American gun controllers love to cite Australia as an example of a “more civilized” country where people voluntarily turned in their guns after their government demanded they do so. After the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, Australia imposed a special tax and used the proceeds to mandatorily “buy back” guns from the populace. The compensated confiscation program resulted in the removal of up to 1 million guns from the hands of the people.
But guess who didn’t turn in their weapons?
Three men have been shot and another two injured during a violent night in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.
Detectives say the separate attacks were targeted and are investigating whether they’re connected. @gillianlant #9News pic.twitter.com/6Budf01csC
— 9News Melbourne (@9NewsMelb) July 30, 2023
This looks like targeted gang violence. At the 1:30 mark in the above video, you can almost see a smile on the Detective’s face when the reporter asks him if those shot were cooperating with the police. 7News has more details (archived links):
Three men hospitalised with gunshot wounds following incidents in Meadow Heights and Glenroy
Three men remain on the run.
Three men are confirmed to have been shot and two others have suffered other injuries in three incidents in Melbourne’s north.
The crime spree began in Meadow Heights at about 9.45pm on Saturday when three masked men entered a property on Amarina Cl.
After entering the property, an “altercation” took place between the intruders and the occupants inside the home, Victoria Police said.
A 26-year-old man was shot in the leg and rushed to hospital in a serious but non-life-threatening condition.
[…]
Neighbours told 7NEWS they heard swearing before a shot was fired.
“I heard a lot of banging on the door (and) cussing,” resident Faiq Azim said.
About three hours later, police attended an incident just 10 minutes away in Glenroy on reports of gunshots.
Three men were found injured at an address on View St.
A 45-year-old man suffered gunshot wounds while two others, a 22-year-old man and a 23-year-old man, suffered lacerations.
Another man, aged 43, later self-presented to hospital with a gunshot wound.
[…]
About the same time in the nearby suburb of Delahey, a drive-by shooting took place.
The three residents inside the property were not injured.
Multiple bullet holes were seen in the home’s outdoor shutters.
Police initially thought the shootings were linked, however have now dismissed that theory.
So, it looks like there was not just one targeted shooting, but some stabbings and a drive-by as well. Does it come as any surprise that criminals who don’t care about murder would care about Australia’s sundry gun laws?
There is a spurious quotation attributed to Thomas Jefferson which was originally a part of Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria’s writings, which explains the Australian gun confiscation laws perfectly:
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms … disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed one.
The Australian citizenry obeyed their government and turned in their weapons in huge numbers. Meanwhile, criminals continue operating without any regard for the law. But what about the claims that Australian gun control reduced violence?
As compared to the United States, the rest of the Anglosphere, including Australia, have had lower levels of violence, with or without firearms, for a long time. Despite the claims of gun controllers, Australian gun control likely had no effect at all on a country that already had a lower propensity for violence. An old article from the Foundation for Economic Education states this:
Empirical evidence shows that the rate of mass shooting incidents in Australia and its neighbor New Zealand, a socioeconomically similar country, did not differ significantly before or after the buyback program, despite New Zealand retaining civilian ownership of firearms banned in Australia in 1996. This casts doubt on the claim that Australia’s lack of mass shootings is a result of the 1996 gun control measure.
Moreover, Australia’s firearm homicide rate was falling well before 1996, and the continuation of this trend following the buyback program doesn’t prove the program’s efficacy. In fact, a paper recently published in the International Journal of Criminal Justice noted that not a single study on this matter has found a statistically significant impact of the Australian legislative changes on the pre-existing downward trend in firearm homicide.
Australia is code for gun confiscation. Anyone who keeps pointing down under wants us disarmed and subjugated. Full stop.