Special report
Twelve months since law abiding firearm owners in Australia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by the government – a programme that cost Australian taxpayers more than $500 million dollars – crime has jumped.
Reports indicate Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent, assaults up 9.6 percent and armed robberies are up 44 percent.
State-wise, Victoria’s homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. One commentator said “it should be noted that while the law-abiding citizens turned firearms in, criminals did not and criminals still possess their guns.”
While figures over the previous 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, even while the resident is at home. Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in ‘successfully ridding Australian society of guns.
Yes indeed, as anyone should understand, punishing law abiding people does not prevent criminals from committing offences.
Political celebrities who want to be “seen to” do something pretend that making more rules and spending more of our money will solve our problems but it does not.
More rules do not prevent crime because criminals do not comply. They just create more expenses that working people cannot afford to pay.
Prohibiting people from defending their lives and property only creates more innocent victims of crime.
As the social and economic decline caused by people in government over regulating our lives and over spending our money gets worse, there will be more crime and violence.
The political and bureaucratic elites who have caused our problems will not solve them for us.
We have been hiring the wrong people to work for us in our government and should fire and replace them in the next elections.
The same old political parties will make the same old promises and fail to keep them as usual so stop voting for and hiring them to tell us what to do and waste our money pretending they can do things they cannot do.
The old saying is ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’.
Statistics show firearms are used in a very minority of homicides. US statistics show even hands, fists, and feet are used to commit homicide almost twice as often as a rifle is. In March last year Stuff news reported “the government’s clampdown on firearms and seizures of high-powered semi-automatic weapons has had no impact on a rise in gun crime and violence in New Zealand.”
Firearms surrendered/buy back occurred after Port Arthur massacre in 1996. So the article starting premise “twelve months” is wrong. As for the other stats???
Post the crime statistics from the most heavily armed civilian populations in the world. These show real figures on crime vs civilian gun ownership
Yet another example of incompetence in the form of “good intentions/poor outcomes” – when will we learn? Govt’s worldwide seemingly can’t do anything other than make things worse.
I would like to see NZs stats for firearms crimes since the buyback here at a guess they will be higher.