On April 28, 1996, six weeks after Howard was elected Prime Minister of Australia, Martin Bryant shot and killed 35 people and wounded 23 others, at Port Arthur, Tasmania.
Soon after that shooting, the Australian government under Howard, passed the 'National Firearms Agreement', which included Australia's 1996 gun buyback program, which was reported to cost about $500 million taxpayer dollars, with $340 million going to gun owners, in compensation for surrendering the firearms banned by the new law —
http://archive.is/eG33a
https://www.anao.gov.au/sites/g/files/net616/f/anao_report_1997-98_25.pdf, http://archive.is/vS8rj (p. 7)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_buyback_program#Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia#Port_Arthur_massacre_and_its_consequences
In two previous posts I pointed out that the Australian gun buyback had no impact in saving lives. Gun homicides in Australia decreased after the ban, but were already decreasing years before the buyback started in 1996. And gun suicides in Australia started a long steady downtrend from almost 10 years prior in 1986, but the overall suicide rate in Australia actually increased after the gun buyback began in 1996, because the non-firearm suicide rate was increasing, and Australians do not normally use a gun to commit suicide —
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2014/06/prohibitions-or-pretending-human-nature.html
http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2015/10/you-have-to-lie-to-support-gun-control.html
Here is a study from October 2006, by two Australian academics, Jeanine Baker and Samara McPhedran, entitled 'GUN LAWS AND SUDDEN DEATH, Did the Australian Firearms Legislation of 1996 Make a Difference?', which documents these same points.
Included below are two charts from the Baker/McPhedran study, showing the Australian suicide and homicide rates for the 93 year period from 1910 to 2003. Notice that the Port Arthur shootings created an outlier in the historical trend, just as other incidents had in previous years.
Baker/McPhedran point out that retaining outliers (like the homicide count from the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre) artificially elevates the changes in the homicide rate in the time series data, and that the 1996 data point should be thrown out for the purposes of evaluating the effect of Australia's NFA — not to mention that the gun buyback was not even completed until 1997. But they did not eliminate the 1996 homicide count from their study to avoid the appearance of bias.
I added the red 'Port Arthur Shooting' label to the chart below to make that data point more obvious (the label was not on the original chart in the study) —
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/40534/1/MPRA_paper_40534.pdf
http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/GunLawsSudden%20DeathBJC.pdf
http://moveleft.org/dog_ban/br_j_criminology_2006_.pdf
http://archive.is/uZCg4
GUN LAWS AND SUDDEN DEATHDid the Australian Firearms Legislation of 1996 Make a Difference?Jeanine Baker and Samara McPhedran...
Methods...
A methodological caution is necessary. In 1996, the firearm homicide rate was high due to the murder of 35 people in one shooting event. As a consequence, mistakenly using 1996, rather than 1997, as a start point for evaluating changes in the rate of firearm deaths post-NFA would alter the conclusions drawn. Likewise, the retention of the 1996-elevated figure, along with outliers identified in firearm homicide, artificially elevates the change in rates for the pre-NFA time series. This has important implications for future investigations and it is recommended that subsequent research into the impacts of firearms legislation take into account the importance of screening for outliers and using appropriate, consistent grouping methods.
Outliers in this study were identified using the ARIMA residual values calculated from examining the data from 1979 to 2004 for each sudden death category. Years in which the residual values differed from the mean residual value by more than twice the standard deviation were assumed to be outliers (Table 1). However, given the polarization that can occur in the debate about firearm legislation, outliers in this study were not eliminated lest such actions be construed as being used in order to make the argument that the NFA failed to influence sudden death by firearm even more compelling.
...
ConclusionsExamination of the long-term trends indicated that the only category of sudden death that may have been influenced by the introduction of the NFA was firearm suicide. However, this effect must be considered in light of the findings for suicide (non-firearm). Homicide patterns (firearm and non-firearm) were not influenced by the NFA, the conclusion being that the gun buy-back and restrictive legislative changes had no influence on firearm homicide in Australia. The introduction of the NFA appeared to have a negative effect on accidental firearm death. However, over the time period investigated, there was a relatively small number of accidental deaths per annum, with substantial variability. Any conclusions regarding the effect of the NFA on accidental firearm death should be approached with caution.
...
However, the NFA was not only directed at buying back semi-automatic longarms and pump action shotguns, despite 643,726 firearms being handed in for destruction. Additional legislation introduced concurrently across Australia as part of the NFA related to tightening the criteria for ‘genuine need’ and purpose of use, enforcing safe storage of firearms and ammunition, and mandatory training and reporting. Thus, the efficacy of these additional restrictions should also be considered in light of policies designed to reduce overall firearm deaths in one or more of the sudden death categories. Examination of the sudden death categories presented here indicates that evidence for such overall reductions is tenuous at best, with only firearm suicide rates post-NFA being significantly different from those predicted from the observed rates.
However, suicide rates by firearm pre- and post-NFA both showed decline. Without considering the general trends in suicide within Australia for this time period, the conclusion would have been that the 1996 NFA had succeeded in lowering firearm suicide rates. However, immediately following the NFA, suicide (non-firearm) increased. This would suggest that there may have been an initial period during which method substitution occurred, although it seems improbable that a buy-back focusing on semi-automatic longarms and pump action shotguns would prevent access to firearms for anyone intent on suicide. It is possible that the increased scrutiny of licence applicants and the necessity for safe storage would cause those considering acquiring a firearm to attempt suicide to evaluate other methods and may subsequently have led some individuals to seek alternative methods of suicide recognized as approximately as lethal as firearms (particularly, hanging).
...
Quoted below is an article at nytimes.com, from January 2013 (written 7 years after the Baker/McPhedran study quoted above), by the former Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, entitled 'I Went After Guns. Obama Can, Too.'.
Of course, it is not surprising that Howard would pretend that legislation he championed has been responsible for saving many lives, even though there is no indication that this is true. And notice that Howard made no attempt to hide his view that the citizens of Australia should be subordinated to bureaucrats such as himself when he wrote —
http://archive.is/4h0Xi
Australia, correctly in my view, does not have a Bill of Rights, so our legislatures have more say than America’s over many issues of individual rights, and our courts have less control.And anyone who believes that someone like Barack Obama or the U.S. Congress — or any government bureaucrat for that matter — needs encouragement to violate individual rights, is not paying attention.
John Howard closes his ridiculous article by pretending that there is now wide consensus that Australia's 'National Firearms Agreement' reduced both gun-related homicide and suicide rates. He also wrote that gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996. And so they did — just like they were falling years before the buyback. And, of course, gun-related murders fell dramatically the moment the Port Arthur Massacre ended, since that Massacre accounted for over 35% of the homicides that year (35 of 99 total, Baker/McPhedran).
That is, the Port Arthur Massacre was an extreme anomaly. One has to go all the way back to 1928 and the Coniston Massacre, to find an incident in Australia where the homicide count from a massacre was higher than that of the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 — and the Coniston Massacre involved a dispute with indigenous Australians (it was not a shooting rampage by a lone gunman). If the death count from the Port Arthur massacre had been no higher than the highest among the 13 that John Howard mentioned at the close of his article (8), the firearm homicide rate in Australia would have gone up slightly after the NFA gun buyback.
In 1997 Australia's total firearm homicide count was 75 — so if 8 is used for the Port Arthur homicide count (the highest homicide count in the 13 prior massacres from 1996 back to 1978), giving a total of 72 firearm homicides in 1996, Australia's firearm homicide rate actually increased immediately after the gun buyback. Here is how Australia's homicides rates compare in 1997, when the Port Arthur homicides are reduced in the 1996 homicide count —
- 1996 Population = 18,310,714, Firearm Homicides = 99 : rate 0.541 per/100,000 (original total)
- 1996 Population = 18,310,714, Firearm Homicides = 72 : rate 0.393 per/100,000 (less 27 Port Arthur homicides)
- 1997 Population = 18,517,564, Firearm Homicides = 75 : rate 0.405 per/100,000
In short, the claim that a massacre resembling Port Arthur would have happened again had Australia's NFA not been passed is obviously false, since the Port Arthur Massacre was such a rare event. In that regard, consider this quote from the study, 'Australia: A Massive Buy back of Low-Risk Guns' [emphasis added] —
http://archive.is/fbrPW
...Well, of course — no one should have expected much of an affect from Australia's NFA and its gun buyback, because the guns that were banned and purchased were not used to commit crimes or suicide to begin with.
Homicides continued a modest decline; taking into account the one-time effect of the Port Arthur massacre itself, the share of murders committed with firearms declined sharply. Other violent crime, such as armed robbery, continued to increase, but again with fewer incidents that involved firearms. This relatively small effect is hardly surprising given that the type of firearms prohibited had not previously been used frequently in crime or suicide, as well as the low power of the potential tests, with less than five years of postban data. However, the principal goal of the intervention was ending the mass murders; in the five years since the buyback, there has been a modest reduction in the severity of these murders, and none have involved firearms, though the frequency of these events is so low that not much can be inferred from this occurrence.
...
And do not forget that Australia's overall suicide rate increased immediately after the gun buyback, since committing suicide with a firearm has never been the preferred method in Australia. And the firearm suicide rate was in a downtrend for almost 10 years before the NFA was enacted — as clearly shown by the chart included above from the Baker/McPhedran study. So unless you think that somehow everyone is better off, as long as people commit suicide without using a firearm, saying Australia's NFA reduced firearm suicides is meaningless. Obviously, only the total number of suicides is important.
Of course, those who wish to pretend that they are champions of morality and saving human lives, will never stop pretending that the restrictions they create (like Australia's NFA) are an unqualified positive, regardless of how much they must misrepresent the evidence to defend that view.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/opinion/australia-banned-assault-weapons-america-can-too.html
http://archive.is/4h0Xi
I Went After Guns. Obama Can, Too.
By John Howard JAN. 16, 2013
SYDNEY, Australia
IT is for Americans and their elected representatives to determine the right response to President Obama’s proposals on gun control. I wouldn’t presume to lecture Americans on the subject. I can, however, describe what I, as prime minister of Australia, did to curb gun violence following a horrific massacre 17 years ago in the hope that it will contribute constructively to the debate in the United States.
I was elected prime minister in early 1996, leading a center-right coalition. Virtually every nonurban electoral district in the country — where gun ownership was higher than elsewhere — sent a member of my coalition to Parliament.
Six weeks later, on April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant, a psychologically disturbed man, used a semiautomatic Armalite rifle and a semiautomatic SKS assault weapon to kill 35 people in a murderous rampage in Port Arthur, Tasmania.
After this wanton slaughter, I knew that I had to use the authority of my office to curb the possession and use of the type of weapons that killed 35 innocent people. I also knew it wouldn’t be easy.
Our challenges were different from America’s. Australia is an even more intensely urban society, with close to 60 percent of our people living in large cities. Our gun lobby isn’t as powerful or well-financed as the National Rifle Association in the United States. Australia, correctly in my view, does not have a Bill of Rights, so our legislatures have more say than America’s over many issues of individual rights, and our courts have less control. Also, we have no constitutional right to bear arms. (After all, the British granted us nationhood peacefully; the United States had to fight for it.)
Because Australia is a federation of states, the national government has no control over gun ownership, sale or use, beyond controlling imports. Given our decentralized system of government, I could reduce the number of dangerous firearms only by persuading the states to enact uniform laws totally prohibiting the ownership, possession and sale of all automatic and semiautomatic weapons while the national government banned the importation of such weapons.
To make this plan work, there had to be a federally financed gun buyback scheme. Ultimately, the cost of the buyback was met by a special one-off tax imposed on all Australians. This required new legislation and was widely accepted across the political spectrum. Almost 700,000 guns were bought back and destroyed — the equivalent of 40 million guns in the United States.
City dwellers supported our plan, but there was strong resistance by some in rural Australia. Many farmers resented being told to surrender weapons they had used safely all of their lives. Penalizing decent, law-abiding citizens because of the criminal behavior of others seemed unfair. Many of them had been lifelong supporters of my coalition and felt bewildered and betrayed by these new laws. I understood their misgivings. Yet I felt there was no alternative.
The fundamental problem was the ready availability of high-powered weapons, which enabled people to convert their murderous impulses into mass killing. Certainly, shortcomings in treating mental illness and the harmful influence of violent video games and movies may have played a role. But nothing trumps easy access to a gun. It is easier to kill 10 people with a gun than with a knife.
Passing gun-control laws was a major challenge for my coalition partner: the rural, conservative National Party. All of its members held seats in nonurban areas. It was also very hard for the state government of Queensland, in Australia’s northeast, where the National Party was dominant, and where the majority of the population was rural.
The leaders of the National Party, as well as the premier of Queensland, courageously supported my government’s decision, despite the electoral pain it caused them. Within a year, a new populist and conservative political party, the One Nation Party, emerged and took many votes from our coalition in subsequent state and federal elections; one of its key policies was the reversal of the gun laws.
For a time, it seemed that certain states might refuse to enact the ban. But I made clear that my government was willing to hold a nationwide referendum to alter the Australian Constitution and give the federal government constitutional power over guns. Such a referendum would have been expensive and divisive, but it would have passed. And all state governments knew this.
In the end, we won the battle to change gun laws because there was majority support across Australia for banning certain weapons. And today, there is a wide consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate, but also the suicide rate. The Australian Institute of Criminology found that gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996. The American Law and Economics Review found that our gun buyback scheme cut firearm suicides by 74 percent. In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered 13 gun massacres — each with more than four victims — causing a total of 102 deaths. There has not been a single massacre in that category since 1996.
Few Australians would deny that their country is safer today as a consequence of gun control.
IT is for Americans and their elected representatives to determine the right response to President Obama’s proposals on gun control. I wouldn’t presume to lecture Americans on the subject. I can, however, describe what I, as prime minister of Australia, did to curb gun violence following a horrific massacre 17 years ago in the hope that it will contribute constructively to the debate in the United States.
I was elected prime minister in early 1996, leading a center-right coalition. Virtually every nonurban electoral district in the country — where gun ownership was higher than elsewhere — sent a member of my coalition to Parliament.
Six weeks later, on April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant, a psychologically disturbed man, used a semiautomatic Armalite rifle and a semiautomatic SKS assault weapon to kill 35 people in a murderous rampage in Port Arthur, Tasmania.
After this wanton slaughter, I knew that I had to use the authority of my office to curb the possession and use of the type of weapons that killed 35 innocent people. I also knew it wouldn’t be easy.
Our challenges were different from America’s. Australia is an even more intensely urban society, with close to 60 percent of our people living in large cities. Our gun lobby isn’t as powerful or well-financed as the National Rifle Association in the United States. Australia, correctly in my view, does not have a Bill of Rights, so our legislatures have more say than America’s over many issues of individual rights, and our courts have less control. Also, we have no constitutional right to bear arms. (After all, the British granted us nationhood peacefully; the United States had to fight for it.)
Because Australia is a federation of states, the national government has no control over gun ownership, sale or use, beyond controlling imports. Given our decentralized system of government, I could reduce the number of dangerous firearms only by persuading the states to enact uniform laws totally prohibiting the ownership, possession and sale of all automatic and semiautomatic weapons while the national government banned the importation of such weapons.
To make this plan work, there had to be a federally financed gun buyback scheme. Ultimately, the cost of the buyback was met by a special one-off tax imposed on all Australians. This required new legislation and was widely accepted across the political spectrum. Almost 700,000 guns were bought back and destroyed — the equivalent of 40 million guns in the United States.
City dwellers supported our plan, but there was strong resistance by some in rural Australia. Many farmers resented being told to surrender weapons they had used safely all of their lives. Penalizing decent, law-abiding citizens because of the criminal behavior of others seemed unfair. Many of them had been lifelong supporters of my coalition and felt bewildered and betrayed by these new laws. I understood their misgivings. Yet I felt there was no alternative.
The fundamental problem was the ready availability of high-powered weapons, which enabled people to convert their murderous impulses into mass killing. Certainly, shortcomings in treating mental illness and the harmful influence of violent video games and movies may have played a role. But nothing trumps easy access to a gun. It is easier to kill 10 people with a gun than with a knife.
Passing gun-control laws was a major challenge for my coalition partner: the rural, conservative National Party. All of its members held seats in nonurban areas. It was also very hard for the state government of Queensland, in Australia’s northeast, where the National Party was dominant, and where the majority of the population was rural.
The leaders of the National Party, as well as the premier of Queensland, courageously supported my government’s decision, despite the electoral pain it caused them. Within a year, a new populist and conservative political party, the One Nation Party, emerged and took many votes from our coalition in subsequent state and federal elections; one of its key policies was the reversal of the gun laws.
For a time, it seemed that certain states might refuse to enact the ban. But I made clear that my government was willing to hold a nationwide referendum to alter the Australian Constitution and give the federal government constitutional power over guns. Such a referendum would have been expensive and divisive, but it would have passed. And all state governments knew this.
In the end, we won the battle to change gun laws because there was majority support across Australia for banning certain weapons. And today, there is a wide consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate, but also the suicide rate. The Australian Institute of Criminology found that gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996. The American Law and Economics Review found that our gun buyback scheme cut firearm suicides by 74 percent. In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered 13 gun massacres — each with more than four victims — causing a total of 102 deaths. There has not been a single massacre in that category since 1996.
Few Australians would deny that their country is safer today as a consequence of gun control.
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