Meet A Generation That Has Grown Up Free From Mass Shootings

[onehandle]

SYDNEY, Australia – Most Australians would remember where they were when they first heard something bad was going on at Port Arthur. I was walking through the common room at my university residential college and there was a group glued to the old picture­ tube television in the corner -- strange for daylight hours. Scraps of information were seeping out from the wind­swept historical site on the southern shore of Tasmania, not far from the bottom of the world and already stalked by the ghosts of its brutal penal colony past. No one was Tweeting. Social media barely existed. Mobile phones were a luxury and spots as remote as Port Arthur had no coverage anyway.

A gunman was on the loose. Five, ten, 15 people shot. Preposterous numbers that just kept growing. Local police scrambled down the narrow road in, unaware what horror they approached. In the end the toll from ‘the Port Arthur Massacre,’ as it’s etched into Australian vernacular, was 35 dead and 23 injured.

April 28, 1996. Twenty years next year. It’s sometimes cheap to say an event changed a nation -- but Port Arthur changed Australia. A whole generation of young Australians is now coming of age having never borne witness to a mass shooting in their own country. They don’t remember Port Arthur because they weren’t born when a 28­-year-­old with a low IQ stalked through a tourist attraction picking off innocent men, women and children with high-powered weaponry for reasons none of us will ever fathom.

Young adults who have graduated high ­school, can vote, drive and legally drink alcohol (in Australia the drinking age is 18) have never walked on to campus fearing the weirdo from their economics tutorial might turn out to be a gun nut with a death wish.

That’s freedom.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/australia-gun-control_561bb80ce4b0e66ad4c86fa0

[lunamagica]

1. K&R. Thank you so much for bringing this here

[KamaAina]

2. Bonzer, mate!

[Electric Monk]

3. If/when this gets locked in GD, please feel free to continue in GCRA

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12629874

[Eleanors38]

4. Since you posted about this, what is the time allotted for Guns Discussion?

When will this Guns Discussion end and normal General Discussion policies resumed? This would be helpful for DUers. Thanks.

[Electric Monk]

7. That's not my call, I'm not a General Discussion host. nt

[pintobean]

20. It's just a banner ad

that appears on most GD gun threads.

[X_Digger]

5. So Hectorville never happened?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Hectorville_siege

Or Monash?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting

How about Geoffrey Hunt? Did that never happen?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2906200/Farmer-DID-shoot-three-children-wife-years-immense-stress-recovery-brain-injury-murder-suicide-shocked-quiet-community.html

[passiveporcupine]

8. Your second link of the university shooting is the only one that qualifies

as the type of random shootings Australia has put an end to, and since only two people were killled, I'm not sure it even qualifies as a mass shooting.

I'm sure there are still shootings in Australia, or any country with guns. That will always happen, but it can be minimized with gun control.

The other links you posted are family murder/suicide situations, or people using a gun to settle a fight. That will always happen (not always with guns). The guy who shot his neighbors used a shotgun, not a semi-automatic weapon. The guy who shot his wife may not have shot his own children. The wife had mental issues from a car accident and she may actually have shot the children, resulting in her husband shooting her and then himself.

If there has only been one random mass shooting in Australia since 1996 (the Port Arthur incident)...then I'd say they have virtually stopped these kinds of killings.

The farmer who killed his wife...if she had mental problems and killed her kids, perhaps that is a situation where there should not be any guns allowed in the house. That is not part of Australia's gun policy though. The husband still qualified to have a gun.

[X_Digger]

9. A mass shooting (per FBI) is where three or more are killed in a limited geography and time.

If we're going by your limited criteria, then you need to tell mother jones (and the posters here who quote family suicides as mass shooting incidents.)

You can't have your cake and eat it too-- no changing the definition based on whether you want to inflate it or deflate it.

Mass shooting incidents in Australia were rare before Port Arthur. It's a post hoc ergo propter hoc to assert that AU's gun control efforts caused a reduction in mass shootings. It's a blatant lie to say (as the OP does) that none have occurred since then.

[passiveporcupine]

10. I'm not the one calling family murder suicides part of the mass shooting sprees

we've been experiencing since Columbine.

So it's not me trying to have my cake and eat it too, as you so blithely claim.

[passiveporcupine]

12. Do you really want to compare the US to Australia

We've had 36 "notable" mass shootings since 1996.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9414540/A-history-of-mass-shootings-in-the-US-since-Columbine.html

Compared to three (the ones you listed) for Australia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_mass_murders

In the US we've had an average of one mass shooting (at least 4 people killed) per month since 2009

Yet mass shootings are still a tiny portion of overall gun deaths

In 2010, according to the FBI, around 8,775 people were murdered with firearms in the United States. Less than 1 percent of those victims were killed in mass shootings.

Assault weapons are used in a minority of mass shootings — but those incidents were much deadlier.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2013/02/02/study-the-u-s-has-had-one-mass-shooting-per-month-since-2009/


The risk of dying by gunshot has halved since Australia destroyed 700,000 privately owned firearms, according to a new study published today in the international research journal, Injury Prevention.

"Not only were Australia's post-Port Arthur gun laws followed by a decade in which the crime they were designed to reduce hasn't happened again, but we also saw a life-saving bonus: the decline in overall gun deaths accelerated to twice the rate seen before the new gun laws," says study lead author, Professor Simon Chapman.

http://sydney.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=1502



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia#/media/File:Gun_deaths_over_time_in_the_US_and_Australia.png

[X_Digger]

13. My words come out just fine, thanks. I don't need your fingers in my mouth.

When I want to compare AU to the US, I'll say so.

But by that same metric, the AU has indeed experienced a mass shooting since Port Arthur, giving lie to the OP.

Thanks for helping, there.

[passiveporcupine]

14. Last thing in the world that I want is my fingers in your mouth

Human mouths are nasty!

[X_Digger]

15. And I don't know where your fingers have been! ;) n/t

[passiveporcupine]

16. Probably scratching my dog's butt!

[Herman4747]

17. Mass Shootings and the U.S.A.

You fail to provide a link for your claim that a mere 3 people being shot dead by a gun-lover qualifies as a mass-shooting. According to CNN, "a mass shooting is defined as having four or more fatalities, not including gang killings or slayings that involve the death of multiple family members" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting . You see, "few" is defined as "a small number of" or "hardly any" FOR EXAMPLE, THREE. But you are going to continue to try to convince us all that "three" qualifies as "mass." Well, GET TO IT, GUY!! None of what you provide would be a mass shooting under the CNN definition. So show us that three is indeed "mass," and that you are right and CNN is wrong.
And how many incidents in Australia were you able to come up with since 1996 [that is, 19 YEARS]? Three, right? So that's supposed to be a MASSive amount, or is it instead, JUST A FEW?
Turning to a different matter, Wikipedia reports that "While the U.S. has 5% of the world's population, 31% of public mass shootings occur in the U.S." Wikipedia has also chosen to use the rule of "four or more" in determining if a combination of killings from shooting is a "mass shooting." But let us focus instead on the 5% and the 31%. How do you, X-Digger, explain this? Why do you suppose that the gun-lovers in the USA can't keep their bullets to themselves?

[X_Digger]

18. Per FBI-- see link

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/september/fbi-releases-study-on-active-shooter-incidents/pdfs/a-study-of-active-shooter-incidents-in-the-u.s.-between-2000-and-2013

Hope you like your crow cold.

[Herman4747]

19. Unlike You, I am unwilling to surrender my brain to the FBI...

...that is, I use my own brain to determine what qualifies as "mass" and what does not.
Try using your own brain, sometimes. You might like doing so.

[LanternWaste]

21. An intractable and dogmatic mind often denies itself all valid definitions and possibilities but one

An intractable and dogmatic mind often denies itself all valid definitions and possibilities but one, regardless of the petulant irrelevancy of aviary cuisine...

[SwissTony]

11. Yeah, Australia still has guns.

You cite three incidents.

Compare and contrast with Sandy Hook.

We have dickheads in Australia and our gun laws mean unfortunately some of them will have access to guns.

We also have drink-driving rules...and...say no more.

[gollygee]

22. You've named 3 events since 1996 and you think that proves your point? n/t

[X_Digger]

23. It gives lie to the subject of the OP. *shrug*

US gun control proponents like to say that AU's gun buy back solved all their problems, and will wiggle, twist, and change the definition of a mass shooting to make it so.

I think that does prove my point, yes.

[hifiguy]

6. Aussie, Aussie Aussie!

Oi! Oi! Oi!