The Corrupt Judges Of The Ninth Circuit Court

On June 9, 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Court published their decision for 'Edward Peruta v. County of San Diego'.   This decision upheld a district court ruling 'that there is no Second Amendment right for members of the general public to carry concealed firearms in public.' —
    https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/06/09/10-56971.pdf
    http://archive.is/gvsPj
    http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/content/view_seniority_list.php?pk_id=0000000035
    http://archive.is/GQG2
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Ninth_Circuit

Notice that the first oral argument of 'Edward Peruta v. County of San Diego' was delivered back in December of 2012, so it took the Ninth Circuit Court over 3 years to rule on a simple point of law.  That is, whether citizens of the United States have a Second Amendment right to carry concealed firearms.

Not too surprisingly, the court ruled in favor of government power — that is, that any restriction the state wishes to place on a citizen's ability to carry firearms is constitutional, despite the simple language in the Second Amendment that obviously prohibits any restrictions.   After all, the Second Amendment clearly states "the right of the people to bear Arms, shall not be infringed".   It doesn't take a law degree, or a study of history, to understand what that simple language means.

Of course, the judges on the Ninth Circuit court that held the majority opinion had no problem justifying their ruling, since there is an ample supply of bad precedent from history conferring power to governments (of course), that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution specifically prohibits — again, any infringement of the right of the people to bear arms.

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https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript
http://archive.is/f0MVt

Article the fourth... A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

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The following seven Ninth Circuit Court Judges gave the majority opinion in the case —

Sidney R. Thomas (Chief Judge),  Harry Pregerson,  Susan P. Graber,
M. Margaret McKeown,  William A. Fletcher,  Richard A. Paez, and John B. Owens

The following four Ninth Circuit Court Judges dissented —

Barry G. Silverman,  Consuelo M. Callahan,  Carlos T. Bea,  N. Randy Smith

The majority opinion is tragically comical to read.  Ponderous and ridiculous, it actually includes a brief history of restrictions on the right to bear arms in England, going back to 1299.  Here is just one example —

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http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/general/2016/06/09/10-56971%206-9%20EB%20opinion%20plus%20webcites.pdf

...

1. History Relevant to the Second Amendment
a. Right to Bear Arms in England

The right to bear arms in England has long been subject to substantial regulation.  In 1299, Edward I directed the sheriffs of Safford and Shalop to prohibit anyone from “going armed within the realm without the king’s special licence.” 4 Calendar Of The Close Rolls, Edward I, 1296–1302, at 318 (Sept. 15, 1299, Canterbury) (H.C. Maxwell-Lyte ed., 1906).   Five years later, in 1304, Edward I ordered the sheriff of Leicester to enforce his prohibition on “any knight, esquire or other person from . . . going armed in any way without the king’s licence.” 5 Calendar Of The Close Rolls, Edward I, 1302–1307, at 210 (June 10, 1304, Stirling) (H.C. MaxwellLyteed., 1908).
...

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There are numerous other irrelevant references to various arms restrictions from history in the court's published ruling — as if somehow what was happening in England in 1299 (or wherever and whenever) gives one carte blanche to ignore the obvious language of the Second Amendment, and that the U.S. Constitution was written precisely to break from existing precedents.

Why on earth would anyone fight a bloody revolution to break from some ruling nation, only to establish a legal system that slavishly conformed to the legal traditions of the former rulers?   What on earth would be the point of that?

Somehow it was lost on these judges that the founders fought the Revolutionary War to form a new nation under a government that did not conform to past tradition.   It is especially ironic that a majority of the judges from any court would cite English law prior to the American Revolution as valid precedent, given that the purpose of the American Revolution was to eliminate English control over the colonies.   You could not make that up.   Such is the supposed wisdom of a government employee, with years of experience studying law.

If you do not agree that it is ridiculous to use English law prior to the American Revolution to justify ignoring phrases in the U.S. Constitution like 'shall not be infringed', then you may enjoy the writings of concurring judge Susan P. Graber.

Consider the quote below from Susan P. Graber.   It seems the earlier absurdities in the majority opinion were not extreme enough for Graber, since she felt compelled to make the majority opinion even more ridiculous (italics added below) —

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http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/general/2016/06/09/10-56971%206-9%20EB%20opinion%20plus%20webcites.pdf

I concur fully in the majority opinion.  I write separately only to state that, even if we assume that the Second Amendment applied to the carrying of concealed weapons in public, the provisions at issue would be constitutional.  Three of our sister circuits have upheld similar restrictions under intermediate scrutiny.  Such restrictions strike a permissible balance between “granting handgun permits to those persons known to be in need of self-protection and precluding a dangerous proliferation of handguns on the streets.” Woollard v. Gallagher, 712 F.3d 865, 881 (4th Cir. 2013); see also Drake v. Filko, 724 F.3d 426, 431–32 (3d Cir. 2013) (assuming that the Second Amendment applies and upholding New Jersey’s “justifiable need” restriction on carrying handguns in public); Kachalsky v. County of Westchester, 701 F.3d 81, 89, 97 (2d Cir. 2012) (assuming that the Second Amendment applies and upholding New York’s “proper cause” restriction on the concealed carrying of firearms).  If restrictions on concealed carry of weapons in public are subject to Second Amendment analysis, we should follow the approach adopted by our sister circuits.
...

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This cries out for a response.   Notice that Graber's statement quoted above has nothing to do with the law.   It is not up to judges to strike balances, as Graber claims in the quote above.   Judges are paid to abide by, and uphold the law — that is the meaning of rule of law.   Graber's notion that it is up to judges to apply the law as they see fit in order to 'strike a balance', is as clear a contradiction to the ideal of the rule of law from a judge as you will hear.   Want 'a government of laws, and not of men'?   Well, then you have to keep the likes of Susan P. Graber as far from a courtroom as possible.

And pay special attention to this statement from Graber —

... even if we assume that the Second Amendment applied to the carrying of concealed weapons in public, the provisions at issue would be constitutional.

This quote from Graber begs the painfully obvious question:

What could the U.S. founders have possibly written to permit carrying concealed weapons in public, given that Graber does not accept the statement "the right of the people to bear Arms, shall not be infringed", as granting that permission?

Does the U.S. Constitution really have to be filled with numerous laundry lists of examples to prevent incompetent judges from justifying any interpretation that suits them?   Graber's statement quoted above is obviously absurd on its face — how on earth can the infringements being considered in the case in question still remain constitutional, even with language in the Second Amendment that specifically emphasized concealed carry?

We know that if the U.S. Constitution contained specific examples to clarify every statement of law, it would do nothing to prevent dishonest interpretations, since Graber demonstrated that explicitly in the quote above.   Adding specific examples to the U.S. Constitution might make it harder for judges like Graber to 'strike a balance' that suits them, of course, but the regular assaults on the Second Amendment have provided us with a clear demonstration that many people will simply twist whatever is written to justify whatever position they fancy (Susan P. Graber's statements are just one demonstration among many of this obvious fact).

Notice that dissenting judges pointed out that California's gun laws considered in total, approach being a total ban on a citizen's right to bear firearms, and as such, are clearly in direct contradiction with the Second Amendment —

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http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/general/2016/06/09/10-56971%206-9%20EB%20opinion%20plus%20webcites.pdf

B. In the context of California’s ban on open carry, the counties’ ban on concealed carry for self-defense is unconstitutional

      In the context of California’s choice to prohibit open carry, the counties’ policies regarding the licensing of concealed carry are tantamount to complete bans on the Second Amendment right to bear arms outside the home for self-defense, and are therefore unconstitutional.

      Heller defined the right to bear arms as the right to be “armed and ready for offensive or defensive action in a case of conflict with another person.”  Heller, 554 U.S. at 584 (quoting Muscarello, 524 U.S. at 143 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting)).  Here, California has chosen to ban open carry but grants its citizens the ability to carry firearms in public through county-issued concealed weapons licenses.  Thus, in California, the only way that the average law-abiding citizen can carry a firearm in public for the lawful, constitutionally protected purpose of self-defense is with a concealed-carry license.  And in San Diego and Yolo Counties that option has been taken off the table.  Both policies specify that concern for one’s personal safety alone does not satisfy the “good cause” requirement for issuance of a license.
...

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Writing words in a document protects no one, if those entrusted to abide by and enforce those words are not honest enough to do so.

The words 'shall not be infringed' have a clear meaning that everyone understands.   You know what they mean, I know what they mean, and all the judges on the Ninth Circuit Court know what they mean — pity they will not enforce them.

If you are convinced that the Second Amendment is flawed, then by all means make your case, and attempt to start a movement to amend the U.S. Constitution, but do not lie and pretend a phrase like 'shall not be infringed' means 'infringe when we feel like it'.

The New York Times Trying To Pretend They Are Moral

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"Beware the people who moralize about great issues; moralizing is easier than facing hard facts."
    — John Corry, former New York Times reporter, 'My Times: Adventures in the News Trade'   1993, p.131

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Consider the opinion piece quoted below, from December 2015, by the editorial board of 'The New York Times' —
     https://archive.is/a4PaG

As you read this, keep in mind that 'The New York Times' editorial board is staffed by senior journalists with many years of experience — when this was written, the editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, for example, had been with 'The New York Times' for almost 30 years, since March of 1987, and the associate editor Robert B Semple, had been with the paper since 1963 --

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/end-the-gun-epidemic-in-america.html

End the Gun Epidemic in America

It is a moral outrage and national disgrace that civilians can
legally purchase weapons designed to kill people with brutal
speed and efficiency.

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD   DEC. 4, 2015

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California.  Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism.  That is right and proper.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places.  The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency.  These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection.  America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday.  They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism.  Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal.  That is true.  They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation.  Those challenges exist.  They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws.  Yes, they did.

But at least those countries are trying.  The United States is not.  Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs.  It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment.  No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership.  It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?

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You would think (or hope) that a group of people like 'The New York Times' editorial board, with well over 100 years of combined experience reporting on world news, would be able to write more than a collection of bromides on a subject as old as gun violence.  But the opinion piece quoted above is a dramatic demonstration of the simple truth that they cannot.

Notice how absurdly nonsensical this expression of 'The New York Times' editorial board is — after explicitly stating the obvious point that no law will stop criminals from obtaining firearms illegally, the editorial board still insists we should pass more gun control laws.  The editorial board wrote it is true that "no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal" — well, of course, since no one willing to commit an extreme act like murder would be restrained by the threat of a much less serious penalty for violating some firearms restriction.

Even the subtitle to the opinion piece is absurd.  All firearms are "weapons designed to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency".   That is the point.   Who on earth thinks that a pistol, for example, is designed to maim people with gentle slowness and inefficiency?

And, of course, 'The New York Times' editorial board must avoid the obvious point that military assault weapons are not legally available to the public.  They were long since banned for civilian use back in 1986 by the 'Firearm Owners Protection Act'.

The civilian replicas of military assault rifles that are currently legal to purchase do not have the critical feature of an assault rifle — that is, the civilian replicas are not machine guns.  Military rifles can be automatic, and civilian look-a-likes cannot — which means the civilian versions require a separate trigger pull for each shot.

In short, the statement from 'The New York Times' editorial board, that civilians can purchase "weapons of war, barely modified", will only seem valid to those who are ignorant about the difference between a semi-automatic weapon and a machine gun.   Here is a short video demonstrating that difference, and also the absurdity of writing laws to restrict magazine sizes (which accomplishes absolutely nothing, other than forcing people to purchase more magazines) --

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C-CLsMRcA0

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And recall, as just one obvious example that helps to demonstrate the irrelevance of the debate over particular gun features, that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated former President John F. Kennedy with a single shot, bolt action rifle.   But it is often the case that recommendations from advocates of gun control have no relevance to any particular murder — just as 'The New York Times' editorial quoted above falsely assumes from ignorance that some imagined military assault weapon feature facilitated a murder.

And notice this revealing statement in 'The New York Times' editorial —

"It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment."

Well, what on earth is so "peculiar" about the wording of the Second Amendment?   Here's the wording, in case you have forgotten —

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state,
  the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Is it really so hard to understand why a group of people, who just fought a revolution against a government that they viewed as tyrannical and contemptuous of individual rights, would write a law prohibiting the government they were forming from disarming its citizens, precisely so the people would always be able to defend themselves, just as the founders had done during the Revolutionary War?

Both the intent and need of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution seems painfully obvious to me — pity it is so difficult for such an obvious and desperately needed check on government power to be understood by others.

So, what is the goal of those who insist on futile, self-defeating measures?
What is the goal of someone who insists on taking an action that they openly acknowledge will not help?

'The New York Times' editorial board adamantly insists that we take a course of action which they simultaneously acknowledge does not work.   What do they hope to gain with their strident cries for more gun control, when they simultaneously and explicitly state that murderers are not thwarted by such laws — that murderers can always obtain firearms illegally?

How can this be anything other than pretentious moral preening?   That is, posturing that you care more than others.

'The New York Times' editorial board makes the absurd claim that "at least those countries are trying", in response to the passage of gun control laws in other countries that we know with certainty did not prevent murders (which the editorial board at least had the honesty to openly acknowledge).   So how can any even barely reasonable person describe pursuing a course of action known to be futile as "trying", or as displaying a "sense of decency", as the 'The New York Times' editorial board put it?

A reasonable person with many years of experience as an honest observer of human life, would fully expect such empty emotional demands to do something, to do anything, to be repeated, even when we know the recommended actions will accomplish nothing — other than to make more individuals susceptible to becoming a victim.   But no reasonable person would be satisfied by such lazy, knee-jerk, emotional reactions.   Recommending actions that you acknowledge are ineffective, so you can grasp at creating the appearance of "trying" or of "retaining a sense of decency", is a profound expression of abject moral cowardice.

The problem of human violence is rooted deep in human nature, and simplistic recommendations for governments to pass restrictions regarding how men kill one another does absolutely nothing to address the fundamental problem — it only makes it easier to victimize those who would obey the restrictions.   Of course, repeating this obvious point will never stop people from making pointless recommendations that ignore the fundamental issue — as 'The New York Times' editorial board clearly demonstrates in their opinion piece quoted above, even with an open acknowledgment that what is being suggested has been tried and did not work, the temptation to engage in moral preening is overwhelming.

As an important aside, regarding the general deterioration of 'The New York Times', quoted below is part of an interview Brian Lamb conducted with John Corry, a former reporter of the 'The New York Times' — the same reporter who wrote the quote that heads this blog post.  If you take the time to read this interview, you will notice that it contains a significant indictment of the standards of news media in general.  John Corry states that "I've never considered myself a Republican", but he believes that "when I applied, in my view, journalistic standards to television news, I began to sound like a conservative."

The obvious indictment contained in Corry's interview is that prominent news organizations do not have basic journalistic standards.  This comment will not be controversial to any critical reader who even occasionally follows the news --

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http://www.booknotes.org/Watch/55567-1/John-Corry.aspx
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/30/books/eyeshades-and-objectivity.html

...
LAMB: How about yourself?  Politics.  Do you consider yourself a Republican?

CORRY: Oh, no.  I've never considered myself a Republican in that sense, but what I found -- and it really goes back to Harper's.  You know, I'm a conservative and there's no question about that, and -- look, when I became the television critic of The Times and Abe Rosenthal, then the executive editor, my only marching orders were, apply journalistic standards to television news, television documentaries.  That was all -- apply journalistic standards.  And I did that, and I found that when I applied, in my view, journalistic standards to television news, I began to sound like a conservative.  Now I am a conservative, no question about that, but it seems to me that -- oh, it's almost painful -- it's just cliche that American journalism exists left of center.  The media exists left of center.  And Abe Rosenthal, who had been executive editor of The Times, always knew this, and it was his lifelong task -- he was dedicated -- he was sworn to holding The New York Times in the center, in the political center.

And Abe said -- and I believe this -- that unless you keep hold of The Times, it will drift to the left because reporters and editors will simply follow their natural impulses, predilections.  They will go off to the left.  And so I began as writing television criticism and what was on NBC or CBS or PBS and applying journalistic standards -- what I thought were journalistic standards, I began to sound increasingly like a conservative and increasingly was labeled as a conservative.  Now I didn't mind this.  In fact, it was sort of fun, and I was a conservative in a media culture dominated by liberals and, oh, I confess that towards the end of my time as television critic, increasingly I enjoyed sticking my thumb in the liberal eye, and you can do it fairly.  You can do it.  You don't have to be sneaky about it, but I was increasingly -- I was reviewing documentaries about the Sandinistas, and if I never see another documentary about the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in which they're shown as agrarian reformers or if I never see another documentary -- another report on Fidel Castro where all that we hear is about the wonderful job that Fidel is doing in education and health and welfare in Havana, well, I'll be awfully happy.  But when you apply history, apply journalistic standards to those documentaries and, by golly, you will come across as a conservative.  And I enjoyed it.

LAMB: You suggest that a lot of people in the business live on the West Side of New York between what streets and what streets on the Upper West Side?

CORRY: Yeah.  One of the interesting things that -- look, everyone in the media in New York knows everyone else.  If they don't know everyone else, they know all about them.  And actually, it would be on the East Side where the people who run our publications live, and they live between 59th Street and 86th Street on the East Side and/or along West End Avenue or Central Park West on the West Side and a few selected suburbs.  And views are spread -- I mean, there is not a media conspiracy.  I'm a little bored with conservatives who run around talking about the dark conspiracy in the media and the media's going to subvert all our values or the media may, indeed, subvert all our values, but it's not a conspiracy.  It's that views are shared.  They're spread by osmosis, and they're enforced by moral persuasion, I suppose.  The problem is that people think alike.  People think alike, so, yes, if I was in The New York Times newsroom in 1980 and everyone has voted for Ronald Reagan, except Hilton Cramer, I mean, it tells you something about where the media is looking or are looking.

LAMB: How did they treat you?

CORRY: Well, remember, I'd been around for a long time, and I had a lot of friends in the business, and I still have a lot of friends with The New York Times, but increasingly in the '80s, I had the feeling that I was, oh, almost the token conservative, and sure, I was treated just fine.  I mean, I knew all kinds of people there.  I had been nominated for Pulitzer Prizes in different categories, not as a reporter, so I was treated just fine.  But I think when I left in 1988, and I left for a variety of reasons.  One reason was that -- oh, I had grown up at The New York Times, and I didn't want to grow old at The New York Times.  I had just known too many old reporters who were sitting in the back of the room and gotten sour and grumpy and were taking assignments from 25-year-old editors, and it seems to me that I didn't ever want to be in that position.  And it seemed to me that my time was running out at The New York Times.

No, I wasn't fighting with anyone.  I got along very well with my colleagues, but when Abe left -- Abe Rosenthal -- and Max Frankel came in as executive editor, it was a different vision of the news.  It was a different way of putting out a newspaper, and in the beginning of that book, I speak about the people who've long since retired from The Times or otherwise separated from The Times who still refer to The Times as “we.”  Now I still think of The Times as “we,” and even today [March 27, 1994], five years after leaving The Times -- and I go back to The Times for lunch, whatever, to see old friends.  But you pick up the paper and you say, “What the hell are we doing with that front page?” or “What are we doing?” You are still part of the family.  But the paper has changed so enormously, and I don't think I would fit in to The New York Times today.  I have a different vision of news.  I have a different vision of what a great newspaper should be.

The other day, on a Sunday, what was it? -- a week ago Sunday, I think [from March 27, 1994], and I picked up The New York Times, and there, page one, there were seven stories on page one.  I counted them.  And now in the old days -- old only being 10 or 15 years ago [1979 to 1984] -- the news journalistic philosophy was that you would give a snapshot of the world in the previous 24 hours: What happened yesterday all over the world?  But the other Sunday, I picked up the paper and I looked at the seven page-one stories and not one story had a yesterday or a last night in the lead.  All seven stories were about something that will happen or might happen or conceivably could happen some time in the future.  Well, it's a different kind of journalism, and it, what was it? -- the same Sunday or was it just last Sunday? -- I'm not sure.  And I picked up the magazine and I just happened to open the last page first and there was an essay on the last page of a Sunday magazine, and it's about penises, and, well, that's not The New York Times that I grew up in.  It's a different kind of paper.
...

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John Howard's Lie

John Howard was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from March 1996 to December 2007.

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) —

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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 DEATH

Did 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.
...

Conclusions

Examination 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

The point here is not that we should just be able to ignore any large homicide count — the point is, that this claim that Australia's NFA 'reduced the gun-related homicide rate', as John Howard states below in his article, depends on the assumption that the completely anomalous death count from the Port Arthur Massacre was eliminated by the new legislation — but it is hard to find an event like the Port Arthur Massacre anywhere in Australia's history, so there was never a reason to expect such a massacre to happen again by 2013 (when John Howard wrote his article), if ever, even if the Australian government made no changes to their laws after the Port Arthur Massacre.

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

...
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.
...

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.

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.

---

You Have To Lie To Support Gun Control

In a previous post, I wrote about the ridiculous premise that human behavior could be suddenly and dramatically changed by some new piece of legislation passed by a particular government —
     http://maxautonomy.blogspot.com/2014/06/prohibitions-or-pretending-human-nature.html

It is absolutely bizarre how people will enter into discussions over and over again about some piece of legislation, as if somehow, magically, that legislation will dramatically reduce, or completely eliminate, some undesirable human behavior.

As an obvious example, that post used Australia's gun buyback program, which was instituted as part of Australia's 'National Firearms Agreement' in 1996 (https://archive.is/eG33a).

Since the Australian legislation had no impact in saving lives — gun homicides decreased after the ban, but were already in a steady downtrend from years before, and the overall suicide rate increased immediately after the ban — the Australian gun buyback should have ended the debate about the effectiveness of gun control.  But since people are so determined to pretend that their lazy, knee-jerk reactions are so helpful, and that one can be a social benefactor simply by supporting some poorly thought out set of rules, now we see ridiculous repetitious references to Australian gun laws, as if they were an overwhelming success —
     http://archive.is/FMofP

It needs to be stressed (repeatedly), that one does not need to engage in a long study, collecting data and performing an intensive statistical analysis, to know that prohibitions of any kind do not work.  That a prohibition for a particular activity would be considered at all, means that people are not likely to be deterred from that activity.  Of course, we all know this — we all know that law, in and of itself, does nothing to constrain human behavior.  That is why we see an endless stream of violations of existing laws, including those laws with extreme penalties — e.g. the prohibition of murder.

This is what is so absurd about the gun control debate in general — every discussion contains the absolutely insane assumption that an individual who is willing to commit murder, would weigh a list of prohibitions in some piece of gun legislation — e.g. on magazine sizes, or particular gun types, etc.

Do people honestly believe that an individual who is planning a mass murder, would somehow be restrained by some set of laws that restrict how the murder is committed?   What reasonable person would make such an idiotic claim, when the whole point of such extreme actions is to commit a shocking, newsworthy crime?

And here are two more questions regarding Australia's gun buyback (or any similar gun prohibition) —

1. Since we know that some people will always violate existing laws, however reasonable, how many people did not turn in prohibited weapons?
2. And of those who did not turn them in, are they more, or less likely to commit a murder, or sell the weapon to one who would commit a murder?

The point of those two questions should be obvious.  Even though no one can know the answer to question #1 (since criminals do not voluntarily report their criminal activity), the number of prohibited weapons that were not turned in and destroyed is certainly greater than zero, and those individuals who did comply with the law were not the risk factor — i.e. they were law abiding.  So there is one thing we do know conclusively — every gun prohibition tips the balance of power in favor of the criminal who does not follow the law.   There is no insight here, and it is sad that this obvious point is in such desperate need of being repeated — law only restricts the law abiding, and so more law only empowers criminals.

Here are two charts from GunPolicy.org, which show the overall suicide and homicide rates (regardless of method) in Australia from about 1990 through 2012.  Notice that the suicide rate increased after the ban, and did not drop below the low it reached before the ban in 1993, until 2003.  And notice that the overall homicide rate barely changed from 1990 to 2000 (Australia's homicide rate was already very low) — both the firearm suicide and homicide rates were dropping, but people were simply switching to other methods --

---

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_suicide_any_method
http://archive.is/JjzhF

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_homicide_any_method
http://archive.is/OwSk8

---

Here is a chart from the 'Australian Institute of Criminology', from their 2012 collection of data, which I also included in my previous post from June of last year.  This chart shows how stable and low Australia's homicide counts have been — again, there wasn't a sudden drop after 1996 (the count went up, along with population, so the rate went down slightly) --

---

https://aic.gov.au/publications/facts/2012
https://archive.is/7cLiN

---

And here is a page from a widely cited paper from June 2010, by Andrew Leigh and Christine Neill, regarding the 1996 gun buy back in Australia, 'Do Gun Buybacks Save Lives? Evidence from Panel Data'.  As I explained in my previous post from last year, the authors of this paper have an obvious agenda, since the data the authors chart does not support their conclusion.  That is, both suicide and homicide rates with firearms were in steady downtrends when Australia's gun buyback began in 1996, and those trends did not change in response to the buyback.  And both non-firearm suicides and homicides increased immediately after the ban — the overall suicide rate actually increased, as shown by the GunPolicy.org chart above, and the overall homicide rate dropped only slightly.   These graphs from the Leigh/Neill paper show the rate of suicides and homicides for firearms vs. non-firearms using 'Australian Bureau of Statistics' data --

---

http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
http://ftp.iza.org/dp4995.pdf
http://archive.is/fWNHw

---

Here is the conclusion from that paper — which is obviously false, given that the overall suicide rate increased, while the overall homicide rate barely changed --

---

http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
http://ftp.iza.org/dp4995.pdf
http://archive.is/fWNHw

In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth. Using differences across states in the number of firearms withdrawn, we test whether the reduction in firearms availability affected firearm homicide and suicide rates.  We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80 per cent, with no statistically significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The estimated effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude, but is less precise. The results are robust to a variety of specification checks, and to instrumenting the state-level buyback rate.

---

Well, if the firearm suicide rate dropped by 'almost 80 per cent, with no statistically significant effect on non-firearm death rates', and the 'estimated effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude', how did the overall suicide rate increase, and the overall homicide rate remain basically unchanged?

The conclusion quoted above from the Leigh/Neill paper becomes absurd on its face when one considers that the 1996 Australian gun buyback only applied to certain kinds of rifles, so the new law had no effect on the ability of Australians to commit suicide with a firearm.  It is a total non-sequitur to claim that Australia's 'National Firearms Agreement' would affect firearms suicides, unless you believe that law-abiding Australians had some bizarre penchant for committing suicide with the rifles included in the ban.  And if you look carefully at the scales in the chart above from the Leigh/Neill paper, you'll notice that non-firearm suicides dominate the overall suicide rate.  That is why the overall suicide rate could increase while the firearm suicide rate was in a steady downtrend — Australians have not been prone to committing suicide with a firearm.

It is impossible to look at this data and think that Australia's gun buyback did anything, because nothing that was happening after the gun buyback was not happening before.  Australian taxpayers should be livid, since the Australian government supposedly spent about $500 million on the gun buyback, with $340 million of that going to purchase banned firearms —
     http://archive.is/Y5YfH
     https://www.anao.gov.au/sites/g/files/net616/f/anao_report_1997-98_25.pdf
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_buyback_program#Australia
     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia#Port_Arthur_massacre_and_its_consequences

If only such difficult problems of human nature could be solved by passing such simple rules.

Prohibitions (or Pretending Human Nature is Malleable)

There is a very popular fallacy that government prohibitions can limit (or even eliminate) certain behaviors.  As evidenced by the support for the prohibition on drugs, and the inevitable call for stricter gun controls in reaction to public shootings.

But without even considering data on a specific issue, there is an obvious question that should be asked — How could any law prevent people from engaging in a certain behavior?  How could this possibly work?

If you consider the basic facts, it is absurd on its face to think that a government prohibition (short of implementing an Orwellian police state) will do anything but create a black market in the prohibited good or activity.  From murder to marijuana, there is a black market for everything that is prohibited by the government — and there always has been.

It is surreal to listen to those with a blind faith in some imagined magical power of law to regulate human behavior, when every government prohibition that has ever existed has obviously failed.

Advocates of gun control are especially prone to this way of thinking.  Over and over, we hear bizarre fantasy-based recommendations for some firearm restriction (like limiting magazine sizes, for example), as if someone who were willing to risk the penalty for murder, would not risk the penalty for possessing an illegal firearm.

When viewed in this way, it is nonsensical to talk about writing specific laws about gun features or even outright bans, as a way to prevent gun violence, since murder already has an outright ban with the most serious legal penalty, and that penalty obviously does not prevent gun violence.

Some might be tempted to respond, 'Well, why not eliminate laws altogether, if they don't act as a deterrent, and won't stop criminals.'

But that response is ridiculous — the point is not that all penalties should be eliminated, because they will not stop crime, but to recognize that nothing is gained by pointlessly multiplying laws to absurdity in the blind hope for an impossible effect.  Of course, every society should have a prohibition against murder, for example, but not an endless list of nonsensical laws dealing with how a murder is committed.

Studies of gun control legislation are especially interesting in this regard, because not only do they tend to ignore the obvious point that no prohibition has ever worked, but the even more obvious question — 'Why on earth would a would-be murderer be restrained by the much less severe penalty for violating a firearms restriction?'

With this in mind, any study is highly suspect that purports to show that some restrictive law, in and of itself, reduced some criminal activity.  Demonstrating that some set of laws actually altered human behavior, would require extraordinary evidence, since it would be an incredible exception, breaking a well established pattern of ineffectiveness.

Case in point:  The June 2010 paper, by Andrew Leigh and Christine Neill, regarding the 1996 gun buy back in Australia, 'Do Gun Buybacks Save Lives? Evidence from Panel Data'.

Here is the introductory paragraph from that paper, with the author's conclusion —

---

http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
http://ftp.iza.org/dp4995.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20180219023005/http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
http://archive.is/dit6e

In 1997, Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth. Using differences across states in the number of firearms withdrawn, we test whether the reduction in firearms availability affected firearm homicide and suicide rates.  We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80 per cent, with  no statistically significant effect on non-firearm death rates. The estimated effect on firearm  homicides is of similar magnitude, but is less precise. The results are robust to a variety of  specification checks, and to instrumenting the state-level buyback rate.

---

These two sentences from the introduction, should make any questioning reader very suspicious:

'We find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rate of almost 80 per cent, with no statistically significant effect on non-firearm death rates.  The estimated effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude, but is less precise.'

This begs the obvious question: 'Why would this change in law change human behavior so radically?'   If this change actually took place, it would be absolutely magical.

And note that the Australian government did not ban firearms — only particular types of firearms — in particular, certain long guns.  This means the ability to commit suicide with a firearm was not even affected by the ban, making the claim that the firearm suicide rate would drop as a result of the ban that much more suspicious.

That is, why would eliminating just one method of suicide or homicide, cause such a large decrease in the rate of firearm suicides and homicides?

It is appropriate to wonder if there is a fallacy in this research, because the claim is so fantastic, and stands in stark contradiction to every other attempt to control human behavior.  Why would such a control work here, when other similar controls have never worked anywhere else.

The 'after this, therefore because of this' fallacy (post hoc, ergo propter hoc) is an obvious candidate for explaining the error in their conclusion, but one must look at the data cited by the authors to find out.

Here is a page from the Leigh/Neill paper showing a graph of the rate of suicides and homicides using 'Australian Bureau of Statistics' data —

---

http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
http://ftp.iza.org/dp4995.pdf
https://web.archive.org/web/20180219023005/http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf
http://archive.is/dit6e

---

Well, clearly there is a problem with their conclusion, given that a downtrend in both the firearm homicide and suicide rates was in place years before the Australian gun buy back took effect.  Obviously, a gun buy back starting after 1996 (at the vertical line in the graphs), could not cause downtrends that began roughly 8 or 9 years earlier, at about 1987.

And notice the sudden drop in the firearm homicide rate at about 1987 in Figure 1 b. — it looks very similar to the drop that started in 1996, and continued through the gun buy back.  If you are tempted to explain the drop that started in 1996 with the gun buy back, then that raises the problem of explaining similar drops that occurred without a buy back — the author's own chart proves the buy back is not the likely explanation, since similar drops had already occurred without a gun buy back.

The authors acknowledge the established downtrend in the rates in their paper, but do not address the massive problem that it poses to their conclusion, that the Australian gun buy back caused a massive reduction in firearms deaths.

Also, pay special attention to footnote #8 from the quote shown below, stating that there are disagreements in the homicide statistics after 2002, and that the downtrend shown in the graphs above may be exaggerated, further undercutting their claim of a massive reduction in firearms homicides as a result of the gun buy back.  The accuracy of the data in this period is critical to their conclusion, but they dismiss the issue in a footnote —

---

It is also clear from Figure 1 that firearm deaths have been falling on a
consistent basis in recent decades, while a similar trend is not as clear in the
case of non-firearm deaths.8  Firearm deaths—both homicide and suicide—
are currently at exceptionally low levels by historical standards

8. Note again that there may be some inconsistencies in the homicide (death by
assault) statistics after 2002. The figures for 2004 and 2005 seem exceptionally low
and do not align with the justice statistics on homicides in those years.

---

So the 'after this, therefore because of this' fallacy (post hoc, ergo propter hoc) is just one of their problems.

And notice this chart from the 'Australian Institute of Criminology', from their 2012 collection of data —

---

https://aic.gov.au/publications/facts/2012
https://archive.is/7cLiN

---

This graph from the 'Australian Institute of Criminology' data does not separate firearms homicides, but note the maximum point on the graph occurred in 1999, a couple of years after the gun buy back occurred.  This further undercuts the claim that something significant happened to the homicide rate as a direct result of the gun buy back.

And of course, gun control plays on the public's sense of self-righteousness, so the conclusion from this paper will be repeated, without people doing anything to find out if the conclusion has any validity — this conclusion was already being repeated, since it is such a popular myth that gun restrictions reduce gun violence.

And here we go —
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/
    https://web.archive.org/...washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/08/02/did-gun-control-work-in-australia/
    http://archive.is/kc5Hr

What is it about this issue that makes it so satisfying to pretend some policy works, regardless of the evidence?

What can we possibly gain, by deceiving ourselves that simple policy changes will solve the difficulties of human nature?

It is really too bad that more academics will not try to educate the public about what works, rather than presenting questionable (at best) research like this, that appears to have an agenda, in that a sweeping conclusion is drawn which is obviously unsupported by the data presented.

But here is a somewhat surprising article on time.com, in that it gives a more objective treatment of the Australian gun buy back, and makes some of the same points I made in this post —
    http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1736501,00.html
    https://web.archive.org/web/20180219023838/http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1736501,00.html
    http://archive.is/B2nRI