The effect of the Gun ban in Australia

I just came across another joker who claimed that Australia was so much safer because of their gun ban.

That's obviously nonsense.

Every time they want to defend this gun ban propaganda, they refer to "gun crime" which, supposedly, was reduced. The first lie here is the use of the term "gun crime" and instead of overall violent crime data.

The second someone talks about "gun crime" you know that they don't want you to look at all the other forms of violent crime (knife crime, murder with blunt objects, acid attacks, violent beatings and murder with bare hands, rape, armed robbery, assault etc.)

Let's have a look at the big picture in the years following the gun ban - straight from the Australian government:

"Trends in violent crime"
https://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi359

"Homicide has followed a cyclical pattern since the start of the 20th century, characterised by a trough coinciding with World War II (1939-45), followed by a steady increase to peak at a rate of around 2.0 per 100,000 in the 1970s and 1980s."

So homicide was never a big issue. At the highest point, 2 people per 100'000 were victims of homicide (by any method) and the criminologists admit that it is cyclical.

Defenders of the gun ban insist on the apparent reduction in "gun homicides". In fact, the trend towards fewer homicides - including gun homicides - started wll before the gun ban and the decrease in Australia was far less spectacular than the decrease in the US, where gun rights were expanded - and there's zero evidence that the reduction had any connection with the gun ban at all:

A little reminder: it's absurd to compare Australia with the US given that totally different demographics. In the US, 5 large cities with very large black populations and stict gun laws account for more than 80% of all US homicides.

So how about violent crime excluding homicides?

"Between 1995 and 2006, the rate of recorded assault rose significantly from 562.8 to 829.4 per 100,000 people"

So disarming the general population caused a massive increase in assaults, especialy in aggravated assaults:

"The rate of recorded assault has increased for males and particularly for females. The rate of increase was also greater for people aged 0-14 years (37% between 1996 and 2003) than for those aged 15 years and over (27%) (Figure 2).

It is the rate of aggravated rather than non-aggravated assault that appears to have contributed to the marked rise in assault rates. For the years where data are available (1999 to 2006), rates of aggravated assault increased by 46 percent (41% for males and 61% for females). In contrast, non-aggravated assault rates rose by only seven percent (3% for males and 19% for females). "

Yeah, totally reassuring... 

The claim that "there have not been any mass shootings since the gun ban" is like saying that Saudi Arabia managed to ban heavy rain - not like they were a problem the average Australian ever had to worry about. Having to face the substantial increase in violent crime Australia experienced, unarmed, is a major issue.

FEE also analyzed the data for Australia:

https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-australias-gun-laws-reduced-gun-homicides/