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TheThirdMan
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Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "Bloomberg Originals" channel.

@TheRealAwesomePersonOfCoolness Paid gun lobby stooges.
30
Bolt action rifles are legal in Australia. So are shotguns (just not pump action ones).
6
Adam Franasiak This upswing had no demonstrable connection to the gun buyback. Gun crime rates dropped at a greater rate than crime by other means, without a commensurate increase in those other means.
4
Evidence please.
4
@timbo853 No, I want evidence of all your claims, from the ownership of that AR-15 to the inference that the Port Arthur massacre was planned (by anyone other than Martin Bryant).
4
Winter That 2.5 million defensive use claim is bogus. Do you even know where it comes from or how old it is? Only the gun lobby believes those fairy stories.
4
@liam.s789 That's not an excuse for doing nothing about guns. Australia has had no gun massacres since 1996.
4
Haswanth Thetraingod Self defence has never been a reason to own a gun in Australia, not even before 1996.
4
If guns weren’t so pervasive in America, you wouldn’t need guns to protect yourself in the first place.
4
ΓΡΗΓΟΡΗΣ ΧΡΙΣΤΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ That was in 2001. After that it dropped again so it’s safe to say it’s unconnected with gun laws.
4
Elillan Raguparan You didn’t. You had semi-automatic military style rifles banned and it’s a two year buyback program. Australia’s crime rate did not spike in response to the NFA of 1996. Furthermore, any connection with the ban of semi-automatic military style rifles is non existent. Australians don’t use guns for self-defence, much less AR-15s. Never have, never will. Don’t believe everything the gun lobby tells you.
3
1ohtaf1 Who said the rate of homicides wasn’t falling and how does that change anything? The rest of your comment is an invention. You made it up.
3
In Australia, health care is a right and gun ownership is a privilege. In America, gun ownership is a right and health care is a privilege.
3
Uber is more of a threat to him than Crossrail. Even then, you can't transport four million people per day into central London by car. London cabbies will be around for a while yet. They will be replaced when the technology is available (driverless cabs).
2
+50L4R You can already do it on Eurostar. Why would it be any better in a Hyperloop?
2
1911GreaterThanALL And you fail to see the point that the only people who care about this are the gun lobby. There’s no reason to give a rat’s arse about this when your murder rate - and particularly your gun murder rate - is is drastically out of kilter with any modern western democracy. That is what decides public policy. Getting all wet about a graphic in a video - especially when it is of only marginal interest - is to simply ignore the basic reality that there is a growing resistance to gun lobby terms of reference. It it hardly a major issue compared with the consistent and virulent resistance by the gun lobby to any laws at all, no matter how reasonable. In placing self interest over the rights of people to go about their daily business without being shot, the gun lobby is, in effect, siding with murderers. And you think a graphic showing the wrong type of gun is important? I think there are far more important issues at hand.
2
Because they didn’t increase.
2
Elillan Raguparan So what? I’m a former shooter and gun owner. Shot everything from black powder to a Bren LMG. Shot ducks and bunnies. Now please explain what you mean when you say violent crime increased after the Australian NFA. What is the connection? I do my own research.
2
@ophiofangs6839 You have trouble with reading and comprehension, don’t you? I did not say “misinterpretation”. I said “misrepresentation”, which is what you have been doing from the start. Would you like me to use smaller words so you can keep up? If you want to know something about the interpretation of the second amendment, i suggest you read ”The Opinion” by Justice Antonin Scalia from the 2008 Supreme Court case ”Heller v DC”. It’s very relevant to this and counters your emotionalism very well. It is, after all, the law.
2
Or better door locks.
2
@StONEDiLESO "My point is, that it's not laws that reduce gun violence, its education, reducing poverty and addressing mental health issues." Disingenuous nonsense. There is no way the American gun lobby is ever going to initiate or support programs to address any of those things. They would be deemed socialist.
2
Gary Winthorp Still peddling your pathetic distortions Gary?
2
StONEDiLESO I can’t believe I have to explain this. Do you think the gun lobby - the majority of whom are Republican voters - are going to support any government using their taxes for social welfare programs or to reduce inequality? Of course they wouldn’t. That’d be socialism. It’s yet another throw away line they use to avoid doing anything about guns, disingenuous because they’re trying to make out they have a social conscience while all along blocking any reasonable attempts to curb gun violence. Their focus centres around one basic philosophy; their right to own a gun is more important than someone else’s right to go about their business without getting shot. They are condoning murder as a matter of convenience.
2
StONEDiLESO Here’s the reality for you: who is going to pay for your massive social welfare programs? Nobody. Start making it much harder to get guns and experience shows that gun crime goes down dramatically.
2
spaceninja 43742 There is no reliable evidence that this works. America has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world. America also has a murder rate - and particularly a gun murder rate - that is simply out of kilter with any modern democracy. Public policy can’t be decided by unproven pseudo logic.
2
Gary Winthorp Well Gary, you should have no problem providing some links then. And if I used the same definition you’re using, America would have a gun massacre every day. You’re not really that bright, are you? You’re a liar Gary. You’re still using “mass shooting” and “gun massacre” interchangeably in the hope nobody notices. And you still can’t back up your claim that we changed our definition.
2
Earl Rudolph They just want the violence to stop.
2
Gary Winthorp ratman posted a list of restrictions Switzerland has that the US doesn’t. Then the other guy started deleting his posts. So who is running away?
2
Gary Winthorp Calling him “mentally handicapped” is not a valid argument Gary, no matter how many times you say it. Now where are the references to your other claims?
2
Alexander Carter Gary Winthorp is a liar.
2
Gary Winthorp Only the American gun lobby cares about this. Australian legislators will not be taking dictation from you.
2
Yes it did. Don't argue about this with an Australian. And just for comparison purposes, I am five times more likely to be murdered in the United States than in Australia and a staggering twenty five times more likely to be shot.
2
Daniel Cadwell Who cares? Oh, the gun lobby. That’s right. The rest of us care about more important things.
2
Sammanoya 54 That May be true but it doesn’t invalidate the story.
2
Deon Britain’s murder rate is MUCH lower than yours.
2
@andybrown6698 "The fact of the matter is Austrailia tried to implement a mandatory gun buyback and less than 1% of the population actually turned their guns in. 1 in 4 people in Austrailia owns a gun. Go educate yourself." Nonsense. The Australian gun buyback was limited to semi-automatic and pump action weapons. Something like 680,000 firearms were destroyed, representing approximately one-fifth of the total number of guns in Australia at that time. And many of the people who turned their guns in took the cash and - quite legitimately - bought new guns. And incidentally, your figure of one in four is wrong. Australia has a population of about 25 million and there are about three million privately owned guns. The average does not tell you that, just like America, gun ownership is highly concentrated and the real figure for gun ownership in Australia is about one in twenty. It's you who needs to educate yourself Bubele.
2
Including nuclear war? Sorry. No.
2
@michaelf.2449 You should check on that. Not many countries actually formally recognise Taiwan. Almost all of them are in Central America.
2
@Winter Yeah, come on Australia! Lift your game. We need to be up there with America! We need to aim for 6.0/100k when the best we can manage is only 1.0/100k.
2
@Reimastered Then why does it happen more in the United States than anywhere else? No, don't tell me it's the size of your population. Why doesn't it happen in India or China?
2
@YourFriendlyKiller I repeat: The 2.5 million DGUs is bogus. As for your claim that gun laws would disarm the innocent, I might countenance some of that if all Americans owned guns but they don't. The rate of gun ownership since the mid 1970's has gone from 45% of households to around 32% (Pew Research). So, if anything, Americans have chosen to disregard this argument and the concentration of guns in the hands of a small number of people has increased. That is to say, there are people stockpiling guns and that skews the statistics considerably.
2
@glidercoach "He's right. It's not a bogus study. It was commissioned by President Obama in 2013 and conducted by the Center of Disease Control at a cost of $10 million." Don't quote that survey to someone who has read it. They didn't do any specific research and only quoted Kleck & Gertz in passing reference (Kleck was a co-author of that CDC report anyway). The CDC was barred from researching gun violence for 18 years. This was because of extensive lobbying by the gun lobby and this was the first report they wrote after the law expired. They are pretty gun shy because if they write anything unfavourable, the gun lobby will make sure they lose funding.
2
@kingcarter9975 Yes: a complete fabrication by the American gun lobby, who lie as naturally as they breathe.
2
@CommissarKozlov The ONLY people who care about this are gun people. The rest of us care about public policy.
2
@redpanda2657 One thing I learnt from reading about things like the Cuban Missile Crisis and Operation Able Archer 83: what if everything we think we know is wrong?
2
Then perhaps you could explain why the murder rate in the land of gun freedom is five times that of Australia. And you can forget about blaming mental health and gangs and all those other throw away lines the gun lobby taught you. Here's the reality about safety: a person is five times more likely to be murdered in the United States and a staggering twenty five times more likely to be shot.
2
All the more reason to control who owns what. People are dangerous and need to be trained, licensed and tested and their guns registered, just like with cars. You couldn't have made my argument better.
2
Ethan Whatsyourname No they didn’t. There have been occasional spikes but there was no trend. Ergo, you can safely say that it had nothing to do with gun laws, especially since Australians don’t use guns for self defence. Never have. This is not “just like America” you know.
2
@DIRECT.x.FLUID.x.TRANSMISSION In Australia? Nope. That idiot David Leyonhjelm tried to get the Adler shotgun past but failed. I guess strictly speaking pump actions would be legal but the controls on them are so strict that almost nobody outside of the police or the ADF can access them.
1
@abcdef-hg8ro Do you actually understand rates or do you believe everything the gun lobby tells you? Buddy. There was no compensatory increase in murder by other weapons simply because semi automatics were taken out of circulation. Only American gun owners are capable of believing this.
1
@christ.5258 There’s a difference between a military rifle and a military-style rifle. It has a pistol grip, a high capacity magazine and uses a military round. What’s your point?
1
@BmorePatriot "And the ironic part: all made by CIVILIANS." So what? This has got to be THE most irrelevant point yet. "Seriously tho, the term “military-style rifles” is really a myth. It’s really just a “rifle”." And pray tell, what does a modern military rifle look like?
1
@rajashashankgutta4334 "ok military uses similar rifle. So what?" The military versions are switchable. What's your point? "Military also uses knives in combat. Should we ban them too?" I'll tell ya what: when the armed forces trade in their guns for knives as their primary personal weapon, then we'll talk about that. "Just because military uses it doesn't mean we should ban them or restrict them in civilian market." What possible justification could there be for civilians having access to such weapons? Self defence? Nope. Hunting? Not unless you're a rotten shot. Target shooting? Ummm... LOL!! Impressing people in the supermarket carpark? I think we're getting somewhere.
1
@theonlinetroll6946 Yes. Why?
1
@laos85 Yeah, nah...
1
@ophiofangs6839 What a load of emotional nonsense.
1
@ophiofangs6839 See? Answers with more emotion. Spare me the emotional blackmail. It’s not about protecting your family. If you wanted to do that you probably wouldn’t have guns in your house in the first place. No, it’s about your deliberate misrepresentation of the intentions of the founding fathers.
1
@JorgeGonzalez-gu7ve That is true but a lot of the countries in that area have become much more prominent since the revolution. They have a say in this too.
1
And 85% of Australians would have willingly put you through the same shredder.
1
Lies and no excuse for doing nothing about guns.
1
Lies and trow away lines. Total nonsense dictated to you by your gun lobby high priests.
1
@frederik2881 Only the gun lobby cares about this.
1
Because they took a stand. People always complain when governments don't stand for anything. Now you're complaining that they did. Damned if they did and damned if they didn't. Australian gun laws enjoy almost universal support.
1
1ohtaf1 Well, without house-to-house collections, what do you think could have been done? We are not a totalitarian state so we don’t do that. That Man Monis was in possession of an illegal firearm was not a failure of firearm laws but a failure of policing and a failure of all those tranches of counter terrorism laws that they simply didn’t use. The Lindt Cafe siege was a watershed moment in Australian policing but there is no connection between any of this and organised crime. Pissant wannabe terrorists are only a small part of the total picture and don’t invalidate in any way what I said.
1
Gary Winthorp Jesus, you’re persistent, aren’t you? You have been debunked half a dozen times already on this and still you keep posting your fake news.
1
@liam.s789 They absolutely own that category in Western democracies.
1
Gary Winthorp Don’t be a bitch. You’ve been absolutely spanked on this because you cannot back up a single claim. The problem for you is that I know the answers to this and you don’t.
1
Mr Beefy What nonsense. The UK homicide rate is slightly less than 1.0/100K while the United States is slightly more than 5.0/100k. What was that you were trying to claim again? That statistics have been cherrypicked? By the way, the gun lobby’s claims about mental health in America are as hollow as a bell. You have zero intention of doing anything about it. And all your terrorists are home grown.
1
@YourLocalMemeAndAnimeDealer Not sure what you mean.
1
Joseph The Swiss have not taken their military weapons home for a long time. Even when they did, they were not allowed to possess the ammunition.
1
? ”And Chicago has some of the most strict gun laws in the country and is also the murder capital of the US.” Please no. Not another one who doesn’t know anything about Chicago’s gun laws... Stop repeating the nonsense fed to you by the NRA or GOA and learn to research stuff for yourself.
1
@ratofvengence Read straight from the spin sheet. No questions asked.
1
@BmorePatriot It's got a population of seven million... And they had one in 2001 and another in 2015. This is why such things are better measured in terms of rates. They correct for population size.
1
luke Never been there, have you? See, this is not an immigration debate, it’s a gun control debate. And it’s gun nuts and racists (frequenters of the same space anyway) who want to sweep all the real reasons under the carpet. Too hard for you? Going to fast for you to keep up are we?
1
@luke BIIIIITCH! Incidentally Mr I-Know-Everything-About-You, apparently it has escaped your notice that the gun laws in the UK were introduced by a conservative government under John Major. The gun laws in Australia were introduced by a conservative government under John Howard. The gun laws in New Zealand were supported 119-1. To quote Howard himself, guns are not a left-right issue, they are a public safety issue. If attempting to polarise the debate as an excuse to start ad hominem is the bet you can do... LOL!!
1
@unapologeticpatriot6504 If you don't want to be lumped in the same basket then stop calling people names.
1
Gary Winthorp Nice, out of context quote. Two mass shootings in 15 years offset against a population of seven million. How is that being selective? That’s a virtual definition of rates. The point, of course, being that Switzerland doesn’t lead the world in mass shootings if we correct for population size.
1
Gary Winthorp That’s from another thread. Why don’t you try addressing it there?
1
Gary Winthorp Maybe he just got sick of your personal attacks. Maybe he just doesn’t like you because you persist in using ad hominem.
1
azznbad1 Don’t compare rates with raw numbers.
1
azznbad1 Most people who find themselves on the receiving end of a murder charge have no previous criminal history. Ask Ted Wafer about it sometime. The point being that the old “criminals don’t obey the law” argument doesn’t hold water. And since there are criminals in every country, even those who have implemented strict gun control, the statement makes no sense. Criminals don’t obey the law in America. They don’t obey it in Australia or Japan or Switzerland either, yet all of those places have much lower murder rates than the United States. As an argument for doing nothing, it’s useless. Furthermore, the background checks laws are incredibly badly applied. You can buy and sell second hand guns on Facebook market place without background checks. So the problem is not the law itself but the fact that it is badly applied. And again, it’s no excuse for doing nothing. Finally, the law pushes up the price of a gun dramatically. An AR-15 costs $1,000-1,200 in the United States and can be bought just about anywhere. The same gun in Australia costs about $34,000 on the black market. A pistol worth $300 in the United States costs about $10,000 in Australia, so nobody but the seriously rich criminals is going to be using them. They’re hardly likely to spend that kind of money buying a gun to hold up convenience stores or petrol stations where you might get a few hundred dollars out of the register. Risk goes up, price goes up. That removes a lot of players from the market.
1
@azznbad1 What is a “Simi automatic”? Or are you a New Zealander? The 5.56mm round is very powerful. It kills by velocity but works better at shorter ranges than a heavier calibre. Don’t bother playing definition games. This only matters to the gun lobby. In Australia and New Zealand these things are called Military Style Semi Automatics (MSSA) to prevent people like you from making stupid comments. But either way, you know very well that the AR-15 round is an assault rifle round. The law makers will decide what is and is not an “assault rifle” should such legislation be passed. If they have any balls at all, they will decide and they won’t be taking dictation from the gun lobby.
1
StONEDiLESO No, that is not quite true. Look up the Zug massacre.
1
Holt Westling What does that faux history have to with the right to private gun ownership? Nothing.
1
Please explain how that would make any difference.
1
@zigglywiggly9524 Just a variation on "guns don't kill, people kill". Probably the best reason I can think of to limit availablity.
1
Gary Winthorp Already have. You’re trying to mislead by deliberately confusing “mass shooting” with “gun massacre”. This is just obfuscation on a grand scale. Here’s a reality for you: your murder rate is five times what ours is and your gun murder rate is 25 times higher. By stalling on gun reform with these ridiculous and demonstrably wrong claims, all you’re doing is enabling your own horrendous gun violence statistics to remain the same or get worse. You are, by default, aiding and abetting murderers. If anyone needs to explain themselves, it’s you.
1
It is a rapid fire weapon.
1
Gary Winthorp Now you are becoming irrational. A bolt action rifle is not a rapid fire weapon. That graphic might even have been put in there to bait gun nuts. You are talking to a former shooter and gun owner who has shot everything from black powder to a Bren LMG and that includes a number of semi autos (FN-FAL, M1 Carbine and Garand). Shot pistols. Shot ducks and bunnies too. As long as the American gun lobby continues to tell lies about Australia, I will continue to drag you backwards through a barbed wire fence.
1
Not a left/right issue.
1
How does that help the situation?
1
@Daniel Willets "Australia’s violent crime was already declining, and their gun ban had no effect on their already declining violent crime." Do you have a source for this piece of garbage? "Oh and theft immediately skyrocketed." No, it spiked in 2001. And that had nothing to do with gun laws because Australians have, by and large, never used guns to protect property.
1
@danielwillets2346 "Piggonboy the likelihood of being murdered stayed the same." The likelihood of being murdered fell from 1.8/100K to 1/100K. The likelihood of being shot fell from 0.30 to 0.11. So, in fact, the murder rate fell by about 45% while the gun murder rate fell by almost 65%. Read it and weep.
1
@YourLittleDeath "I am not aware of any study that shows that." The likelihood of being murdered fell from 1.8/100K to 1/100K. The likelihood of being shot fell from 0.30 to 0.11. So, in fact, the murder rate fell by about 45% while the gun murder rate fell by almost 65%. Read it and weep.
1
Gary Winthorp Still spreading lies Gary? Still trying to bamboozle people by deliberately confusing "gun massacre" with "mass shooting" and hoping nobody picks it up? Very cute.
1
@vyuzen5464 Wantirna? In Melbourne? What can I do to help?
1
@vyuzen5464 What's that?
1
@vyuzen5464 Nah. Not interested.
1
Gary Winthorp You tell me I'm ignorant and then you tell me you don't know what I'm talking about? Fucking hilarious!
1
Bobby Please explain what you mean.
1
Sparky mcbingbang No we’re not. We’re not even in lockdown anymore. You got that from Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan or Candace Owens. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And please tell me what difference guns would have made and why.
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Sparky mcbingbang Shows how much you know about Australia, i.e.: nothing.
1
Sparky mcbingbang How would having more guns help?
1
Sparky mcbingbang Come on, tell me what difference guns make. What are you going to do? Wave your gun at the virus? Come on. Chop, chop.
1
Sparky mcbingbang How would more guns change that?
1
Sparky mcbingbang Our lockdowns saved thousands of lives. The US has 15 times our population and 300 times as many deaths. That’s a per capita difference of twenty. So your precious guns didn’t help you. In fact, you’ve had about 600 mass shootings this year and we have had none. The American gun lobby is a death cult.
1
Sparky mcbingbang We’re not in lockdown anymore. Besides, we Australians are not as self centred as you yanks. We believe in “taking one for the team” to protect others who are more vulnerable and we’re less susceptible to conspiracy theorists and snake oil salesmen. It’s a great day here today so I’m going to get my morning coffee and then go down the coast. BTW: did you know Americans comprise the third largest group of illegal immigrants to Australia by nationality? Americans love this place so much they won’t bloody go home.
1
Sparky mcbingbang "Our rights enable us to protect ourselves against a tyrannical government." Do you really think politicians care about any veiled threats from gun nuts? If they did, they wouldn't do the job. Politicians get death threats every day. You underestimate them. "One of these days" threats from gun nuts is nothing new. The only thing your gun rights guarantee is more shootings. "You now have a tyrannical government." We're not even in lockdown anymore. And we're not going back into lockdown again either. You shouldn't listen to Ted Cruz. He's a serial liar. So are Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan and Candace Owens. Not one of them has any idea what they're talking about. Neither do you. Anyhow, I've had my coffee and I'm headed down the coast for some lunch and sea air.
1
Sparky mcbingbang "No, the whole world is watching you people, and it’s sad that you can’t even defend yourselves." The whole world has watched us with some envy, knowing that our Covid death rate was a small fraction of yours. Defend ourselves? Against what? Please explain how having more guns in the community would help. This must be the fifth time I've asked this and you've squibbed it every time. What are you afraid of? Why are you afraid of coming out and saying it? You imply it but you won't say it. Are you afraid of the FBI or something? Or have you been told not to say anything? "You don’t agree with those people because they’re right." How can they be right when they don't know what's going on? And when someone takes them up on it - as Michael Gunner did - they turn tail and run like the ill-informed cowards they are. You've made a conscious choice to believe them, haven't you? You've given up critical thinking because it's lethal to your argument (this applies to all gun nuts. They just repeat slogans). You are the living breathing example of Bonheoffer's theory. "Cope harder" Cope with what? We're not in lockdown anymore and won't be again. You'll just have to deal with that.
1
Sparky mcbingbang How would privately owned guns help the current situation in Australia. Please enlighten us.
1
Sparky mcbingbang You waiting for Boogaloo or something?
1
Sparky mcbingbang How would private gun ownership change anything in Australia?
1
Sparky mcbingbang Come on, answer the question. Chop, chop.
1
Sparky mcbingbang You do know, don't you, that Australia figures 41st in the world on the list of gun ownership by percentage and that there is one gun for every eight people in Australia? No, you don't want to know that. You should read Bonhoeffer's theory. It's you to a tee.
1
Sparky mcbingbang By the way, it doesn't bother me that you have guns in your country. It bothers me that you tell lies about mine. The gun lobby lies as naturally as it breathes. It deals in lies as a basic information service. From where I'm sitting, it feels like I'm just talking to a brainwashed robot that spews out slogans. The American gun lobby is a cancer that should be excised.
1
Sparky mcbingbang How would private gun ownership change anything in Australia?
1
@Americannational2257 This was about Australia. I don’t give a rats arse whether you like guns or not. And I don’t give a rats arse about you either. When your gun lobby stops trying to corrupt our political processes with millions of dollars in funding then maybe I’ll stay out. In the meantime, you can KMA.
1
@Americannational2257 When your gun lobby stops spending millions of dollars trying to water down our gun laws and corrupt our political processes, maybe I’ll think about it.
1
Reese Nelson If you don’t understand the democratic process then don’t bother quoting the constitution. There is no provision for an armed gang of burger eating fat guys to overthrow a democratically-elected government.
1
@BmorePatriot I didn't say it was. More importantly, what I said was that, regardless of what the gun lobby says about guns and the government, you don't have the right to undertake armed insurrection against a democratically elected government, regardless of how honourable you think your motives are.
1
@BmorePatriot Darwin is the only one that qualifies. We use the same standard as the FBI.
1
Where were the semi automatics then? You really haven't thought this through, have you?
1
That will never happen. The Taiwanese see themselves as the rightful rulers of China. This is not just a one-way street.
1
Nope and even if it did go up, it had nothing to do with gun laws.
1
@hostishumanigeneris4472 "Kind of like how the drop in deaths had nothing to do with gun laws." Care to explain that?
1
@hostishumanigeneris4472 That's not the same as saying the drop in gun deaths had nothing to do with gun laws. You're obfuscating. Incidentally, if you care to look it up, gun murders in Australia went from 0.30/100K to 0.11/100K - a drop of about 65%, while murder by all means went from 1.9/100K to 1.04/100K over the same period - a drop of about 45%. No, correlation doesn't equal causation. But if you look at every other country where restrictive gun laws have been implemented you will find the same pattern. What do you suppose the odds are of that being a coincidence?
1
Flaccidpenguin And many of those who sold their semi automatics to the government went out and bought legal guns to replace them. What’s your point?
1
Please explain.
1
So what?
1
And it went down faster after the buyback.
1
China 6-4 on, US 4-1 against.
1
aric theodorson Dream on.
1
Sammanoya 54 I’ve already seen the supposed debunks. They got all wrapped up in the detail and missed the major points. I’m Australian. Some of my friends were sent to Port Arthur in the aftermath. I’m also a former shooter and gun owner. The video is basically right but the types of firearms used in the graphics are not a very important part of the story.
1
@williamcunningham7149 The only people that matters to are gun people.
1
@williamcunningham7149 That's nice.
1
Matt S Lies.
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CommissarKozlov They don’t have to know anything about firearms. Knowing firearms is far less important than knowing public health and policing. Public policy isn’t decided by whether or not the correct graphic is used in a video documentary. Yet you think this is a crucial factor? Gun lobby terms of reference are designed to distract from reality and people are increasingly disinterested in them.
1
CommissarKozlov ”heThirdMan Knowing firearms is important when these idiots are calling semi-automatics assault rifles (which would imply they are select-fire) and failing to acknowledge that said select-fire weapons require a Class 3 license which is very difficult to obtain. I myself live in Missouri which is very pro-gun and I've only met one person who has one and he's a Marine vet with a lot of money and his own gun store. These idiots would would ban a CZ Scorpion even though some variants of it are literally the same caliber as a pistol, the same barrel length (therefore the same velocity) with the only difference being the design of the firearm. Why? Because it looks scarier than a pistol even though it's a pistol itself. These little things are important unless they want to totally ban firearms. That's why I actually laugh more at cherry-picking, unknowledgeable anti-gunners than I do the ones who want to ban them outright, because at least the latter are more logically consistent. These guys want to be taken seriously? They need to do their homework, otherwise they end up becoming memes like that fucking goofball from CNN's video who called the AR-15 "fully semi automatic" and pretended the gun had a lot of recoil when it absolutely does not. It's all to make them look scarier and push an agenda.” None of this is important except to the gun people attempting to divert attention from the real issues. The courts or legislatures who will decide this don’t care what your licences entitle you to (bit of a distraction from the original point but that’s nothing new in these debates). Furthermore, those bodies will not be taking dictation from a bunch of presumptuous gun nuts about definitions. THEY will decide, not you.
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outdooradventures65 Yes: the gun lobby hates any kind of criticism.
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Assault Spoon And how many of those have there been per head of population? You have one gun massacre every week.
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Dream on. Why don't you read about Heller v DC. There's a part called "the opinion" which you should be cheering about. But it doesn't mean you can own any gun you like.
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jrDNis 1. So what? America’s murder rate - that is numbers per head of population - is about five times that of Australia. America’s gun murder rate is 25 times that of Australia.
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jrDNis 1) So what? That is why we talk about rates. Rates correct for population but the gun lobby doesn’t understand rates. 2) That looks like a small number but it’s a huge percentage increase. 3) Background checks don’t stop people buying and selling on the private second hand market. 4) Of course it is. The Las Vegas shooting showed what could be done with a semi automatic. 5) Proof please.
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OId Email Nah. Unfortunately our run ended this year with a family murder-suicide that claimed seven lives. Still, we had 22 with no mass shootings and we probably won’t have another for 20 years. Our gun laws work. But you’re right; America has a lot more than 13.5 times the number of mass shootings we have. American gun nuts claim you need guns to prevent massacres, yet they lead the world.
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Gary Winthorp I’ve already gone over this multiple times. None of those ones you refer to qualifies as a gun massacre. The definition used here by the Australian Institute of Criminology and the Australian Bureau of Statistics is four dead victims of a random attack. The Monash University shooting - I was at that one - was two victims. In fact, none of the examples usually quoted by the American gun lobby qualifies so perhaps you need to stop believing the sermons of your gun lobby high priests and the fake news of the blogosphere.
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Gary Winthorp And you only care about guns so don’t give me your hypocrisy and faux outrage. You put up those examples of what you claim are gun massacres in Australia since 1996 and I’ll shoot ‘em down for you.
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Gary Winthorp "Japan is a great example how people will still kill themselves without firearms. Many other countries show this too." Really? Which ones? "The point is, you have absolutely no right to limit my right because someone else decides to harm themselves with their right." Fuck you. Your right to own a gun does not override other people's right to go about their business without being shot.
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@andybrown6698 "Explain why Chicago has such high crime rates contrary to having the strictest gun laws in the nation. Explain why states with the strictest gun laws usually have the highest rates of violent crime." Pfft. Another gun lobby homily that has no basis in fact. Chicago used to have a law that forbade guns in the central city area. That was enacted in the early 1980s and the rate of gun crime slowly declined. In 2008, the DC vs Heller verdict changed all that and the Chicago law was challenged in Chicago vs McDonald in 2010. As a result, the Chicago law was overturned and since then, gun crime has soared, peaking in 2016. Once again, it is you who needs to educate yourself.
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@andybrown6698 You don't even know your own country's gun laws. @Michael Flack is pretty right on with his remarks. Don't try to judge Australia by American standards, particularly American gun lobby standards. We are not America. We are not and never have been, a gun culture. Most importantly, we don't have a bunch of low information zealots running around armed to the teeth and wanting to show off their ego accessories.
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What a load of weak dick rubbish.
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@gizroc When did they threaten Australia with nuclear weapons? They have certainly made direct threats against Australian sailors operating in the South China Sea. Fighting fire with fire isn’t an option there.
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Gun lobby logic. Our murder rate went down by 45% while out gun murder rate went down by 65%, without a commensurate ncrease in other methods.
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Europe did not ban guns. What drugs are you on genius?
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That's normal in any invasion, communist or otherwise. Just remember this: the Taiwanese think that they are the rightful rulers of China in exactly the same way that the Chinese think they are the rightful rulers of Taiwan. If the population ratio was the other way around you can bet the shoe would be on the other foot.
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Agreed to by all states and territories. Agreed by almost all political parties. Supported by between 85 and 90% of Australians.
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@Glaze_TPF I think that was the Strathfield shooter.
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Please explain. How does this show that they don't like the constitution?
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@aadrianlee In what way do you think they are trying to change it?
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Cheedy Meanwhile, you’re happy to live with taking someone else’s right to live, just so you can own a gun. Very considerate of you.
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Cheedy If you’re going to trumpet DOJ figures then why don’t you tell the whole story? The United States has a higher rate of murder than every other first world country. In fact, the United States has a higher gun murder rate than most other first world countries total murder rate. How would you care to explain that?
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Connor Only of importance to the gun lobby. Nobody else gives a rats.
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@CommissarKozlov "How the fuck do you confuse a bolt-action with a semi-automatic unless you know NOTHING about what you're talking about?" It doesn't really matter that much. The debate is about public safety, not about how guns operate. The issue is policy. The mechanics of gun operation is just background detail. Useful for the wording of the law but not necessary for a policy debate.
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@kart0917 It takes two to tango. No, if we only blame China we'll end up in a war for sure.
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@TrustInTheShepherd Taiwan does not want to be part of Communist China. Big difference. Taiwan still secretly harbours the ambition that one day their ruling elite will run mainland China again.
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@damonchan192 I'm glad you brought that up. That's just nationalist rhetoric. They don't speak for everyone in Catalunya. This is why nationalism is such an evil force. It starts wars.
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@TrustInTheShepherd Then they got the claim back again when Chiang Kai Shek fled there in 1949. After all, what right did he have to invade the place?
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@theccpisaparasite8813 That's not a fact, it's an opinion. I call it a criminal regime but that's only my opinion. No matter how confident I am, I can't claim it as a fact.
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@jonb914 Who is justifying it? If you want to understand these things, you need to look at it dispassionately from both perspectives.
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@jonb914 No one has clubbed anyone yet.
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@hostishumanigeneris4472 "Australia seems to have a different definition of mass shootings then" No, we use the same definition as the FBI. And there is a difference between a mass shooting and a gun massacre. "Then again, liberals like you get confused over your own gender, so..." Ooooooh! Somebody's got the rag on. FYI: the National Firearms Agreement wast introduced by a CONSERVATIVE government. The gun laws in the UK were introduced by a CONSERVATIVE government. Do some fucking research, will ya.
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Yes: Australia is not obsessed with guns.
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@YourLocalMemeAndAnimeDealer Sure. Why?
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Another victim.
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Gun lobby swarm tactics. Triggered American gun humpers.
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And yet we had no gun massacres for 22 years, having had 10 in the previous 13 years.
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Vault Ceeper You don’t actually know anything about Australia, do you? Or indeed, any other country in the world outside of the United States...? People have virtually never used guns to defend their homes here. Never. I know this conflicts with the US gun lobby narrative but it happens to be wrong. We have never been an armed populace. We don’t have millions of gun totin’ low self esteem wankers giving us the machismo speech about defending their homes against criminals. We don’t have one gun for every man, woman and child like you do so we don’t have a perceived need for guns to protect ourselves. And since you obviously don’t know the law in Australia, it’s worth pointing out that we actually do have self defence laws here. Some states have proportional defence and some have castle law. But you can’t cite self defence as a reason for owning a gun in Australia. That’s the law.
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That's lucid...
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Bobby Citation please.
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@Reimastered No we're not. There are something like 180 nationalities represented here. We are actually the most ethnically and racially diverse country on the planet. What's your point?
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Winter By the way, anyone who thinks 11,000 gun deaths per year (its about 14,000 now) is laughable probably shouldn’t be allowed out after dark. I’ll bet you wouldn’t be as flippant if it involved one of your own. Your gun murder rate at this point is 4.5/100k, which is way out of kilter with any other wealthy democracy. Your gun murder rate alone is more than four time our total murder rate by all means! So with an attitude like that, you’re in no position to lecture anyone of freedom morality and rights. You are morally bankrupt.
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Gary Winthorp Wow! I'd completely forgotten about you. Funny that your first thought was to turn to personal abuse. You can kiss my arse Gary.
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@AlejandroGarcia-tj2bs So? I used to have an uncle called Jack.
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@glidercoach "Gun ownership is back to where it was, yet gun deaths are down. Since gun deaths were already declining, the buyback was all for nothing." Yet per capita, gun ownership is down. There are now 30% more people in Australia than there were when the NFA was passed. So while the numbers of guns in the community may have gone back to approximately where they were, we got rid of semi automatics. And our gun murder rate dropped by up to 60% with no compensatory increase in murder by other methods. "They took property and family heirlooms from people for nothing." How many semi-automatic heirlooms were there exactly? And don't bother with this confiscation crapola. Dangerous things get banned all the time. How often the people get compensated? "Surely those million of dollars could have been better spent on clearing bush in case of a fire." 😂😂, please expand. This is potentially hilarious.
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@Winter "I wouldn't care if it was 2 million people dying a year. Freedom > Safety" ROFL!! Are you secretly on my side or something? How does 2 million murdered every year equal freedom? That's just too funny. You don’t even see those kinds of rates in war-torn hell holes.
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Winter ...and the best you can do is call me “a fucking caveman”. With a temper like that I’m surprised any jurisdiction would allow you access to lethal weapons. Your idea of gun freedom is really a gun hellhole. Two million dead, eh? You’d be okay with that...? You’re in no position to lecture anyone on freedom.
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Hostis Humani Generis No kidding? It may have escaped your notice but nobody expected that shootings would just stop following the ban of semi automatic firearms. However, the rate of shooting murders went from 0.30/100k to 0.11/100k without any compensatory increase in murder by other methods.
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Isaiah Pierce America elected Trump...
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@BmorePatriot "Your gun control are a fairy story. There’s a lot of people who support gun rights and are not EVEN gun owners and they claim that 2.5 millions lives were saved because of guns." Please explain how or gun laws are a "fairy story". So far it's worked out pretty well for us. On the other matter - that of your claim of 2.5 million lives saved with guns - I'm afraid we have nothing but fairy story. First of all, that is taken from a 1995 study but Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz (it is now a quarter of a century since it was compiled). It is probably the most discredited piece of gun research on the planet. First of all, Kleck & Gertz did not make any claim about lives saved. Nobody with a brain would. But they did make a claim that between 500,000 and 2.5 million crimes were prevented by gun totin' civilians. Read Cook & Ludwig's 1998 response, which used the same method but corrected for false positives. It points out that 2.5 million is about double the number of crimes committed in the United States in 1995. And if that claim is true, it seems that criminals are actually targeting gun owners! I knew crooks were dumb but Jesus... Yes, Kleck and Gertz's claims are that unrealistic. Australia is not and never has been a gun culture. Semi automatics were banned for ordinary civilians to stop the incidence of gun massacres. There had been 13 in the 10 years prior to 1996 and none after. Gun crime didn't stop and nobody expected it to. The incidence of guns being used in Australia to prevent crimes is effectively non-existent and was even before the NFA.
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@GabrielAlves-fw7bj Am I supposed to be impressed by you?
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@leannesundell9126 You need to read all of these comments. That has been discussed in context already.
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@Know_Nothing4_4 That's so generalised and without seeing it for myself, I only have your word for it.
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@n7g3g How would that help?
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@froggopoggu How would recognising Taiwan have helped?
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Well, perhaps you can explain why they are the weapon of choice for murderers in the US (between 65 and 70% of murders in the US are committed with guns).
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What a load of sanctimonious crap.
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What about it? That would just make conflict more likely.
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Gary Winthorp All terrible but none of those qualifies as a gun massacre. The definition of a gun massacre is four dead victims of a random attack. Family murder suicides are not random so they don't count. Stop telling lies.
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Gary Winthorp There is nothing you can tell me about my country. You have been proven to be untrustworthy on all matters so far, especially the cute bit where you try to trade "gun massacre" for "mass shooting". Stop telling lies.
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Lies.
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Lies. No other word for it. You should be ashamed of yourself.
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And what? You're not?
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Yurriaan Van Duyn Proof please.
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Only gun nuts care about this.
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Riff Raff You mistake not knowing for not caring.
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Gary Winthorp Still telling lies Gary?
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No comparison. Mexico is an extremely corrupt country where the law is only arbitrarily enforced.
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No Idea That’s easy.
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Daddy_ Marx No, they’ve been going back up. US murder rate in 2010 was 4.7/100k and the gun murder rate was 2.83/100k. Those figures in 2018 were 6.2/100k and 4.5/100k.
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BmorePatriot Victim.
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@BmorePatriot Nothing to do with it. That’s just whataboutism. It doesn’t change the fact that your rates of gun violence are going back up again and it’s never been clearer than in places where restrictions have been relaxed.
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Actually, in reality, you don't. What has happened is that the number of households which own guns has declined from about 45% in the 1970s to 32% (Pew Research had a lot of data on this). The reason you have so many guns is because people - mostly middle-aged white guys - are stockpiling them. Something like half of your nearly 400 million guns are in the hands of about 20 million burger munching fat guys with bad moustaches.
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@noon3d So what?
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@noon3d Of course not. What's your point?
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@noon3d What's your point? Come on, explain yourself son.
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@drmnys The incidence of mental illness is no different from any other Western country yet America's murder rate is many times higher. But that couldn't possibly have anything to do with guns, could it?
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kellerr13 You sure as hell implied it. What are we to make of comments that refer to immigration as a factor (which you did)? If you really want to make valid comparisons, have a look at the socio-economic health of the country first. Look at health and education, standard of living and index of happiness. That’s where the real indicators are. That’s why Switzerland is more peaceful, not because it is more “nationalistic” (which Switzerland is not). As for me looking things up, I already have. But that’s not how it works. You are the claimant. The onus of proof is with you. I don’t have to do anything. So go ahead, prove your claim.
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kellerr13 Alright, so it’s cultural purity. It amounts to the same thing.
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@kellerr13 Yeah, that's what they all say.
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drmnys Please stop believing what the gun lobby tells you. They rely on your own lack of willingness to do any research as well the vested interest which compels you to believe them.
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drmnys Well you show me the peer reviewed document and I’ll read it. Mental illness is a problem everywhere. But different countries have different standards and different definitions. Martin Bryant was mentally ill. That’s why Australia introduced requirements like having two references before you can get a gun licence. Seung Hui Cho was mentally ill but what did America do to limit access to guns for other people like him?
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@THESLlCK That’s where you’re wrong.
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Elijah Javner Why should your life expectancy be contingent upon your wealth? Where’s the advantage in bankrupting Americans with medical bills? And it’s not like it has to be all publicity funded. Most countries with national health schemes are hybrids of public and private. I think the vast majority of Americans would have a much greater need and use for basic health care that they would for guns.
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Professor MAWillett Well maybe you can explain why our healthcare system is so much better than yours.
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Professor MAWillett You’re bluffing.
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Professor MAWillett Law abiding citizens, as you call them, are perfectly capable of acting irrationally too. They are also capable of making mistakes, sometimes due to mindset, sometimes due to confusion and sometimes due to impairment. Ask Ted Wafer some time. The stereotype of the American hero defending his home and family with a gun is largely a myth and research shows that time and again. Guns in private hands are far more likely to be use to commit crimes than to prevent them.
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@christianbennett1810 Yeah, well, there are rights that matter more than others and people need health care a lot more than they will ever need guns.
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@christianbennett1810 Gun ownership is optional. Health isn’t.
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@christianbennett1810 Well some people want kiddie pr0n too but we don’t make that a right. I think if the founding fathers knew how this was going to play out, they might have thought twice about it. Driving a car is not a right guaranteed by law. Freedom of entry to private property is not a right guaranteed by law. I’m sure there are lots of other examples. A sense of proportion is what’s needed. Health care benefits the entire community. Guns don’t.
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@christianbennett1810 Very, very few people hunt for food. Why would you when you can go to a supermarket? Very, very few people ever need a gun for self defense. The number of people killed illegally by guns is about 50 times the number killed legally by armed citizens. So, in fact, guns are far more of a detriment to the community than a benefit. Health care benefits everyone, even gun owners. I cited CP because you raised the notion that if someone wants or doesn’t want something, that should be the deciding factor on what should be a right.
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@christianbennett1810 The point is that people use guns illegally on a regular basis. And please, that Gary Kleck claim of between 500,000 and 2,000,000 is bogus (he actually claimed 2,500,000). It was bogus when the report came out more than 25 years ago and it’s still bogus. It has been disproved more times than you’ve had hot dinners. The only reason the CDC cited it was that one of the authors of the CDC report was Gary Kleck. So far this year, there have been 859 cases recorded of defensive gun use. That’s 859, not 859,000. There have been 14,000 murders with guns and 17,000 suicides. That’s 14,000 murders v 859 defensive gun uses. Illegal gun use far outweighs legitimate defensive gun use.
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@christianbennett1810 Because a society can only move as fast as it’s slowest member. Salvador Ramos, Adam Lanza, Omar Mateen and Stephen Paddock… all law abiding citizens…until they weren’t.
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@christianbennett1810 "then why restrict guns from law-abiding citizens, shouldn't they have guns to protect themselves from criminals?" And as I have already pointed out, owning guns for protection is BS. Guns are far more often used for illicit purposes than for lawful ones. Look at the numbers I provided: 859 DGUs this year versus 14,000 murders. Americans don’t need to be protected from criminals but they need protection from American gun owners.
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@christianbennett1810 "why should those disgusting human beings dictate what the vast majority of americans can and cannot do?" They're not disgusting human beings. They're mostly ordinary people who snapped.
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@christianbennett1810 "any person who kills 20 children inside of a school is a disgusting human being" How would you know? Did you know him? People snap. Get used to it instead of pretending that it couldn't happen to a lot more people than the gun lobby is prepared to admit. Labels won't help. Yes, that's right: remove yourself as far as possible from the fact that even gun owners are human. I suppose you really have to, don't you? Those of us who have campaigned for reasonable gun control feel bad enough. But you'd really want to fend off all possible avenues of responsibility, wouldn't you?
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@christianbennett1810 No, what I'm saying is that the gun lobby so patently doesn't care that the only view I'm left with is that it's an evil movement. A social cancer, so patently self-interested and invested in itself that needs to be excised so America can move on. and the sooner, the better.
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Yeah, well you don't really know who it plays out, do you. You are aware, aren't you, that a woman with a gun is more likely to be killed than one who isn't carrying? @SerangelROM
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@SerangelROM Let me give you a potted history of that claim. First of all, the CDC quotes a number of surveys and that is just one of them. Secondly, that figure comes from a 1995 survey by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz and was established with a random telephone survey of about 4,000 respondents. Since the figure exceeded the total number of reported crimes in the United States, a second similar survey was done by Phillip Cook and Jens Ludwig in 1998 and corrected for false positive. While that second survey did not seek to establish a figure, it did show that a range between 500,000 and 2.5 million was impossible. The NCVS, which examines these things on a case-by-case basis, puts the figure at around 65,000. It's also worth pointing out that these things are all basically neutralised by the fact that these are people defending themselves with guns against other people with guns. Gary Kleck himself no longer quotes that survey, saying that between 35% and 65% of those DGUs were probably illegal anyway. But if you compare the total number of defensive homicides by civilians with guns against the total number of gun murders, you will see that for every justified killing there are around 55 gun murders. Finally, "only 12,000" is actually a pretty big number. The US gun murder rate is around 2.9/100k and that figure alone is way above the total murder rate - by any method - of almost all First World countries.
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The depends on which state you live in. Some observe Castle Law and others use proportional response.
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Japan's role in this is to try to stop it spreading. This is not just about Taiwan. It's the whole region. It's the whole South China Sea. there are lots of other countries in the region who have direct interests there. Vietnam - who don't like China, Thailand, who are increasingly moving into the Chinese circle. Malaysia and the Philippines... all of them scrabbling for disputed territory and there's a lot of disputed territory in that part of the world.
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You really don't get statistics, do you?
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Then why is their murder rate 1/5th of the United States? Gun control does work. Those figures don't lie.
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Let me tell you something you don't know: Americans fucking love it here. So much so that they represent the third-highest national group who regularly overstay their visas.
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In Australia, the Australian Bureau of Criminology, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and all the state police forces use the same number: four dead victims of a random shooting.
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Gary Winthorp Did we? You show me that we ever used three and we’ll take it from there. I don’t believe we even had a definition of a massacre before 1996. And still you’re trying to switch “gun massacre” for “mass shooting”. So Gary, you tell me what a “mass shooting” is because a mass shooting doesn’t make any reference to number of deaths.
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Gary Winthorp All Lies Gary, to suit YOUR agenda. Now, I’m on vacation and have better things to do with my time, if you don’t mind.
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Dylan Klebold Trigger an American gun nut: mention Australia. LOL!!
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Gary Winthorp Still peddling lies Gary? Still trying to twist the terms and hope nobody notices?
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There's a lot more to it than that. So much of the world's economic power and manufacturing is based in those countries that surround China. It's not just a potential war between two countries. Look at all those other countries like South Korea and Japan, who are world manufacturing powers who would inevitably be caught up in this and potentially suffer huge losses. And that's a positive outcome. The negative one is just too horrible to contemplate.
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Perhaps you could come down from your apoplexy and explain yourself a little more clearly. Right now you sound hysterical and a hysterical person with guns is dangerous. "Wake the hell up please! Next time your in a gun fight without a gun just remember the person shooting at you is a CRIMINAL!" Most people who find themselves on the receiving end of a murder charge have no previous criminal history. Just ask Ted Wafer.
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Recent changes to US laws, such as stand your ground and open carry, not to mention the relaxation that went with the US Supreme Court decision in “Heller v DC” in 2008, coincided with an increase in the murder rate from 4.7/100k nationally in 2010 to 6.2/100k in 2017 (CDC figures). To be totally fair, not all of that increase could be attributed to guns but it comes despite the gun lobby’s incessant claims that “an armed society is a polite society” and “more guns equals less crime”. Even in gun-loving Texas, where open carry is common, these flogs couldn’t stop a lone gunman murdering 20+ people. Their response has been along the lines of more guns needed, showing scant regard for the fact that they have done nothing to stop these massacres. They also fail to recognise the correlation between the facts of saturation levels of gun ownership and the over representation of the United States in incidence of gun massacres compared with other wealthy neo-liberal democracies. They have blood on their hands and John Lott is the leader of this morality bypass..
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Professor MAWillett Facts don’t care about any of that.
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Professor MAWillett If you look at what I wrote you’ll see I do have my facts straight.
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Professor MAWillett ”shame on you for being in favour of death over self defence” Shame on you for becoming so irrational so quickly.
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Professor MAWillett Why is it that people like you insist that self defence can only be accomplished with guns? Why do people like you insist that the right to self defence only exists in America? Your social experiment on this has failed spectacularly and the cost is measured in human lives. If you bother to look as far as real figures, you’ll find that the number of times civilian owned guns are used for self defence is far outweighed by the number of times they are used for illicit purposes. So, in fact, the case for guns for self defence is extremely weak and study after study bears this out. Now if you’ve got something specific to say, then go ahead and say it but at the moment your arguments are deliberately diffuse and 100% emotional.
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Professor MAWillett Down to ad hominem. No facts presented. No specific subjects to address. And you accused me of trolling... I have no further use for you.
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I popped a bottle of champagne!
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@darrenbreydsor5604 What does this mean?
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I love it. The more the better.
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MajorLeague What are you talking about? You cannot cite self defence as a reason to own a gun in Australia or, indeed, many other countries.
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MajorLeague Don’t give me this virtue signalling self defence nonsense. You just like guns.
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MajorLeague Then stop resorting to emotional arguments.
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MajorLeague This is irrelevant. Self defence cannot be cited as a reason for owning guns in most countries. That is the basic fact. You are trying to conflate two different issues. Australia doesn't have a large population of self-righteous wankers running around waving guns and claiming to be defending themselves from a bunch of other gun waving wankers. It seems America's gun lobby hasn't figured this out. If you didn't have so many guns in the first place you wouldn't be running around talking about using them for self defence. The effectiveness of guns in the hands of civilians is incredibly dubious. In fact, it's mathematically unjustifiable.
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@GabrielAlves-fw7bj "Well why not then ban the army and the police from doing their functions?" Is this what you call "logic"? Nobody is talking about total gun bans. Not anywhere. "Well considering that most home breaks and shootinga only last 2 rds for civilians , saying that they aren't efficient ( I'm TAKING US DATA , the tiger's mouth for shootings ) is kinda lame" I don't understand any of that.
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@GabrielAlves-fw7bj "Remenber when you said that it is mathematically unjustifiable the usage of arms by civilians?" Let me explain this with a little more detail. In 2010 there were 16,256 murders in the United States, with 11,078 of them by gun (these are CDC figures). That same year, there were 617 justified homicides, with 259 by civilians and the rest by police. Of those 259, exactly 200 were with guns. So for every justified homicide by a civilian with a gun, there were 55 gun murders. That is why I say the use of arms by civilians is unjustified: they are far more likely to be used to murder than for lawful purposes. "An Police force is unneficient and if your country ever becomes a dictatorship , they will be incredibly repressive" What's your alternative? "And giving over your nation without resistance in case of invasion would be better too" What?
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To quote former Australian Prime Minister John Howard; gun control is not left right issue. It's a public safety issue. Only the American gun lobby believes this has anything to do with "leftists" or "liberal". The gun control laws in the UK were introduced by a conservative government under John Major and in Australia under a conservative government led by John Howard.
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Sounds like a great way to start a war.
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@New York Val Well Val, there are two problems with that. First of all, most Americans don’t agree with you and secondly, whatever the constitution says, gun ownership does not give you the right to take the law into your own hands. If you’re going to pull a gun on someone, you’d better be right or the law will come down on you like a ton of bricks. Private guns, when used on other people, are far more likely to be used illegally than not. For every justified killing by a civilian with a gun, there are approximately 55 gun murders.
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@newyorkval1478 By the way Val, how are you going to take on the US government with a gun?
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Steve pig (looks around) Who is talking about a total gun ban?
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Steve pig Who is talking about banning guns? Nobody.
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Steve pig Sure do.
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Steve pig Let me guess: you didn’t know it was loaded?
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@stevepig4187 Whoosh!
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@stevepig4187 FYI; you're dealing with a former shooter and gun owner, so you can put your prejudices away.
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@stevepig4187 No, I've shot everything from black powder to a Bren LMG. Shot pistols. Shot ducks and bunnies. And this snowflake doesn't give a rat's arse whether you believe me or not. If you didn't get the joke, don't blame me.
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@stevepig4187 Oh, down to pigeon holing, eh? You don't know anything about me. It's a private ballot. I don't have to tell you anything.
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Steve pig Biden? What’s he got to do with anything? Still don’t get it, do you? Nobody is talking about a total gun ban. That’s gun lobby hysteria. Sure. If you’re a law abiding gun owner - you know, the ones you and your ilk claim are being unfairly treated because of a few idiots - then you’ll accept the situation and take it on the chin. So are you a law abiding citizen or aren’t you? There are no proposals to get rid of guns altogether so you can still have guns. Nobody is proposing otherwise. So tough talk will only put you on the wrong side, not just of the law but the best interests of America and Americans. Every credible study shows this. Every first world country which has introduced gun control has seen significant falls in gun violence. But make your veiled threats if you like. When the time comes, you’ll fold. They always do.
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@stevepig4187 Is the the standard of your thinking processes? Tell it to the family of the woman shot dead in Walmart by her two year-old.
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@stevepig4187 Would you chose a spoon to kill someone?
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@stevepig4187 Oh but we do. To drive a car you need to log hours of supervised driving experience and then pass both written and practical driving test. If you pass you are granted a licence which can be revoked at any time. Over time, laws have been made to make cars, roads and the practice of driving safer. Seat belts, speed limits and other things such as fatigue, drugs or alcohol and distraction are heavily policed and you can be fined for breaches of those laws. In the more egregious cases, you can even be sent to prison. In some jurisdictions you can have your car impounded and even put through a press for repeated bad behaviour. The result of this is that the number of road fatalities has dropped dramatically. This is reflected everywhere it's been implemented. So let's apply all those things, like licencing and registration to guns. I would expect to see that same results. Bring it on!
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@klauslehrmann4927 "The constitution says for the people to have right to keep and bear arms against a tyrannical government." The Constitution is silent on tyrannical government. Dude. "Using your gun for such is not taking the law into your own hands." It absolutely is. "You are typing that defending yourself against a tyrannical government, as well as against a nutcase with a gun, is vigilanteism, and that you should wait for law-enforcement to rescue you." I thought you'd say that. The gun nuts always make that assumption. 1) If you're going to take on government with a gun, it's a long term thing and YOU HAVE TO WIN. There's no alternative because if you lose, the government will either jail you for the rest of your sorry life or execute you. 2) The one thing that's abundantly clear is that the gun lobby's definition of tyranny is rather different from most other people's. 3) The difference between defending yourself from a home invader and taking on government in a shooting war is pretty stark. "If there was not a right to keep and bear arms, there would still be nutcases to protect yourself from." Look at the figures from other modern democracies and you will see that the numbers of people you need to protect yourself from are much, much lower and that is also reflected in murder statistics. "Regardless of guns being legal or not, anyone with bad intentions will still get guns ilegally." This is a bullshit argument. NEWSFLASH! NOBODY is proposing making guns illegal, just some of them or, more precisely, expanding the list of those which are already banned. You cannot own a machine gun, for example. Secondly, have you seen what happens when a government outlaws a certain type of gun? The black market price goes through the roof, which pretty much eliminates virtually every casual crook. In the United States, an AR-15 costs between $1,000 and 1,200 delivered. That same gun in Australia costs $34,000. How many casual crooks - or even those who plan - are going to be able to afford those? Basically none. Once again, this is reflected in statistics. "I wish we had a 2A here in Denmark." Denmark is one of the safest countries on the planet.
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See, this is where the gun nuts get it wrong every single time. A society can only move as fast as its slowest person. If you had worked with governments to negotiate a mutually acceptable outcome instead of stonewalling everything, you wouldn't be in the position you're in. The fact is that this intransigence is the reason nobody gives a flying fuck about gun owners in Australia.
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@nj7969 I think you should read those things before commenting. Neither of them outright says that. These are not simpletons writing for other simpletons in the US gun community.
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Only gun nuts give a fuck about that.
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Gary Winthorp Then Why do you carry them, if not to 1) scare people off or 2) accessorise your ego?
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CommissarKozlov Well, I am a former shooter and gun owner whose life experience led me to decide that I don’t need a gun and neither does anyone else in a civilised society. A look at any other first world country will show you that. No point you talking about rights. It’s hypocrisy.
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What ever gave you that idea?
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@alexanderdickson419 That’s why it was called “The National Firearms Agreement”, with the emphasis on “agreement”.
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Easy. Where do you want me to start? Because I'd take a bet you don't actually know much about Chicago.
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This was not a confiscation. It was a buyback of about 20% of the guns in circulation. Furthermore, show me historical proof that "gun confiscation caused a lot of deaths".
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@mikeobrien9829 ...not to mention the 70,000+ who are wounded, many of whom are never the same again.
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@Fabian Suckfuell There was no gun ban in Australia. It is still possible to legally own guns.
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@1911GreaterThanALL The only people that matters to are gun enthusiasts. Nobody cares about the technical differences because the AR-15 is still the weapon of choice for mass shootings and murder of law enforcement officers. Just get rid of them.
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1911GreaterThanALL A rather simplistic view. He didn’t put it very well. What he meant to say was that you cannot cite self defence as a reason for owning a gun in Australia. There’s little point in discussing it any further because gun ownership in Australia is not guaranteed by law, as it is in the United States. Furthermore, rates of violent crime in Australia are nothing like that of the US. Finally, some Australian states have castle law and others have proportional response. Shooting someone in anything other than a life or death situation is legally very difficult to defend. Circumstances are rarely so clear cut as the gun lobby likes to pretend.
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1911GreaterThanALL Actually, Britain and Australia both rolled out their gun control laws at about the same time and much of Europe took their cue from the Brits.
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1911GreaterThanALL The point is that it is almost never a simple matter, as the gun lobby pretends. Have you read some of the responses to random telephone surveys of people who claimed to have used a gun either in self defence or to prevent a crime? Australians have never been a society that saw the need for guns for self defence. There have been isolated examples but they are extremely rare. Guns for self defence here isn’t even an issue.
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1911GreaterThanALL The US was coming down off third world level rates following the crack epidemic. You had a lot further to fall and you still have five times out murder rate.
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1911GreaterThanALL I’m not sure what any of that has to do with what I said. The AR-15 is over represented in mass shootings and the murder of law enforcement officers. This was the reason cited by the Maryland Court for their assault weapons ban. The ratio of long arm murders to handguns was not the subject of my point.
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@1911GreaterThanALL "If we compare the LV shooting and the Nice attacks that massacre was committed with a truck." The overwhelming number of massacres in Western countries are committed with firearms. "The point stands that why do people want to commit mass murders not theoretically we can control guns when 270-340m firearms are already in private hands." Sorry, I didn't understand this. There seems to be a problem with the syntax (auto correct?). "Many of them would turn violent if similar schemes from Australia or anywhere else be passed." Our firearms laws have been popular with at least 85% of the population here, there would be no violence. Even so, I'm not sure if I can comment because I didn't fully understand your previous statement. "Police forces have already been on camera saying they would not support or enforce such legislation." You mean the ones in the US? After the Lindt Cafe Siege in Sydney a couple of years ago, there was a proposal to further tighten gun laws here. As some have been watered down a bit in the intervening 22 years since the original laws, I was in favour of it but with reservations. The problem was the way in which the perp (Man Monis) had obtained his weapon - a sawn off shotgun. It wasn't so much that he had obtained it illegally but the fact that the weapon had been transformed from a legal one into an illegal one by cutting it down *. That was only one issue with that incident, the other one being the police tactics and the behaviour of police command that night. The second most senior police officer in that state was moved aside afterwards, basically for lying to the public. Only one politician spoke up against our gun laws over that incident - a Senator named David Leyonhjelm, who spouted NRA boilerplate as though all other aspects of American law applied here. It didn't go down particularly well. * I lied. The weapon was a pump action shotgun so it was illegal anyway. I thought it was an over-under.
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