a gun if it >were kept permanently at a registered firing range. Automatic weapons >and handguns were strictly forbidden. The weapon of choice for bank >holdups was the sawn-off shotgun, as there was no other way of getting >a firearm small enough to smuggle into a bank discretely. > >The eastern states of Australia (where I live now), had apparently >much >more liberal gun laws, which poses a problem, because there is no >border control between the states (as you might expect), apart from >occasional fruit fly inspections. I was shocked when I moved over here >to find police officers carrying pistols, as that wasn't the case in >WA (it might be now, though!). > >> As the >> consequence of a mass shooting at Port Arthur in 1996, their newly >> elected PM, (Nationalist?) John Howard organized a massive >effort to >> change the gun control laws. It is claimed that this, along with >> subsequent "gun buyback" efforts, yielded a significant downturn >in >> gun violence (and completely eliminated gun-massacres?). >> > >After the Port Arthur massacre, stricter, and more homogenous gun laws >were brought in. I'm not sure if automatic weapons were ever legal, >but one of the measures was an amnesty on automatic weapons, with a >buy-back scheme that got a lot of these guns out of the community. > >Port Arthur sticks in our memories as being a once in a lifetime >massacre, not once every few years, as appears to be the case in the US. > > > >-- > >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) >Principal, High Performance Coders >Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] >University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au >---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >============================================================ >FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > ------------ Eric Charles Assistant Professor of Psychology Penn State University Altoona, PA 16601
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