Furor over Study of Failed Aussie Gun Buy-Up
Date: Nov 12, 2006 8:09 PM
The Australian Gun Buy-Up, like the Canadian gun registration program,
is a monumental boondoggle, wasting hundreds of millions of dollars.

The New GUN WEEK, November 10, 2006
Page 1

Furor over Study of Failed Aussie Gun Buy-Up
by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

There is thunder Down Under in the wake of a study published
in the British Journal of Criminology that asserts the
nearly $500 million spent on Australia?s gun ?buy-up?
precipitated by the 1996 Port Arthur massacre has had no
measurable effect on that nation?s homicide rate.

At least part of the controversy swirls around the fact that
the study?s authors, Dr. Jeannine Baker and Samara
McPhedran are members of gun organizations, a fact they
reportedly disclosed up front to render moot any allegations
that they were merely pawns of the gun lobby.

However, The Sydney Morning Herald noted, ?The significance
of the article was not who had written it but the fact it
had been published in a respected journal after the regular
rigorous process of being peer reviewed.?

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, more than 600,000
firearms were taken in by the government, which at least
partly reimbursed their value to the unfortunate gunowners
who had to surrender their firearms?primarily
semi-automatic rifles and pump shotguns?under gun laws
passed after Martin Bryant went on a rampage, killing 35
people and wounding 18 others.

But Baker and McPhedran turned out what Don Weatherburn,
director of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics
and Research, called a study that was ?well conducted and
published in an internationally respected, peer-reviewed
journal.?

?It would be unfair to accuse the authors of ?cooking the
books? to achieve a certain result,? Weatherburn wrote in a
Morning Herald Op-Ed article.

But Simon Chapman, a professor of Public Health at the
University of Sydney, said in a recent radio interview that
the Baker-McPhedran research should not be taken seriously.
Speaking to Daniel Hoare with Australia?s National Radio,
Chapman insisted tougher gun laws are needed on the island
continent.

?We need to look at tightening up gun laws on hand guns,?
Chapman argued. ?There has been a proliferation of handguns
in recent years, but I think generally speaking, one can
say that the gun law situation in Australia remains one of
the toughest in the world. And that?s to the great
disappointment of the gun lobby in Australia and
internationally.?

But Baker, in the same report, fired back: ?In 1996 we were
told that taking the … buying back those civilian
firearms, off those licensed firearms owners would make
society safer and it would reduce firearm deaths. The
evidence isn?t there to support that.

?The whole point was we were looking at the National
Firearms Agreement,? she said, ?which was the turning point
or the sort of pivot point that we were examining. In terms
of mass murder, there have been mass murders since Port
Arthur. They haven?t been with a firearm.?

Baker further observed, ?If the money spent on gun control
in 1996 had been spent on suicide prevention programs or
mental health programs, we would have saved a lot more
lives.?

Weatherburn seems to support Baker?s argument, noting,
?People bent on committing a crime with a gun may get one
illegally if they cannot lawfully obtain one.?

?Research since the gun buyback,? he wrote, ?has shown that
more than 90% of homicide cases involve an unregistered
weapon and the alleged offender was not licensed to own a
gun.?

The Baker-McPhedran study may not qualify as the proverbial
?damning indictment? of Australia?s gun turnin program?or
similar proposals and actual confiscations in other
countries?but it comes close. According to the Sydney
newspaper, ?Politicians had assumed tighter gun laws would
cut off the supply of guns to would-be criminals and that
homicide rates would fall as a result, the study said. But
more than 90% of firearms used to commit homicide were not
registered, their users were not licensed and they had been
unaffected by the firearms agreement.?

Baker told the newspaper that she waited a full 10 years
before actually looking at whether the gun buy-ups,
initiated by Prime Minister John Howard, had any measurable
effect on Australia?s crime and suicide rates. It took that
long for useable data to become available, and one thing
that became evident was that murder rates were already
declining prior to the massacre and the gun program.

In his analysis, Weatherburn noted, ?So why didn?t the gun
buyback reduce the rate of firearm homicide? One
possibility is the reduction in firearm ownership was too
small to influence the gun homicide rate

There are only about 50 murders involving firearms in
Australia each year. There are hundreds of thousands of
gunowners. This suggests that the risk of any gunowner
using a gun to kill someone is very small.?

The revelations come as kind of an ?I told you so? for
Australia?s licensed gunowners, who had insisted in 1996
that the Howard gun turn-in, much like the Clinton semiauto
ban in the United States at the same time, would have no
impact on criminals.

?Mr. Howard,? the newspaper noted, ?and others predicted
the removal of so many guns from the community, and new laws
making it harder to buy and keep guns, would lead to a
reduction in all types of gun-related deaths.?

?The policy has made no difference,? Baker told the
newspaper.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !