What I find curious is that the left historically favoured arming the proletariat to overthrow the bourgeois state. Also, shooting is predominantly a working class sport. Now, neither the proletariat nor their sport attract much support. The new proles are the extreme greens.

http://www.nsw.greens.org.au/policies/policies.php?subaction=showfull&id=1162588400&archive=&start_from=&ucat=1&

The laws are all state based, but the content was at the insistence of the Commonwealth with the threat of withdrawal of funding if not implemented. The Commonwealth only has jurisdiction over imports.

The states could roll back the restrictions, but in practical terms it would not be an option unless the Commonwealth dropped its obsessive fixation.

As Dave said, we are entitled to anything. What was implicit (and I think you knew this) is that we are entitled to do anything with what we own and that nobody has a pre-existing right to control another person. Government action can be justified only on the grounds that it makes us better off.

At the moment, there is no evidence that tight gun laws give us a benefit.

Having said that — this isn’t my central concern & I agree it’s a hard sell and that we probably would get more votes out of drug legalisation. But principles are principles and I can’t throw them out when they’re politically inconvenient.

The following charts were made by me (during the time I was shifting opinion on the issue of gun control). I have not been able to track down the original spreadsheet with the links to the raw source data however from memory it was a report on criminality across different nations and different crimes. I did not cherry pick the data set however without my original source there is something of a credibility issue (ie trust me I’m not a liar). Also it is possible that the original data set was cherry picked although that seems unlikely as they were not to know that I was going to use the data for this purpose.

The three charts are here:-

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~terjep/gun-debate/homocide.gif

The first chart on the image shows several countries plotted with total annual homocide of all types on one axis and percentage of households with guns on the other axis. It shows a clear relationship between homocide and gun ownership. However there are three possible conclusions.

i) The correlation is statistical pot luck (or worse).
ii) gun ownership makes society more violent
iii) violent society makes people more likely to want a gun

The second chart is essentially the same plot except it only shows gun related homocide. The pink fitted curve on this chart implies that there is no general correlation between firearm homocide and gun ownership.

However this flat curve concerned me. I figured that it was possible that the data was skewed due to some societies being less violent than others. So I created chart 3 to try and normalise the curve. It is a crude normalisation however I figured it was not unreasonable. Essentially it upgradesgrades the firearm homicide rate if the society is generally non-violent and downgrades the rate if the society is generally violent.

Chart 3 reveals that there is still no significant relationship between gun related homicide and gun ownership even if we normalise for societal violence.

Chart 3 and chart 2 lead me to conclude that with regards to chart1 the correct conclusion is option (iii).

Regards,
Terje.

notes:-

To get chart 3 essentially what I did with the raw data was this:-

define V = Background societal violence

calculated V = Total Homicide – Firearm Homicide

Normalised Firearm Homicide = Firearm Homicde / V

And stop this shit about strawmen and straw-women. It’s just a form of leftist speak anyway used as device to stop an argument when the flames get too hot. If you don’t like the other persons point of view explain why and tell the audience how the other persons argument has taken a wrong turn. The only strawmen around are lefties who can’t debate properly… Like you fats.

I don’t know the specifics, but I know generally what they are. Sufficient to have an opinion on them, anyway.

“He couldn’t nominate any real difference between the US”

You could only think that if you didn’t read my posts.

“But my main concern is that he wants the government to spend taxpayers money and use the coercive force of the police and legal system so as to prevent a “gun culture”. ”

Whereas you want to spend taxpayers’ money, etc, to change gun laws. But yes, you’ve got me – I think the government can do good.

“Remove the word gun and replace it with gay, Jew, capitalist or black.”

Strawman argument, and evidence of the dearth of real arguments.

So let’s turn it around – what exactly is it about gun laws you don’t like? Since you know them in forensic detail.

He couldn’t nominate any real difference between the US (which he says has a gun culture) and Australia (which he says he does not want to acquire one.)

He is entitled to his opinion, of course. But my main concern is that he wants the government to spend taxpayers money and use the coercive force of the police and legal system so as to prevent a “gun culture”.

Remove the word gun and replace it with gay, Jew, capitalist or black.
Get the picture?