Letter: Gun control failed Down Under
Date: Oct 21, 2006 11:30 AM
PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2006.10.21
EDITION: All but Toronto
SECTION: Letters
PAGE: A17
BYLINE: Jeanine Baker
SOURCE: National Post
WORD COUNT: 253

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Gun control failed Down Under

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Re: In Australia, Gun Control Saves Lives, letter to the editor, Oct.
19.

The suggestion by letter-writer Philip Alpers that the Australian gun
laws, introduced in 1996, caused a decrease in gun death and gun crime
is ingeniously promoted by members of the Australian National Coalition
for Gun Control (NCGC). When advocating this limited view of the
longitudinal data, Prof Alpers fails to clarify that reductions in gun
death and gun crime began to decline well before the Australian states
were forced into signing the National Firearms Agreement (NFA).

The Australian Institute of Criminology has pointed out that responsible
firearm owners are rarely involved in gun misuse or abuse. The
destruction of over 642,000 legally owned firearms did not alter the
pre-existing trends for firearm misuse and abuse before the legislation
of 1996 was introduced. Indeed, there have been no mass shootings in
Australia since the law passed, but mass murder was always a rare event
in the country. The 1996 NFA did nothing to reduce violent crime,
homicide or suicide. Instead, police are faced with the burdensome
paperwork required to regulate the compliant, while criminals using
firearms make a mockery of the court system.

I would urge Canadians not to be misled into believing the oft-touted
myth that Australia’s trends in violent firearm crime or death began to
decline after the 1996 NFA.

Jeanine Baker, President,
Sporting Shooters Association of Australia
http://www.ssaa.org.au/

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The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !