Info from 'down under'
 

Australian Gun Control

Ed Chenel - A Police Officer In Australia

Hi Yanks,
I thought you all would like to see the real figures from Down Under. It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.

The first year results are now in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent; Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent; Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent) in the state of Victoria alone; homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. (Note that while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the crimiÃ?Â*nals did not and the criminals still possess their guns!)

While figures over the past 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed.

There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased after such a monumental effort and expense was expended in "successfully ridding Australian society of guns."

You won't see this data on the American evening news or hear your governor or members of the state Assembly disseminating this information. The Australian experience proves it. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.

Take note Americans, before it is too late!!

Herb, while the stats are impressive, could you get some references on them and the money involved? Stats without references are hard to swallow even if they do make our Right to keep and bear arms argument seem much more valid than the American liberals would like... Stats with references have "teeth" and stats without them are toothless...

$500 million dollars divided by 640,381 guns is slightly more than $771 per gun...which seems a bit high to me... why did it cost this much? was it a buy back program or did they just collect them and destroy them? and are these Aussie Dollars or US dollars?

Thanks Herb ... and I AM on your side! but if we are going to fight the good fight we have to use good ammo... antecdotal stories are no help.

John, sounds strange to me too unsless the gov't had to buy the weapons, some collections may have had high end items. I can't get any more info as the article is from the Idaho Police Officers Assn. Magazine. My daughter came up with it and sent it to me. Perhaps one of the forum members from Australia can dig up some more info if they see this.

He might have included Gov't studies and manhour time into his figures. If so, it doesn't sound too out of whack. I await the citizens response.

Assuming the Australian government bureaucracy operates like any other government bureaucracy they will have spent AU$771 per gun. Of this, AU$50 was paid for a gun worth AU$400 and AU$731 was spent on administrative costs. Yes that doesn't add up correctly, but when did government accounting ever add up correctly?

I think these numbers are around the mark although I haven't done any research for references etc, but I see them often enough to give them some credibility I suppose....
Lots of expensive "assault" rifles and semi-auto shotguns were handed in at this time, hence the high average figure in AUS dollars (multiply by 0.7 for US bucks).
Check this out SSAA The SSAA is equivalent to your NRA. There's some good reading on that site if you look around a bit too.

Cheers
<img border="0" alt="[cheers]" title="" src="graemlins/beerchug.gif" />

I guess my post didn't take, so here is the link again to a cite that breaks down the cost of the $300 million buyback program by Province.

http://www.ssaa.org.au/iladec97.html

$300 million is ONLY the initial cost to buy the guns turned in. Add transporting, handling and destroying the guns, as well as Administrative cost to oversee the massive program and I think $500 million would be quite low.

Canada's buyback program, projected to cost $89 million has cost over $1 Billion dollars and achieved low compliance. Sorry, no supporting documentation for the $Billion cost. It should be common knowledge by now.

These stats refer to the 1996-97 "buy-back" directed at self loading longarms and pump-action shotguns.

The government are now doing the same thing with pistols.

The retention of a pistol licence for sport/target shooting requires the licence holder to attend at least ten competitions per year, these must be on different days (you cannot shoot a centre fire competition in the morning and a black-powder competition in the afternoon).
Semi-autos with a barrel length of under 120mm are banned. Revolvers with a barrel length of under 100 mm are likewise illegal.Ownership of any pistol over .38 is likewise illegal unless you have permission to shoot black-powder, western action or metallic sillouhette. You may only shoot competitions that have been "authorised" by regulation.

And yes, literally thousands of collectable handguns are being broken up and melted down for scrap. I personally know of two LP08's (Both DWM 1917, both complete except for the snail drums, both all matching) that have gone this way.

These laws apply to ALL post flintlock pistols including original percussion guns.

The people responsible for this are cultural vandals.

John, How about exporting some of your banned collectable pistols to us Yankees here in NRA land. Worst case sennario: If you have to turn in the frame for destrution, I'm game to purchase the other parts from most German or collectable pistol. Tom