Australian gun buyback explained.

[weedpharma]

Don't intend arguing the point Zonta, Just telling you the way it happened. It would be about 3-4 years since I sold them now.

I also have firearms (including a Class "C", semi auto .22). My experience is that I have never had to justify my ownership except at the very beginning of the tightening up of ownership. I simply wrote a letter and the approval was granted. Since then I simply pay my renewal that I receive via mail. Not once has anyone come to check my firearms safe or or that they are stored correctly.

Maybe they do things differently in Queensland.

Weedpharma

 

[OldMcDonald]

Westcliffe, I have posted 3 or 4 times on different threads that I believe it is up to you in the US to decide this one - and it is about guns. A 19th Century British Prime Minister, Disraeli, said "There are lies, damned lies... and statistics."

The figures given in your link are from a newspaper that is the mouthpiece of the political party that was then in opposition and now is in government. A violent crime, by definition has to be something of which the police are aware otherwise it could not be included in the statistics. It could be as simple as somebody punching somebody else, or it could be much more violent. The figure of just over a million "violent crimes" is very similar to a figure supplied to me on another TBN thread of "violent gun crimes" in the US. One million violent GUN crimes in the US is roughly one per 300 people I think - about 300m population? Correct the population figure if necessary. Britain has about 60m population. The number of "violent gun crimes" has been slightly reducing over the last few years, up to the latest figure I found (a few weeks ago) for the year to Sept 2011, and that was just over 6,000. In other words, allowing for my population of 300m in the US, you are 33 times more likely to be involved in a violent gun crime in the US than in Britain. That of course is the simple statistic. Where you live, frequent, and your lifestyle have not been taken into account.

Make what you will out of the numbers, I still say that using information from other countries is dangerous because it is unlikely to be pertinent to the US.

 

[westcliffe01]

So who do you suppose the FBI or the UN is biased against ? I don't think either of them accepts contributions from the NRA, and in fact the UN has as its express mission getting the 2nd amendment repealed. One would think that statistics from either of those organizations would be slanted against gun ownership, certainly not the other way around.

Here is another crime report from 2006 that has a much smaller number of countries compared which have more uniform classification of the crimes http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=un%20violent%20crime%20statistics%20by%20country&source=web&cd=3&sqi=2&ved=0CDsQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.civitas.org.uk%2Fcrime%2Fcrime_stats_oecdjan2012.pdf&ei=ZFsFUeLJMIqkyAGqnoHoBg&usg=AFQjCNGD06GlgtAF3TFOK-dbsCMLsUkzTQ&cad=rja

You will note the England and Wales (and many other European countries and Australia/NZ) feature prominently in the results.

They also have an interesting measure "punitivity ratio" where the US measured 2x on the scale of the next 2 highest countries Mexico and Japan and about 10-20x higher than Wales and England. So there is the evidence of the limp wristed judges handing down meager penalties for EU crime.

 

[OldMcDonald]

Westcliffe, I do not know if your post #53 is addressed to me or another poster, but in case it is to me, I will respond.

I have no idea about any bias by the FBI or UN one way or another, so make no suppositions. I am not being rude with my response, I simply have no views on the matter. I was not aware of the UN stance on your 2nd amendment. What has it to do with other countries? I think politicians the world over just like sticking their noses in other folks' business - and into the trough at every opportunity of course. None of them ever seem to end up being poor.

Please note again though that the link you gave does not differentiate between the use of guns and other means of perpetrating the crimes. If you obtain figures purely relating to gun crime you will probably find different figures. I say this because I keep fairly well in touch with UK news for England and Scotland and it is extremely rare to see any gun crime mentioned - knives are far more prevalent, but there are restrictions on carrying them too, so the majority of incidents involve feet and hands or whatever can be picked up in the midst of the melee. I suspect this is why there are less homicides in Britain - lack of killing weapons. That is not a suggestion that I am anti guns or anti knives!!

I saw a news item recently to the effect that over 50% of all crimes in England and Wales are committed within the Greater London Area. This is an area that has slightly different meanings for different purposes, but appears to be in most cases the City of London (a very small geographical area) and 32 Boroughs surrounding it, which correlates to the area policed by the force known as the Metropolitan Police. I do not know the population offhand but it is "several" million if you will accept such a rough figure.

Your remark regarding lenient sentencing is one that I have noticed many people living in England condemn via the media. The general populace appears to want more stringent sentencing.