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HALF a billion dollars spent buying back hundreds of thousands of guns after the Port Arthur massacre had no effect on the homicide rate, says a study published in an influential British journal.
The report by two Australian academics, published in the British Journal of Criminology, said statistics gathered in the decade since Port Arthur showed gun deaths had been declining well before 1996 and the buyback of more than 600,000 mainly semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns had made no difference in the rate of decline.
Australian gun laws has no effect on murder rate
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From the article:
"The findings were clear, she said: "The policy has made no difference. There was a trend of declining deaths that has continued."
Okay so they say it was a downward trend already and the new gun laws had nothing to do with it. Counterpoint from the
Brady Campaign web site:
"Moreover, in Australia, homicides committed with firearms have been declining - slowly before the Port Arthur Massacre, more sharply since - from 28 percent of all homicides in 1989-90 to 16 percent in 2001.[4] While the 1996 gun laws did not initiate the decline in firearm homicides, they appear to have accelerated it."
So I guess it's all how you interpret the numbers. The Brady Campaign may be biased. But then again so may the authors of your study:
"Dr Baker and her co-author, Samara McPhedran, declared their membership of gun groups in the article, something Dr Baker said they had done deliberately to make clear "who we are" and head off any possible criticism that they had hidden relevant details."
Regardless, the total number of gun deaths by both homicide and suicide has dropped in Australia since the tougher laws went into effect. At the very least this argues against those who say guns stop more killings in self-defense than they cause in the hands of criminals. If this was true then the death rates should have gone up once guns became harder to get for law-abiding citizens.