Current Events > Australian murder rate falls to record low of 1 person per 100,000

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's important not to misinterpret what that article is claiming.

The claim is not that gun control has no effect on safety. Rather, the article is recognizing that nothing happens in a vacuum and that much more research would be necessary to form a strong opinion. It recognizes that analyzing crime rates isn't always so black and white. Stricter gun control "may" increase safety. It "may" decrease safety. The interplay of all factors, including the culture of the society at hand, the prevalence of guns in the market (at least regarding the gun issue specifically), influences from surrounding neighbors, the size of the nation, etc. goes towards crime rate analysis.
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Mal_Fet posted...

Darmik posted...

I never admitted you were right. I've always said that Australia benefitted from our gun control. It was one of several factors that have improved our crime rate.

Got any proof of that?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/factcheck/2016-04-28/fact-check-gun-homicides-and-suicides-john-howard-port-arthur/7254880

"Even where there are debates on the effect of Australia's gun reform, generally speaking almost all of them that I've seen accept that there has been at least some minimal benefit of that gun reform."

Even the cynical experts agree that there was some benefit. That statement includes everyone with a wide variety of opinions based on the statistics presented.
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http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_ID=17847

Violent crime rose despite the gun ban. So while you're not dying, you're not safe.
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scorpion41 posted...

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_ID=17847

Violent crime rose despite the gun ban. So while you're not dying, you're not safe.

Eh bringing in stuff like sexual assault or whatever is really convoluted because of how different other countries measure and handle it. You can also see how selective that article is with how it presents it.

In 2006, assault rose 49.2 percent and robbery 6.2 percent

Rose compared to what? The year before? In general?

Overall it is either stable or down.

http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
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So it did absolutely nothing. Glad you agree.
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scorpion41 posted...

So it did absolutely nothing. Glad you agree.

It did though. It helped reduce homicides and gun violence. Not sure why gun control would stop rape and assault. It's not a magic catch-all solution for every crime ever.
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Darmik posted...

scorpion41 posted...

So it did absolutely nothing. Glad you agree.

It did though. It helped reduce homicides and gun violence. Not sure why gun control would stop rape and assault. It's not a magic catch-all solution for every crime ever.

Gun violence was falling before the law and it would have continued without the law. The law literally did nothing but help politicians feel good about themselves. It was a distraction from the real issues, which is apparently sexual assault.
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scorpion41 posted...

Gun violence was falling before the law and it would have continued without the law.

I disagree. We very much would have had another Port Arthur style massacre if people still had easy access to that sort of weaponry. And that's just an extreme example.
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Darmik posted...

scorpion41 posted...

Gun violence was falling before the law and it would have continued without the law.

I disagree. We very much would have had another Port Arthur style massacre if people still had easy access to that sort of weaponry. And that's just an extreme example.

You're speculating a bit much now. You guys were having multiple murders before the law, and you're still having them. One isolated incident like Port Arthur is extremely rare and unlikely to occur often enough to warrant a firearm ban.
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scorpion41 posted...

You're speculating a bit much now. You guys were having multiple murders before the law, and you're still having them. One isolated incident like Port Arthur is extremely rare and unlikely to occur often enough to warrant a firearm ban.

There's nothing to speculate over. We haven't had a massacre on that level since the gun ban and it seems incredibly unlikely we ever will again. Can the US claim the same?

I never said that it's going to stop every murder ever. But overall the stats have gone down to record lows. You can try and argue that the gun ban is irrelevant to that all you'd like. At the very least it didn't stop it from going down to record lows. It didn't stop our crime stats being significantly better than America's.

I still think it had a positive impact and most Australians do as well.
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Darmik posted...

scorpion41 posted...

You're speculating a bit much now. You guys were having multiple murders before the law, and you're still having them. One isolated incident like Port Arthur is extremely rare and unlikely to occur often enough to warrant a firearm ban.

There's nothing to speculate over. We haven't had a massacre on that level since the gun ban and it seems incredibly unlikely we ever will again. Can the US claim the same?

I never said that it's going to stop every murder ever. But overall the stats have gone down to record lows. You can try and argue that the gun ban is irrelevant to that all you'd like. At the very least it didn't stop it from going down to record lows. It didn't stop our crime stats being significantly better than America's.

I still think it had a positive impact and most Australians do as well.

I'm willing to bet it has more to do with your MUCH smaller population and lower poverty rate than some absurd law.
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scorpion41 posted...

I'm willing to bet it has more to do with your MUCH smaller population and lower poverty rate than some absurd law.

Ok? I never argued that our gun laws existed in a bubble. The state of our country and our culture around guns is a huge factor for why our gun laws worked as well as they did.
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@Darmik posted...

Even the cynical experts agree that there was some benefit. That statement includes everyone with a wide variety of opinions based on the statistics presented.

That's not what she said. She claims that there exist debates which she has seen where people say there was a minimal benefit, not that all experts agree there was a benefit.

Not exactly up to par with the sort of proof I've given, huh?
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The effect the gun reforms had on Australia's gun-related crimes and deaths is a tricky subject. Researchers can't really agree, given that it's tricky to isolate the effect of gun laws from all the other factors that contribute to change. The thing about there not being more shootings seems like a weak argument, considering the population of Australia. It's far too early to tell, given the relative rarity of such events in the first place. While I would hesitate to put myself on the same side as Mal_Fet, the fact is that we still don't really know the effect of the gun reform.
I would expect one of the clearer effects would be a lower number of suicides. This because we've learned historically that if you make suicide less accessible, people will attempt to kill themselves less. But I don't have any data to confirm it in this case, so it's just an expectation.
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mfw a former fucking prison colony has a better murder rate than the US.
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http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf

Look at the graph on page 9...yes the firearm homicide rate was dropping tenuously before the ban, but it rose during the year leading up to the ban, and by 2006 it was much lower than it had been at least as far back as 1968. Even more damning for the pro-gun side is that armed robbery and total robberies were both rising prior to the ban, but both have seen a consistent decrease since 2001 and were much lower as of 2013. B-b-b-b-b-but a site called gunfacts.info said blah blah blah!

Imagine being so naïve that you actually think that a site with "facts" in the title must be all about facts and not have any agenda whatsoever.
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Mike_Stanton posted...

Look at the graph on page 9...yes the firearm homicide rate was dropping tenuously before the ban, but it rose during the year leading up to the ban

Are you really going to rest your case on one single data point in a time series?
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scar the 1 posted...

Mike_Stanton posted...

Look at the graph on page 9...yes the firearm homicide rate was dropping tenuously before the ban, but it rose during the year leading up to the ban

Are you really going to rest your case on one single data point in a time series?

Obviously not, seeing as you had to quote me mid-sentence in order to say that it was based on a single data point...
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Mike_Stanton posted...

scar the 1 posted...

Mike_Stanton posted...

Look at the graph on page 9...yes the firearm homicide rate was dropping tenuously before the ban, but it rose during the year leading up to the ban

Are you really going to rest your case on one single data point in a time series?

Obviously not, seeing as you had to quote me mid-sentence in order to say that it was based on a single data point...

Does one additional data point make your case much stronger?
EDIT: Look, I'm all for gun control. My only point here is what I said in my first post:
scar the 1 posted...

The effect the gun reforms had on Australia's gun-related crimes and deaths is a tricky subject. Researchers can't really agree, given that it's tricky to isolate the effect of gun laws from all the other factors that contribute to change. The thing about there not being more shootings seems like a weak argument, considering the population of Australia. It's far too early to tell, given the relative rarity of such events in the first place. While I would hesitate to put myself on the same side as Mal_Fet, the fact is that we still don't really know the effect of the gun reform.
I would expect one of the clearer effects would be a lower number of suicides. This because we've learned historically that if you make suicide less accessible, people will attempt to kill themselves less. But I don't have any data to confirm it in this case, so it's just an expectation.

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@Kineth posted...

mfw a former fucking prison colony has a better murder rate than the US.

mfw you fall back on meaningless non sequiturs after it's carefully explained to you that your position is bullshit and you have no evidence to back up anything you've claimed.

Mike_Stanton posted...

Look at the graph on page 9...yes the firearm homicide rate was dropping tenuously before the ban, but it rose during the year leading up to the ban, and by 2006 it was much lower than it had been at least as far back as 1968.

It rose during the year leading up to the ban because that was the Port Arthur shooting which prompted the ban in the first place. Along with being statistically insignificant, a real statistician would not use a black swan as proof that the trend would have continued going up .
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Mal_Fet posted...

@Kineth posted...

mfw a former fucking prison colony has a better murder rate than the US.

mfw you fall back on meaningless non sequiturs after it's carefully explained to you that your position is bullshit and you have no evidence to back up anything you've claimed.

So you're faceless since that didn't happen in this topic?

You're literally the only response to the one post I made.
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Kineth posted...

Mal_Fet posted...

@Kineth posted...

mfw a former fucking prison colony has a better murder rate than the US.

mfw you fall back on meaningless non sequiturs after it's carefully explained to you that your position is bullshit and you have no evidence to back up anything you've claimed.

So you're faceless since that didn't happen in this topic?

You're literally the only response to the one post I made.

Mistook you for Darmik. My bad
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scar the 1 posted...

Does one additional data point make your case much stronger?

That, and the fact that it was only tenuously decreasing prior to the ban. In addition, looking at the graph shows that there's been a consistent downward trend in gun violence since the ban, despite being volatile from year to year prior to that.

Mal_Fet posted...

It rose during the year leading up to the ban because that was the Port Arthur shooting which prompted the ban in the first place. Along with being statistically insignificant, a real statistician would not use a black swan as proof that the trend would have continued going up .

It was lower in 2006 than it was at any other point on the graph, not just the year before the ban. And once again, the decrease was tenuous at best prior to the ban and often times would rise by a lot from year to year even then. Since the ban it's been decreasing, and whenever it does increase from one year to the next it's usually by a negligible amount. In fact, since 1999 the firearm homicide rate has been consistently much lower than it ever had been since 1979. All you can really say is that it's not statistically significant. Too bad the decrease still isn't something that was particularly predictable either.
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Crime stat discussion isn't gonna go anywhere. People will look into it however they want. Mal_Fet will forever cite his gun nut blogs that tell him what he wants to hear.

But even going beyond that I see all of these stories about police shooting innocents because they're scared, schools needing security checkpoints/demands for teachers to be armed and I'm just glad we don't have to deal with any of that bullshit.
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Its a culture thing. Culture is the be all end all. American culture fosters violence.

Mike_Stanton posted...

That, and the fact that it was only tenuously decreasing prior to the ban. In addition, looking at the graph shows that there's been a consistent downward trend in gun violence since the ban, despite being volatile from year to year prior to that.

Having one spike over a number of years isn't the same as "being volatile from year to year". I would gladly admit it if data was conclusively showing that the gun reform reduced gun violence. It isn't showing that, though. And we have too little data to be sure, one way or the other.
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scar the 1 posted...

Having one spike over a number of years isn't the same as "being volatile from year to year".

It didn't have one spike. There's several increases and decreases throughout the entire period prior to the ban. There's a sharp decrease followed by a sudden increase between the period of about 1977-1980. Even as it starts trending downwards there's a slight increase followed by a slight decrease leading up to the large spike in gun homicides before the ban. Since then, whenever it goes up it only seems to go up by a smaller amount than it did before, and when it goes down it does so by about 0.2 per capita. It's not statistically significant, especially when you take into account the drop in non-firearm homicides, but it's definitely an unprecedented decline.
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Darmik posted...

Crime stat discussion isn't gonna go anywhere.

How incredibly convenient for you, seeing as how all the relevant stats prove you're wrong.

Darmik posted...

But even going beyond that I see all of these stories about police shooting innocents because they're scared

Almost never happens

There's like two legitimate cases of this per year. Every other case is like with Michael Brown when it was discovered that he deserved it after the outrage had already festered.
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Mike_Stanton posted...

scar the 1 posted...

Having one spike over a number of years isn't the same as "being volatile from year to year".

It didn't have one spike. There's several increases and decreases throughout the entire period prior to the ban. There's a sharp decrease followed by a sudden increase between the period of about 1977-1980. Even as it starts trending downwards there's a slight increase followed by a slight decrease leading up to the large spike in gun homicides before the ban. Since then, whenever it goes up it only seems to go up by a smaller amount than it did before, and when it goes down it does so by about 0.2 per capita. It's not statistically significant, especially when you take into account the drop in non-firearm homicides, but it's definitely an unprecedented decline.

I was talking about the spike specifically since that's what you brought up earlier. There was a decline for quite some time leading up to the spike, and as far as I know, that decline could be tied to multiple other factors. Which is my point. Gun reform may have helped tremendously, or nothing at all, we can't really know for sure right now.
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MetalGearSquid posted...

It's probably cuz they banned flat chested porn. Big tits only helps the country

Not gonna participate in this shitshow of a topic but I just came here to say that I always see this little factoid floating around and it's 100% bullshit. Australia never banned flat chested porn.
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pinky0926 posted...

MetalGearSquid posted...

It's probably cuz they banned flat chested porn. Big tits only helps the country

Not gonna participate in this shitshow of a topic but I just came here to say that I always see this little factoid floating around and it's 100% bullshit. Australia never banned flat chested porn.

In my reality everyone who says that is trolling. It's physically impossible to believe it.
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scar the 1 posted...

pinky0926 posted...

MetalGearSquid posted...

It's probably cuz they banned flat chested porn. Big tits only helps the country

Not gonna participate in this shitshow of a topic but I just came here to say that I always see this little factoid floating around and it's 100% bullshit. Australia never banned flat chested porn.

In my reality everyone who says that is trolling. It's physically impossible to believe it.

they're not trolling, they're just latching onto some shitty unsubstantiated blog article they read a while back as a reason to continue disliking a country and believing it inferior for no reason at all.
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MetalGearSquid posted...

It's probably cuz they banned flat chested porn. Big tits only helps the country

I mean, only savages like flat chests.
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pinky0926 posted...

scar the 1 posted...

pinky0926 posted...

MetalGearSquid posted...

It's probably cuz they banned flat chested porn. Big tits only helps the country

Not gonna participate in this shitshow of a topic but I just came here to say that I always see this little factoid floating around and it's 100% bullshit. Australia never banned flat chested porn.

In my reality everyone who says that is trolling. It's physically impossible to believe it.

they're not trolling, they're just latching onto some shitty unsubstantiated blog article they read a while back as a reason to continue disliking a country and believing it inferior for no reason at all.

Yeah but in my headcanon, people who would literally believe such a claim don't exist. I'm thinking of also excluding religious people.
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Darmik posted...

Isn't the crime rate for NYC pretty good these days? What's the gun control like there?

NYC homicide rate in 2016 was 3.0 per 100,000 3 times that of Australia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_New_York_City

scar the 1 posted...

The effect the gun reforms had on Australia's gun-related crimes and deaths is a tricky subject. Researchers can't really agree, given that it's tricky to isolate the effect of gun laws from all the other factors that contribute to change. The thing about there not being more shootings seems like a weak argument, considering the population of Australia. It's far too early to tell, given the relative rarity of such events in the first place. While I would hesitate to put myself on the same side as Mal_Fet, the fact is that we still don't really know the effect of the gun reform.
I would expect one of the clearer effects would be a lower number of suicides. This because we've learned historically that if you make suicide less accessible, people will attempt to kill themselves less. But I don't have any data to confirm it in this case, so it's just an expectation.

This. There are a lot of variables to account for with something like this. If you look at the countries with the most guns per capita, there really isn't a correlation between that and the homicide rate. It really depends on the country and their own set of circumstances.
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It's because they are all unified in fighting against the murderous wildlife of Australia.
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scar the 1 posted...

Mike_Stanton posted...

scar the 1 posted...

Having one spike over a number of years isn't the same as "being volatile from year to year".

It didn't have one spike. There's several increases and decreases throughout the entire period prior to the ban. There's a sharp decrease followed by a sudden increase between the period of about 1977-1980. Even as it starts trending downwards there's a slight increase followed by a slight decrease leading up to the large spike in gun homicides before the ban. Since then, whenever it goes up it only seems to go up by a smaller amount than it did before, and when it goes down it does so by about 0.2 per capita. It's not statistically significant, especially when you take into account the drop in non-firearm homicides, but it's definitely an unprecedented decline.

I was talking about the spike specifically since that's what you brought up earlier. There was a decline for quite some time leading up to the spike, and as far as I know, that decline could be tied to multiple other factors. Which is my point. Gun reform may have helped tremendously, or nothing at all, we can't really know for sure right now.

Yes, and I was simply pointing out that the yearly change in gun homicides was volatile not just because of that one spike, but because the graph is still pretty wavy prior to that. There's no denying that the gun homicides have decreased faster after the ban. And of course it's not conclusive, which is why I acknowledged as much in that last post. I also don't think that homicides are the best way to measure the efficacy of gun laws, since many homicides are just pre-meditated murders that can be planned out carefully regardless of method. The decline in armed robberies is a better indicator, but even that has limitations.
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Mal_Fet posted...

How incredibly convenient for you, seeing as how all the relevant stats prove you're wrong.

No they don't.

Mal_Fet posted...

There's like two legitimate cases of this per year. Every other case is like with Michael Brown when it was discovered that he deserved it after the outrage had already festered.

This is kinda why it's a waste of time talking to people like you. You don't give a shit about all of the gun violence in America because you think most of the victims deserve it.

Like I said we don't have to worry about this shit. On CE right there's a topic about Colorado arming teachers and a huge topic about a police officer who shot a man reaching for his wallet. This is just the stuff coming out of America today.
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Darmik posted...

No they don't.

Then explain why the gun ban in Australia didn't affect the already-decreasing trend of homicide in the country at all.

Darmik posted...

This is kinda why it's a waste of time talking to people like you. You don't give a shit about all of the gun violence in America because you think most of the victims deserve it.

Michael Brown deserved it. Deal with it.

Darmik posted...

Like I said we don't have to worry about this shit. On CE right there's a topic about Colorado arming teachers and a huge topic about a police officer who shot a man reaching for his wallet. This is just the stuff coming out of America today.

And not once has it been shown to be a result of gun laws.
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Mal_Fet posted...

Then explain why the gun ban in Australia didn't affect the already-decreasing trend of homicide in the country at all.

At the very least it didn't increase it either. And we haven't had a mass shooting since. Win-win.

As said several times in this topic it can't be proven either way. I would argue that it was one of several factors that lead the decrease in the crime rates long term. You disagree. That's fine. Gun culture in Australia has never been similar to what it is in the US either which is why the gun ban worked in the first place.

Mal_Fet posted...

Michael Brown deserved it. Deal with it.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/07/08/us-police-shootings-compared-australia-uk-and-germany

US Police shoot and kill hundreds more people than the UK, Germany and Australia combined - but they're also more likely to be victims of gun violence.

Yeah no thanks

Mal_Fet posted...

And not once has it been shown to be a result of gun laws.

Why is it then?
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Mike_Stanton posted...

Yes, and I was simply pointing out that the yearly change in gun homicides was volatile not just because of that one spike, but because the graph is still pretty wavy prior to that. There's no denying that the gun homicides have decreased faster after the ban. And of course it's not conclusive, which is why I acknowledged as much in that last post. I also don't think that homicides are the best way to measure the efficacy of gun laws, since many homicides are just pre-meditated murders that can be planned out carefully regardless of method. The decline in armed robberies is a better indicator, but even that has limitations.

Well, correct me if I'm wrong (because I'm too lazy to open the pdf again), but weren't a significant amount of years before the ban showing a downward trend? Like, a larger one than the periods of noise? Other than that, good point!
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Darmik posted...

At the very least it didn't increase it either. And we haven't had a mass shooting since. Win-win.

No mass shootings, but have mass murders ceased? Didn't they just have a mass murder by use of a vehicle? Shall they ban those next?

Darmik posted...

As said several times in this topic it can't be proven either way.

How come it can be shown that things like longer prison sentences reduce crime, but gun control is magically resistant to checking the efficacy of?

Darmik posted...

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/07/08/us-police-shootings-compared-australia-uk-and-germany

How many of these shootings aren't justified, and what does this have to do with gun control?

Darmik posted...

Why is it then?

You have the reasoning skills of a religious nut.

"If you don't have evidence to explain why something is the way it is, then my baseless claim that happens to align with my worldview must be correct!"

Since you think like a religious nut, then I'll talk to you like one: Positive claims require positive evidence. Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Your claim is that gun control has reduced violent crime in Australia, but you have no evidence to support it, so consider your claim dismissed :)

That being said, I do have an answer for you, by the way: Violent crime has been on the decline in every developed nation, including the US where gun laws have only been getting more relaxed over the past decade. Better technology has led to better policing and quicker and more accurate punishment of violent offenders. When violent people are taken out of society, the rest of the world is able to carry on without them.
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scar the 1 posted...

Well, correct me if I'm wrong (because I'm too lazy to open the pdf again), but weren't a significant amount of years before the ban showing a downward trend? Like, a larger one than the periods of noise? Other than that, good point!

Not really. It doesn't start to trend downwards until 1987 when it saw a sharp decrease, and it doesn't become apparent until 1995 (it rose slightly during the 2 year period after '87, but dropped by a slightly larger amount in '95). Prior to that it constantly rises and falls from where it was at the start of the graph (1968). So it was showing a downward trend before the ban, but at a slower rate than it did afterwards.
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