Banning Guns

This post at Vox Popoli is the result of an Australian reader of that blog writing that Americans should ban guns like Australia has and watch the numbers of shooting go down.  Vox's response was to look up Australian violent crime rates after the gun ban, the results:

"Between 1995 and 2007, Australia saw a 31.9 percent decrease; without a gun ban, America's rate dropped 31.7 percent.
During the same time period, all other violent crime indices increased in Australia: assault rose 49.2 percent and robbery 6.2 percent.
Sexual assault -- Australia's equivalent term for rape -- increased 29.9 percent.
Overall, Australia's violent crime rate rose 42.2 percent.
At the same time, U.S. violent crime decreased 31.8 percent: rape dropped 19.2 percent; robbery decreased 33.2 percent; aggravated assault dropped 32.2 percent.
Australian women are now raped over three times as often as American women.

So, if the USA follows Australia's lead in banning guns, it should expect a 42 percent increase in violent crime, a higher percentage of murders committed with a gun, and three times more rape. One wonders if Freddy even bothered to look up the relative crime statistics."

I also read this article at the Huffington Post about the Colorado shooting and the articles author's desire to ban guns.  I was heartened by the fact that the first several comments at this liberal website were in support of gun ownership.


Since all of the mass shootings in America have occurred in gun free zones, I think the problem is that the gun free zone signs aren't big enough.  Maybe those murderers wouldn't have shot people if they had seen the signs.