It’s interesting to read former Prime Minister John Howard’s retelling of how he outlawed assault weapons in Australia. They also have a federal system with strong states’ rights. So, all he could initially do is ban the importation of assault weapons. He had to convince all the states to enact a uniform ban. He was ultimately successful only because the urban population (60%) outnumbers the rural population in his country, and he could plausibly threaten to amend the Constitution if he didn’t get his way. He also didn’t have to contend with the 2nd Amendment or any organization as powerful as the NRA.
On the other hand, he led a coalition heavily-dependent on rural voters, and his decision upended political loyalties and gave rise to new parties.
I’m not sure what we can learn from his experience, but if the following is correct, we ought to investigate:
In the end, we won the battle to change gun laws because there was majority support across Australia for banning certain weapons. And today, there is a wide consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate, but also the suicide rate. The Australian Institute of Criminology found that gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996. The American Journal of Law and Economics found that our gun buyback scheme cut firearm suicides by 74 percent. In the 18 years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered 13 gun massacres — each with more than four victims — causing a total of 102 deaths. There has not been a single massacre in that category since 1996.
Few Australians would deny that their country is safer today as a consequence of gun control.
I could go for 17 years with no massacres.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of Senate Democrats are shitting bricks.
That seems to be Senate Democrats’ natural state on any issue requiring a little courage.
Found this on another site. Verrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyy Interesting!
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/01/16/founding-fathers-words-reveal-2nd-amendment-was-to-preserve-
slavery/
I read that too. But I don’t think it’s the whole story. You might want to read this as well:
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/01/14/more-second-amendment-madness/
The entire Constitution was an exercise in yapping about “liberty” while protecting slavery. And we’re paying for it still.
It’s also worth noting that many western nations with gun bans also heavily censor the media as well. As a gamer with several friends who are developers places like Australia and Germany have draconian laws they don’t like to deal with.
So if we are pointing to what works there, our video games, movies, TV, music all need to be regulated more as well. And that’s about the point that sends many people who are for gun control running for the hills. Because it’s more about controlling guns than cutting down on violence.
On the other hand, those countries don’t really care about sex and boobs on the TV either. Less shooting more fucking so to speak.
In the last two episodes of an American TV series I watch, two different regular characters have shot a bit character in the head at close range, casually and without looking. No biggie, just oopsies, a little misunderstanding between rival drug lords. Not even big plot points, just slapstick before a scene change. Yet on that show like most others, a bare boobie is some kind of major transgression. God forbid a bare ass…
WTF is wrong with us?
I’m at a complete loss to understand how anyone might think that the media is ‘censored’ in Australia. We do have a system of classification of movies and computer games essentially relating to suitability for viewing or use by different age groups. Under the system a movie or game can potentially be refused classification, or banned, but this is reasonably rare. Television, radio, the internet, music and newspapers are not subject to classification.
The only real censorship in Australia is that the Murdoch media refuses to tell the truth about climate change and also distorts all political news stories to show the ruling Labor government in the worst possible light.
That story fills me with despair. There is no way a ban on semi-automatic weapons to be implemented in the American political system, no matter how much merit the proposal has.
We might get some marginally-better laws over the next few months, and that’s great, but I come away with the impression that the Australian government structure and political landscape are a great deal more sensible than ours.
When automobile manufacturers were resisting regulations to install seat belts, did safety advocates publicly battle with the Automobile Manufacturers Assoc or Ford, GM, Chrysler, etc.? (And yes, there were individuals out there back then that claimed they would have died if they had been wearing a seat belt.) Why let the actual merchants of death hide behind the screen of the NRA?
I suspect Australia is different in a few respects:
In the US I would look at the following factors:
etc.
a fond portrait you paint of us. 🙁
Don’t worry Boo, I love you really, and hope to visit sometime. I’m sure we could also paint a negative, if different portrait of yurpians. For a start, there is almost no such thing as a yurpian…
More like a 100 megapixel photograph.
This is a point I would make as well. It is very difficult to compare the US to pretty much any other country. I have an acquaintance who lives in Finland and he’s a brilliant man. But he constantly offers up his native country as a model of near perfection, showing a lot of statistics about his country in education, gun control, economy, and health care. But Finland is tiny compared to the US, and there’s scarcely any diversity in race and religion. We tease him and say it’s too fucking cold for wrongdoing there. 😉
It’s not nationalism to say that the US is unique and special. We have many reasons to be proud. But the state of affairs isn’t good enough. Gun safety, gun control, whatever we call it, is a fraction of a bigger picture. Frank’s right, it’s a cultural and economical and social issue, and no single set of laws will fix it. We are a society who tolerates and even celebrates violence. We do have severe differences in our economic strata, and we live our lives at a breakneck pace where stress is part of our everyday lives. We have gaps in our mental health care system where individuals with needs fall through the cracks.
I want guns completely gone, but that will never happen. Actually, I’m sick and tired of reading about it, talking about it, and hearing the defenders of gun nuts make threats. Fuck them! I don’t care about their “need” to be armed to the teeth. I have rights, too, and I’m tired of being bullied and threatened by a bunch of crackpots.
So there.
To a certain extent we all regard “our” societies as “normal” and every other society as an abnormal aberration or an interesting anthropological curiosity. Only those who have traveled and studied abroad understand that all cultural norms are relative.
It’s probably also harder to analyses your own society than a foreign one, because what reference points are you going to adopt as the basis of comparison for your own society? When analyzing foreign societies it is easier to compare against your own or against some presumed global norm. And of course globalization is all about imposing global (mostly US) norms.
Coming from an Irish/European background I am incredulous of the the extremes of wealth and poverty in the US. The degree to which almost everything is viewed through a military lens. The incarceration rates which are amongst the highest in the world. The dominance of punishment over rehabilitation in prison regimes. But all these things probably seem “normal” to many Americans and Europe is seen as some vague, weak, complex, confused and confusing, charming but morally compromised quagmire.
Feel free to give your views on the European Tribune: I spent enough time pontificating on all things American on the Booman Tribune!
How fucking depressing……
Because it’s all true.
I would dispute the accuracy of your list it is very much lacking in nuance. just a few examples:
Australia is very diverse – existing populations plus much immigration from diverse Asian and European countries
white attempts to wipe out aboriginal population had differences from USA and native americans (i.e. absorption via make the population “white” through marriage)
white culture works differently from USA, however
as far as the USA goes parts of your list may apply in parts of the USA, most does not apply throughout the USA
poor public education, for example, is recent in high schools. public universities – just an example, that’s not NY or CA, University of Nebraska, say.
millenarianism? Zionism [where?]
class struggle? do you mean the union movement? power grab by plutocrats? [privatization also happening in Australia]
he didn’t have a 2nd amendment.
done.
First, 90% of the Australian population is urban, not 60%
Second, another commented that the Australian constitution is easier to change than the American one. Not really. It’s a long, painful process to get an amendment to the referendum stage, where it must then be passed by a majority of voters in a majority of states. In 111 years, 44 amendment proposals have reached the referendum stage. Of those , only 8 have passed.
“Easier”? Well, I don’t know.
But is their amendment process distinctly more democratic?
Yes, indeed.
Just as legislation by referendum is more democratic than legislation by somebody else you have to vote for.
I agree with everything the Aussies did.
Still, while it’s nice to know the number of gun suicides and gun murders went down (how could they not?), it would be nicer to know that the numbers by any method went down.
One has to suppose they did, but why didn’t he (or they) directly address that?
If there were 10 fewer gun murders that’s nice.
But it’s not as nice if there were also 10 more murders by other means.
Though one supposes even in that case murders in massacres would be down.
As Howard says, it’s easier to kill 10 people with a gun than with a knife.
The overall rate of homicide appears to have declined, too.