No law that restricts access to guns will do anything to stop criminal violence, because, after all, criminals don't care about laws.   That's what makes them criminals.

FLASH  The Australian media is having (metaphorical) kittens about guns following the gun murder of seven office workers in Massachussets in December 2000.  Not being US citizens, most Australian journalists are not aware what a serious indictment of gun control those murders constitute.  Wake up fellahs.

• They were done with an AK47, which is (I believe) a controlled weapon in the USA.
• The murders were committed in the state with the strongest gun controls in the USA.

Statistically the people most at risk from guns in a free society are probably politicians.   Four USA presidents (out of about 40) were removed from office by gunshot in about two centuries.  Six other USA presidents survived serious attempts on their lives.   Not very good odds for politicians.  Based on those figures being a politician is more dangerous than being a soldier or a policeman.   One can sympathize with the urgent desire of politicians, the press & other public figures to register & remove long range weapons from the hands of the people.  While having an armed population is a proven method of decreasing violence in the community, it probably also makes the lives of politicians & public figures more hazardous.

So what benefits does registration& restriction of guns have for the governed?  In the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre (March 1996), gun laws in Australia were tightened.  The immediate (and predictable) effect was to cause the growth rate of armed robbery, which had been growing at about the same rate as unarmed robbery, to double that of unarmed robbery:
 

Fig. 22 of Australian Institute of Criminology graph clearly shows the 1996 and 1997 increase. (They have tried to hide it with a line, but forewarned it is clear that there was only a very small increase in 1995)

This increased violence following gun restrictions must be contrasted with US data. In the USA which is a comparable culture, gun laws have for the past few years been liberalized.  Many states have passed "right to carry" laws, any citizen not guilty of a violent crime must be granted a concealed weapon license on application.  This liberalizing of access to guns in the USA has been followed by a diminution of gun violence.  Gun control advocate President Clinton's web page quotes the "Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998 National Crime Victimization Survey; Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports for the United States 1998, 1999; FY 2001 Budget, p. 107" and reports that "gun violence has declined by more than 35 percent." (about 1/3 down the page)

Those who think that a high homicide rate results from greater firearms availability might like to consider the data compiled by the National Injury Surveillance Unit (from Killias 1993) comparing firearms ownership and homicide rate in Switzerland with that in England & Wales (reproduced below).
 

If availability of firearms caused homicide, then why do the SWISS, who have five times as many guns per head of population when compared to ENGLAND, have fewer murders per head of population?

The crime growth in the Australian results reflects exactly what was predicted on this guns page in February 1999:

"Of course it's not quite the end of the story.  In Australia, armed violence will continue to accelerate.  As will knife killings and other armed violence.   And because our young and powerless have been further disempowered, youth suicide will also continue to accelerate."

The law prohibiting concealed weapons benefits felons and probably makes the world safer for police and politicians and well off citizens (such as "A grade" journalists) who can afford to live in congenial (and well policed) suburbs.  It demonstrably does not benefit the greater majority of law abiding people as is irrefutably shown by statistics on street violence and home invasion.  Before her English home was invaded in December 2000, Madonna said she felt "safer" in gun shy UK.   Hopefully she has learned that less guns means more crime.   England has a rate of invasion of occupied homes to empty homes that is more than six times greater than in the gun toting USA.  USA criminals are more careful about home invasions, because they know that half of US households have a gun.

In summary, when we introduce more restrictions on weapons, violent crimes (especially those with weapons) increase.  When we liberalize access to guns, violent crimes with a weapon decrease.

You will have to ask your politician that question, because I do not know the answer.  Maybe Aussie politicians think that prohibition will stop criminals from getting guns, like USA politicians once thought prohibition would stop people from supplying alcohol?

John R. Lott, Jr., School of Law, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois  60637 and David B. Mustard; Department of Economics; University of Chicago; Chicago, Illinois  60637 wrote an academic paper dated July 26, 1996 on their research into "Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns".  Following is the abstract:

Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992, we find that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes, without increasing accidental deaths. If those states without right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, county- and state-level data indicate that approximately 1,500 murders would have been avoided yearly. Similarly, we predict
that rapes would have declined by over 4,000, robbery by over 11,000, and aggravated assaults by over 60,000. We also find criminals substituting into property crimes involving stealth, where the probability of contact between the criminal and the victim is minimal. Further, higher arrest and conviction rates consistently reduce crime. The estimated annual gain from all remaining states adopting these laws was
at least $5.74 billion in 1992. The annual social benefit from an additional concealed handgun permit is as high as $5,000.

When the Lott-Mustard article originally appeared it provoked an uproar among control advocates.   In the intervening four years nobody has been able to refute Lott & Mustard's findings.   In 1998 local gun control advocate Associate Professor Chapman admitted defeat when he wrote "With the national armed robbery rate up 47%, . . no downturn in gun suicides or domestic slayings . . was it (i.e. the taxation funded buyback of guns) all for nothing?

         "When firearms go, all else goes." (George Washington)

An Australian gun users site.
The Australian Gun Law Con Site
 

This column was started in September 1997. Latest revision was December 2000.  The previous version was dated July 2000

email here