Firearm deaths down 50 pc(Australia)

[grayrace]

Firearm deaths down 50 pc

DEATHS by firearms have dropped almost 50 per cent in the past decade but handguns are being used more often.

A report by the Australian Institute of Criminology released today found the number of deaths caused by firearms dropped to 333 in 2001 from 629 in 1991.

The number of suicides - the biggest single form of firearm death - fell to 261 from 505.

Homicide deaths dropped to 47 from 84, accident deaths dropped to 18 from 29, while other forms of firearm deaths slipped to seven from 11.

[MrBenchley]

1. And so the great Australian bloodbath

that the RKBA crowd is so often shouting about is revealed for the fraud it is...

Imagine, just 333 firearm deaths in a country with 20 million inhabitants....

Texas has about the same population and more than three times that many in a year.

[Romulus]

2. Sounds like Rove-speak to me

How much of an increase in injuries from violent crime has occurred in Australia? After all, we keep hearing about the "low" number of US "casualties" in Iraq, but only because the "casualities" being counted are the dead.

How many Ozzies have been crippled, scarred, comatose-d, or maimed after being beaten, mugged, or raped? How much time in the hospital? That is the question I would like answered.

edited to add:

A report by the Australian Institute of Criminology released today found the number of deaths caused by firearms dropped to 333 in 2001 from 629 in 1991.

The number of suicides (by firearm) - the biggest single form of firearm death - fell to 261 from 505.

Homicide deaths dropped to 47 from 84, accident deaths dropped to 18 from 29, while other forms of firearm deaths slipped to seven from 11.



So the cited "50%" statistic is heavily dependent on firearms suicide?

How's that overall suicide rate doing?

[MrBenchley]

10. Why don't you tell us?

Or are empty rhetorical questions all you've got?

By the way, how many MORE folks here than there crippled, scarred, comatose-d, or maimed after being beaten, mugged, or raped, thanks to the corrupt gun industry setting public policy? Since we're asking rhetorical questions, and all.....


"Homicide deaths dropped to 47 from 84"
Forty-seven gun homicides in a nation of 20 million people.....that's about half as many gun homicides as Jacksonville, FL (population about 750,000).

[slackmaster]

11. Do you really want to talk about rates of assault and overall crime?

By the way, how many MORE folks here than there crippled, scarred, comatose-d, or maimed after being beaten, mugged, or raped, thanks to the corrupt gun industry setting public policy?

Australia tops the list of places where you are most likely to be beaten, mugged, or raped. If you'd rather have your car stolen try England and Wales:



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/02/23/ncrim123.xml

After Australia and England and Wales, the highest prevalence of crime was in Holland (25 per cent), Sweden (25 per cent) and Canada (24 per cent). The United States, despite its high murder rate, was among the middle ranking countries with a 21 per cent victimisation rate.

[grayrace]

13. telegraph? also this isn't reported crime its a phone survey

I mean it could be close, or in a few spots something small could throw some countries up and others down. Is 34,000 enough to sample across 17 countries? I don't know sounds flimsy.

more than one in four - in England and Wales had been victims of crime in 1999. The figure for Scotland was 23 per cent and in Northern Ireland 15 per cent.

I don't know much about N. Ireland. But Irish are a rough bunch, seems like theirs should be the highest in the UK, but I could be wrong. This just isn't enough to throw off real numbers. Australia loses hundreds, we lose 10s of thousands.

[MrBenchley]

15. You may wonder

why a survey is being used to provide data for countries that certainly have modern police forces and collect crime statistics.

And the answer may have something to do with the owner of the Telegraph, right wing nutcase Conrad Black....

"LONDON (Reuters) - A major Hollinger International shareholder has filed a lawsuit alleging that the publisher's independent board members stood by while Chief Executive Conrad Black and other executives "looted" as much as $300 million.
The board of the U.S. company, which owns the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Jerusalem Post, is packed with luminaries including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle, the former chairman and current member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board. "

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040105/wl_canada_nm/canada_media_hollinger_col_18

"Three columnists who praised media baron Conrad Black in print did not disclose in their writings that Black had put them on a paid Hollinger advisory board in the 1990s, according to a New York Times story.
The three were George Will of the Washington Post Writers Group, William Buckley of Universal Press Syndicate, and Henry Kissinger of Tribune Media Services. They and other members of Black's mostly conservative board reportedly each received $25,000 per meeting, said the Times.
When asked if he should have revealed the payments in a positive 2003 column he wrote about Black, Will said no. "My business is my business," he told the Times. "Got it?"
The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into millions in unauthorized payments allegedly collected by Black and other top executives at Hollinger -- which owns the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Telegraph in London, the Jerusalem Post, and other newspapers."

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/features_columns/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2059334

Yeah, THAT Conrad Black...

The Telegraph was the source of that recent report claiming there WAS a link between September 11 and Saddam after all....which turned out to be an utter fake. They had a similar claim back in April...which ALSO turned out to be an utter fake.

[slackmaster]

16. MrBenchley presents a nice genetic fallacy but no data

...a survey is being used to provide data for countries that certainly have modern police forces and collect crime statistics.

Surveys are used in scientific research all the time. A survey in this type of investigation assures apples are compared to apples, since crime reporting procedures and definitions of crimes differ from country to country.

If you have contradictory data please present it.

[MrBenchley]

19. A bit more on this fine source for "truth"

"Aside from the dubious ethics, of course, the Hollinger story offers yet another episode in the annals of right-wing hypocrisy. Black's flagship London "quality" newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, wasted more ink on Whitewater than any other publication outside the United States. Indeed, the Telegraph "broke" many Clinton scandal tales, few of which turned out to bear any resemblance to reality. Featured in the paper's Clinton coverage was an undisguised contempt for the "sleazy business deals" of the president and his Arkansas friends.
Among the opinion-mongers most responsible for that attitudinizing tone was Black's wife, Barbara Amiel. As a columnist she never allowed her skimpy familiarity with basic facts to interfere with her duty to tell us all what to think. In Whitewater there was "a pattern of corruption leading in an unbroken path from Arkansas to Washington," she wrote early on. "Nothing, it seems, can embarrass Bill Clinton."
Now I suppose we shall see what, if anything, can embarrass Amiel, whose domestic staff was apparently subsidized by Hollinger shareholders, at a cost of more than $230,000, and who reportedly received "previously undisclosed payments" as a member of the Hollinger board."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/01/05/amiel/index.html

[slackmaster]

24. MrBenchley has only his genetic fallacy and red herring to offer

Disregard the message, shoot the messenger. MrBenchley's replies boil down to "If it's printed in the Telegraph it can't be true."

But you don't have to take the Telegraph's word or my word about Australian crime rates. The data from the ICVS is all available for free for anyone who wishes to do their own analysis.

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080/NACJD-STUDY/03803.xml

[slackmaster]

18. If you've got better data please present it

The International Crime Victims Survey was not conducted by the Telegraph. If the source really bothers you (as it clearly bothers MrBenchley) perhaps you would find the same data presented by the University of Michigan more palatable:

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu:8080/NACJD-STUDY/03803.xml

[MrBenchley]

20. You might recall that

New Zealand DOES make a comparison of actual crime...wherein you can find that New Zealand and the UK have relatively low levels of crime.....

http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2002/intl-comparisons-crime/section-7.html

And that the US has roughly four times that rate of violent crime....

http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2002/intl-comparisons-crime/section-5.html

And that a member of the RKBA crowd recently cut and pasted the UK and US tables, with their differing methodology, together in an effort to show just the opposite.

Incidentally, if one compares Australia to New Zealand, one finds that Australia has slightly less vionet crime than New Zealand, and therefore something like less than a fourth of America's violent crime....

http://www.justice.govt.nz/pubs/reports/2002/intl-comparisons-crime/section-6.html

[grayrace]

22. thank you

[grayrace]

12. here

http://www.aifs.org.au/ysp/pubs/bull5cc.pdf">Suicide rates

looks like for some age/sex groups it does help. No real numbers only rates it would help if I knew how many there were in each group.

[slackmaster]

3. Apparently gun murders are being replaced by non-gun murders

Executive Summary

During the period from 1 July 1989 to 30 June 1999, homicide in Australia was characterised by the following features:

Incident Profile

• There were 3150 homicide incidents.
• The incidence of homicide in Australia has remained relatively stable,
with an average of 315 incidents per year.
• Just under two-thirds of all homicide incidents (60.2%) occurred in
residential premises.
• Over two-thirds of homicide incidents occurred between 6pm and 6am.
• Nearly half of all homicide incidents occurred on Friday, Saturday,
or Sunday.
• Homicide incidents were least likely to occur between 6am and
before noon.
• Eight out of 10 homicide incidents can be characterised as “one-on-one” interactions between the victim and the offender.
• On average, there are 15 multiple fatality incidents per year, resulting in approximately 39 victims.

Source:

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/28/exec.pdf

The rate held constant for 2000 - 2001 with 317 victims:

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/40/RPP40_01_summary.pdf

OOPS! We have a 20% increase in the homicide rate for 2001 - 2002:

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/46/

Yes, gun control works all right, if you'd rather be stabbed, beaten to death, or poisoned than shot. :freak:

[grayrace]

14. you need to read more then the first page

Compared to 1999–2000, there has been a decrease in the number of victims of homicide in Australia. During 2000–2001, Australia recorded 317 victims of homicide, and a homicide victimisation rate of 1.6 per 100,000 population. This is the lowest recorded victimisation rate since the inception of the NHMP in 1990. A jurisdictional comparison reveals that three jurisdictions recorded a homicide victimisation rate below the national average—Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia. Despite recording relatively few homicide victims in the Northern Territory (n=17), the homicide victimisation rate of 8.7 per 100,000 population in the Territory was about five times greater than the national average. In contrast, there were no homicide victims in the Australian Capital Territory during 2000–2001.

[slackmaster]

17. I read the whole thing

The chances of being murdered in Australia have remained basically unchanged during the time period we're discussing.

Gun murders are down but other kinds of murders are up. Nothing resembling the Port Arthur massacre has occurred since then but nothing like it had ever happened before Port Arthur.

If you want evidence that gun control reduces OVERALL crime you'll have to look somewhere other than Australia.

[grayrace]

21. I think you're not reading

Australia's homicide rate fell during the time, not remained stable.

[slackmaster]

23. No, the homicide rate has remained stable in Australia

Only homicides by gun have dropped; replaced by homicides by other means. The numbers are all there. The passage you quoted in reply #14 refers only to a single year; the rate went up by 20% from that in the following year.

If the overall homicide had dropped you can bet the anti-gun zealots would be trumpeting their great victory. But because it hasn't dropped, all they can do is cherry-pick a Pyrric one.

[DoNotRefill]

4. A few points:

the vast majority of the decrease is due to people not committing suicide with guns. I'm wondering if the overall suicide rate dropped, or if there was just a substitution effect.

I'm also wondering what happened to crime overall during that time period.

Didn't the US have a huge drop in crime during the same time period?

[MrBenchley]

5. Gee

Yeah, the Us passed the Brady law and Clinton launched his COPS program...and we had a drop in crime in the past decade....reversed since this unelected drunk was installed by folks like the NRA.

[Romulus]

6. Thank You

for acknowledging that the current background check laws are working, and establish the correct balance between the right of citizens to bear arms and the right of society to be sure that only proper people are allowed access to those arms.

The availability of semi-automatic firearms has not changed during that time period, so the beneficial effects cited can be solely attributed to the background check system.

Therefore, any further restrictions on arms ownership beyond the current background check scheme are unnecessary.

Signed,

Romulus.

[MrBenchley]

7. Gee

Now think how much we could do if we closed the loopholes and expanded our gun control law. We might get the gun deaths in Texas down to Australia's level.

[slackmaster]

9. And if "gun deaths" are replaced by "knife deaths"?

What is the benefit?

[slackmaster]

8. "Reversed" is not an accurate description of the trend

Try "levelled off":



Here's a link to so many ways of looking at the US homicide rates you'll probably puke:

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/homtrnd.htm