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The Aussie gov spent $500 mil to buy back the guns during the buy back scheme but what was the result?
This is from Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia
Measuring the effects of firearms laws in Australia[edit]
Changes in social problems related to firearms over time[edit]
Historically, Australia has had relatively low levels of violent crime. Overall levels of homicide and suicide have been in decline for several decades, while the proportion of these crimes that involved firearms has consistently declined since the early 1980s. Between 1991 and 2001, the number of firearm-related deaths in Australia declined 47%.[37] According to a 2011 report from the Australian government, "...the number of victims of homicide has been in decline since 1996". There were 354 victims in 1996, but only 260 victims in 2010, a decrease of 27 percent. Of those 260 victims however, only 36 were homicides involving a firearm. Also, "The proportion of homicide victims killed by offenders using firearms in 2009–10 represented a decrease of 18 percentage points from the peak of 31 percent in 1995–96 (the year in which the Port Arthur massacre occurred with the death of 35 people, which subsequently led to the introduction of stringent firearms legislation).". In 2014, only 35 people were victims of firearms homicide (1 in 685000 population),[38] compared to 98 people in 1996 [39] (1 in 186000 population). A 3.7 fold decrease in firearm homicide rates since controls were introduced.
Suicide deaths using firearms more than halved over the ten years, from 389 deaths in 1995, to 147 deaths in 2005.[40] to 7% of all suicides in 2005.[41]
The number of guns stolen has fallen from an average 4,195 per year from 1994 to 2000 to 1,526 in 2006–2007. Long guns are more often stolen opportunistically in home burglaries, but few homes have handguns and a substantial proportion of stolen handguns are taken from security firms and other businesses; only a tiny proportion, 0.06% of licensed firearms, are stolen in a given year. Only a small proportion of those firearms are recovered. Approximately 3% of these stolen weapons are later connected to an actual crime or found in the possession of a person charged with a serious offence.[42]
Contention over effects of the laws[edit]
Research[edit]
In 1997, the Prime Minister appointed the Australian Institute of Criminology to monitor the effects of the gun buyback. The institute has published a number of papers reporting trends and statistics around gun ownership and gun crime.[43][44]
Many studies have followed, providing varying results stemming from different methodologies and areas of focus. However, Harvard University summarized the research[45] in 2011 and concluded, “it would have been difficult to imagine more compelling future evidence of a beneficial effect.”
Some researchers have found a significant change in the rate of firearm suicides after the legislative changes. For example, Ozanne-Smith et al. (2004)[46] in the journal Injury Prevention found a reduction in firearm suicides in Victoria, however this study did not consider non-firearm suicide rates. Others have argued that alternative methods of suicide have been substituted. De Leo, Dwyer, Firman & Neulinger,[47] studied suicide methods in men from 1979 to 1998 and found a rise in hanging suicides that started slightly before the fall in gun suicides. As hanging suicides rose at about the same rate as gun suicides fell, it is possible that there was some substitution of suicide methods. It has been noted that drawing strong conclusions about possible impacts of gun laws on suicides is challenging, because a number of suicide prevention programs were implemented from the mid-1990s onwards, and non-firearm suicides also began falling.[48]
Any findings as to suicide are refuted by the historical previous research by Richard Harding in his book “Firearms and Violence in Australian Life”[49] at page 119, where after reviewing Australian statistics, he found that “whatever arguments might be made for the limitation or regulation of the private ownership of firearms, suicide patterns do not constitute one of them” Harding quoted international analysis by Newton and Zimring[50] of twenty developed countries which concluded at page 36 of their report; “cultural factors appear to affect suicide rates far more than the availability and use of firearms. Thus,suicide rates would not seem to be readily affected by making firearms less available."
In 2005 the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn,[51] noted that the level of legal gun ownership in NSW increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had little to no effect on violence. Professor Simon Chapman, former coconvenor of the Coalition for Gun Control, complained that his words "will henceforth be cited by every gun-lusting lobby group throughout the world in their perverse efforts to stall reforms that could save thousands of lives".[52] Weatherburn responded, "The fact is that the introduction of those laws did not result in any acceleration of the downward trend in gun homicide. They may have reduced the risk of mass shootings but we cannot be sure because no one has done the rigorous statistical work required to verify this possibility. It is always unpleasant to acknowledge facts that are inconsistent with your own point of view. But I thought that was what distinguished science from popular prejudice."[53]
In 2006, the lack of a measurable effect from the 1996 firearms legislation was reported in the British Journal of Criminology. Using ARIMA analysis, Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran found no evidence for an impact of the laws on homicide.[54]
Weatherburn described the Baker and McPhedran article as "reputable" and "well-conducted" and stated that the available data are insufficient to draw stronger conclusions.[55] Weatherburn noted the importance of actively policing illegal firearm trafficking and argued that there was little evidence that the new laws had helped in this regard.[56]
A study coauthored by Simon Chapman found declines in firearm‐related deaths before the law reforms accelerated after the reforms for total firearm deaths (p=0.04), firearm suicides (p=0.007) and firearm homicides (p=0.15), but not for the smallest category of unintentional firearm deaths, which increased.[57]
Subsequently, a study by McPhedran and Baker compared the incidence of mass shootings in Australia and New Zealand. Data were standardised to a rate per 100,000 people, to control for differences in population size between the countries and mass shootings before and after 1996/1997 were compared between countries. That study found that in the period 1980–1996, both countries experienced mass shootings. The rate did not differ significantly between countries. Since 1996-1997, neither country has experienced a mass shooting event despite the continued availability of semi-automatic longarms in New Zealand. The authors conclude that "the hypothesis that Australia's prohibition of certain types of firearms explains the absence of mass shootings in that country since 1996 does not appear to be supported... if civilian access to certain types of firearms explained the occurrence of mass shootings in Australia (and conversely, if prohibiting such firearms explains the absence of mass shootings), then New Zealand (a country that still allows the ownership of such firearms) would have continued to experience mass shooting events."[58]
In 2009 a paper from the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention at Griffith University concluded:
The implemented restrictions may not be responsible for the observed reductions in firearms suicide. Data suggest that a change in social and cultural attitudes could have contributed to the shift in method preference.[59]
A 2010 study on the effects of the firearm buybacks by Wang-Sheng Lee and Sandy Suardi of The Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne studied the data and concluded, "Despite the fact that several researchers using the same data have examined the impact of the NFA on firearm deaths, a consensus does not appear to have been reached. In this paper, we re-analyze the same data on firearm deaths used in previous research, using tests for unknown structural breaks as a means to identifying impacts of the NFA. The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates."[60]
A 2010 study claimed, on the basis of modelled statistical estimates, that the gun buyback scheme cut firearm suicides by 74%. The study,[61] by Christine Neill and Andrew Leigh, found no evidence of substitution of method of suicide in any state. The estimated effect on firearm homicides was of similar magnitude but less precise.
Most recently, McPhedran and Baker found there was little evidence for any impacts of the gun laws on firearm suicide among people under 35 years of age, and suggest that the significant financial expenditure associated with Australia's firearms method restriction measures may not have had any impact on youth suicide.[62]
A 2013 report by the Australian Crime Commission said a conservative estimate was that there were 250,000 longarms and 10,000 handguns in the nation's illicit firearms market. The number of guns imported to Australia legally has also risen, including a 24 per cent increase during the past six years in the number of registered handguns in NSW, some of them diverted to the black market via theft or corrupt dealers and owners.[63] A 2014 report stated that approximately "260,000 guns are on the Australian 'grey' or black markets", and discussed the potential problem of people using 3D printers to create guns. NSW and Victorian police obtained plans to create 3D printed guns and tested to see if they could fire, but the guns exploded during testing.[64]
Statements by organisations[edit]
The American National Rifle Association claimed in 2000 that violent crimes had increased in Australia since the introduction of new laws. The federal Attorney General Daryl Williams accused the NRA of falsifying government statistics and urged the NRA to "remove any reference to Australia" from its website.[65]
CLASS (The Coalition of Law Abiding Sporting Shooters) in 2003 stated that no benefit-cost analysis of the buyback had been carried out and that scientific debate was politicised and ignored benefits of shooting and costs forced on legitimate owners.[66]
The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia states that there is no evidence that gun control restrictions in 1987, 1996 and 2002 had any impact on the already established trends.[67][68]
Responding to Neill and Leigh, The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia replied [69] that suicide by firearm has been decreasing steadily since the mid-1980s, but suicide by other methods such as hanging has not followed the same trend; that important assumptions of the work were not mentioned in media reports; that 93% of people replaced their seized firearms with at least one, if not more, to replace their loss; and recommended the work of Lee and Suardi, who reviewed almost 90 years of ABS data when making their conclusions, while Leigh and Neill chose to analyse only two five-year periods on either side of the 1996 buy-back.
This is from Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia
Measuring the effects of firearms laws in Australia[edit]
Changes in social problems related to firearms over time[edit]
Historically, Australia has had relatively low levels of violent crime. Overall levels of homicide and suicide have been in decline for several decades, while the proportion of these crimes that involved firearms has consistently declined since the early 1980s. Between 1991 and 2001, the number of firearm-related deaths in Australia declined 47%.[37] According to a 2011 report from the Australian government, "...the number of victims of homicide has been in decline since 1996". There were 354 victims in 1996, but only 260 victims in 2010, a decrease of 27 percent. Of those 260 victims however, only 36 were homicides involving a firearm. Also, "The proportion of homicide victims killed by offenders using firearms in 2009–10 represented a decrease of 18 percentage points from the peak of 31 percent in 1995–96 (the year in which the Port Arthur massacre occurred with the death of 35 people, which subsequently led to the introduction of stringent firearms legislation).". In 2014, only 35 people were victims of firearms homicide (1 in 685000 population),[38] compared to 98 people in 1996 [39] (1 in 186000 population). A 3.7 fold decrease in firearm homicide rates since controls were introduced.
Suicide deaths using firearms more than halved over the ten years, from 389 deaths in 1995, to 147 deaths in 2005.[40] to 7% of all suicides in 2005.[41]
The number of guns stolen has fallen from an average 4,195 per year from 1994 to 2000 to 1,526 in 2006–2007. Long guns are more often stolen opportunistically in home burglaries, but few homes have handguns and a substantial proportion of stolen handguns are taken from security firms and other businesses; only a tiny proportion, 0.06% of licensed firearms, are stolen in a given year. Only a small proportion of those firearms are recovered. Approximately 3% of these stolen weapons are later connected to an actual crime or found in the possession of a person charged with a serious offence.[42]
Contention over effects of the laws[edit]
Research[edit]
In 1997, the Prime Minister appointed the Australian Institute of Criminology to monitor the effects of the gun buyback. The institute has published a number of papers reporting trends and statistics around gun ownership and gun crime.[43][44]
Many studies have followed, providing varying results stemming from different methodologies and areas of focus. However, Harvard University summarized the research[45] in 2011 and concluded, “it would have been difficult to imagine more compelling future evidence of a beneficial effect.”
Some researchers have found a significant change in the rate of firearm suicides after the legislative changes. For example, Ozanne-Smith et al. (2004)[46] in the journal Injury Prevention found a reduction in firearm suicides in Victoria, however this study did not consider non-firearm suicide rates. Others have argued that alternative methods of suicide have been substituted. De Leo, Dwyer, Firman & Neulinger,[47] studied suicide methods in men from 1979 to 1998 and found a rise in hanging suicides that started slightly before the fall in gun suicides. As hanging suicides rose at about the same rate as gun suicides fell, it is possible that there was some substitution of suicide methods. It has been noted that drawing strong conclusions about possible impacts of gun laws on suicides is challenging, because a number of suicide prevention programs were implemented from the mid-1990s onwards, and non-firearm suicides also began falling.[48]
Any findings as to suicide are refuted by the historical previous research by Richard Harding in his book “Firearms and Violence in Australian Life”[49] at page 119, where after reviewing Australian statistics, he found that “whatever arguments might be made for the limitation or regulation of the private ownership of firearms, suicide patterns do not constitute one of them” Harding quoted international analysis by Newton and Zimring[50] of twenty developed countries which concluded at page 36 of their report; “cultural factors appear to affect suicide rates far more than the availability and use of firearms. Thus,suicide rates would not seem to be readily affected by making firearms less available."
In 2005 the head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn,[51] noted that the level of legal gun ownership in NSW increased in recent years, and that the 1996 legislation had little to no effect on violence. Professor Simon Chapman, former coconvenor of the Coalition for Gun Control, complained that his words "will henceforth be cited by every gun-lusting lobby group throughout the world in their perverse efforts to stall reforms that could save thousands of lives".[52] Weatherburn responded, "The fact is that the introduction of those laws did not result in any acceleration of the downward trend in gun homicide. They may have reduced the risk of mass shootings but we cannot be sure because no one has done the rigorous statistical work required to verify this possibility. It is always unpleasant to acknowledge facts that are inconsistent with your own point of view. But I thought that was what distinguished science from popular prejudice."[53]
In 2006, the lack of a measurable effect from the 1996 firearms legislation was reported in the British Journal of Criminology. Using ARIMA analysis, Dr Jeanine Baker and Dr Samara McPhedran found no evidence for an impact of the laws on homicide.[54]
Weatherburn described the Baker and McPhedran article as "reputable" and "well-conducted" and stated that the available data are insufficient to draw stronger conclusions.[55] Weatherburn noted the importance of actively policing illegal firearm trafficking and argued that there was little evidence that the new laws had helped in this regard.[56]
A study coauthored by Simon Chapman found declines in firearm‐related deaths before the law reforms accelerated after the reforms for total firearm deaths (p=0.04), firearm suicides (p=0.007) and firearm homicides (p=0.15), but not for the smallest category of unintentional firearm deaths, which increased.[57]
Subsequently, a study by McPhedran and Baker compared the incidence of mass shootings in Australia and New Zealand. Data were standardised to a rate per 100,000 people, to control for differences in population size between the countries and mass shootings before and after 1996/1997 were compared between countries. That study found that in the period 1980–1996, both countries experienced mass shootings. The rate did not differ significantly between countries. Since 1996-1997, neither country has experienced a mass shooting event despite the continued availability of semi-automatic longarms in New Zealand. The authors conclude that "the hypothesis that Australia's prohibition of certain types of firearms explains the absence of mass shootings in that country since 1996 does not appear to be supported... if civilian access to certain types of firearms explained the occurrence of mass shootings in Australia (and conversely, if prohibiting such firearms explains the absence of mass shootings), then New Zealand (a country that still allows the ownership of such firearms) would have continued to experience mass shooting events."[58]
In 2009 a paper from the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention at Griffith University concluded:
The implemented restrictions may not be responsible for the observed reductions in firearms suicide. Data suggest that a change in social and cultural attitudes could have contributed to the shift in method preference.[59]
A 2010 study on the effects of the firearm buybacks by Wang-Sheng Lee and Sandy Suardi of The Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne studied the data and concluded, "Despite the fact that several researchers using the same data have examined the impact of the NFA on firearm deaths, a consensus does not appear to have been reached. In this paper, we re-analyze the same data on firearm deaths used in previous research, using tests for unknown structural breaks as a means to identifying impacts of the NFA. The results of these tests suggest that the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates."[60]
A 2010 study claimed, on the basis of modelled statistical estimates, that the gun buyback scheme cut firearm suicides by 74%. The study,[61] by Christine Neill and Andrew Leigh, found no evidence of substitution of method of suicide in any state. The estimated effect on firearm homicides was of similar magnitude but less precise.
Most recently, McPhedran and Baker found there was little evidence for any impacts of the gun laws on firearm suicide among people under 35 years of age, and suggest that the significant financial expenditure associated with Australia's firearms method restriction measures may not have had any impact on youth suicide.[62]
A 2013 report by the Australian Crime Commission said a conservative estimate was that there were 250,000 longarms and 10,000 handguns in the nation's illicit firearms market. The number of guns imported to Australia legally has also risen, including a 24 per cent increase during the past six years in the number of registered handguns in NSW, some of them diverted to the black market via theft or corrupt dealers and owners.[63] A 2014 report stated that approximately "260,000 guns are on the Australian 'grey' or black markets", and discussed the potential problem of people using 3D printers to create guns. NSW and Victorian police obtained plans to create 3D printed guns and tested to see if they could fire, but the guns exploded during testing.[64]
Statements by organisations[edit]
The American National Rifle Association claimed in 2000 that violent crimes had increased in Australia since the introduction of new laws. The federal Attorney General Daryl Williams accused the NRA of falsifying government statistics and urged the NRA to "remove any reference to Australia" from its website.[65]
CLASS (The Coalition of Law Abiding Sporting Shooters) in 2003 stated that no benefit-cost analysis of the buyback had been carried out and that scientific debate was politicised and ignored benefits of shooting and costs forced on legitimate owners.[66]
The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia states that there is no evidence that gun control restrictions in 1987, 1996 and 2002 had any impact on the already established trends.[67][68]
Responding to Neill and Leigh, The Sporting Shooters Association of Australia replied [69] that suicide by firearm has been decreasing steadily since the mid-1980s, but suicide by other methods such as hanging has not followed the same trend; that important assumptions of the work were not mentioned in media reports; that 93% of people replaced their seized firearms with at least one, if not more, to replace their loss; and recommended the work of Lee and Suardi, who reviewed almost 90 years of ABS data when making their conclusions, while Leigh and Neill chose to analyse only two five-year periods on either side of the 1996 buy-back.