Forum Post: You can make a difference! Call & email & write Sen Dan Coats

Posted 11 years ago on March 22, 2013, 4:12 p.m. EST by bensdad (8977)
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How many of wacky wayne’s nra gun nuts have called him with “Don’t take my guns !”

Are you part of the 81% who want more gun control ? Or do you work for wacky wayne ?

Tell him that you insist that he vote for an assault weapons ban
Tell him that you insist that he vote for a ban on large magazine clips

SENATOR DAN COATS
You MUST say you are from Indiana

317 554 0750 Indianapolis
202-224-5623 DC Office
202-224-3121 Main Senate TN

http://www.coats.senate.gov/contact

Sen. Dan Coats 493 Russel Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

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[-] 1 points by mideast (506) 11 years ago

February, 2000 Sharp Drop in Gun Crime Follows Tough Australian Firearm Laws Latest official data from Australia shows a marked reduction in gun-related crime and injury following recent restrictions on the private ownership of firearms. Twelve days after 35 people were shot dead by a single gunman in Tasmania, Australia's state and federal governments agreed to enact wide-ranging new gun control laws to curb firearm-related death and injury. Between July 1996 and August 1998, the new restrictions were brought into force. Since that time, key indicators for gun-related death and crime have shown encouraging results. Firearm-Related Homicide "There was a decrease of almost 30% in the number of homicides by firearms from 1997 to 1998." -- Australian Crime - Facts and Figures 1999. Australian Institute of Criminology. Canberra, Oct 1999 This report shows that as gun ownership has been progressively restricted since 1915, Australia's firearm homicide rate per 100,000 population has declined to almost half its 85-year average. Homicide by Any Method The overall rate of homicide in Australia has also dropped to its lowest point since 1989 (National Homicide Monitoring Program, 1997-98 data). It remains one-fourth the homicide rate in the USA. The Institute of Criminology report Australian Crime - Facts and Figures 1999 includes 1998 homicide data showing "a 9% decrease from the rate in 1997." This is the period in which most of the country's new gun laws came into force. Gun-Related Death by Any Cause The Australian Bureau of Statistics counts all injury deaths, whether or not they are crime-related. The most recently available ABS figures show a total of 437 firearm-related deaths (homicide, suicide and unintentional) for 1997. This is the lowest number for 18 years. The Australian rate of gun death per 100,000 population remains one-fifth that of the United States. "We have observed a decline in firearm-related death rates (essentially in firearm-related suicides) in most jurisdictions in Australia. We have also seen a declining trend in the percentage of robberies involving the use of firearms in Australia." -- Mouzos, J. Firearm-related Violence: The Impact of the Nationwide Agreement on Firearms. Trends & Issues in Crime & Criminal Justice No. 116. Australian Institute of Criminology. Canberra, May 1999; 6 Assault and Robbery Those who claim that Australia suffered a "crime wave" as a result of new gun laws often cite as evidence unrelated figures for common assault or sexual assault (no weapon) and armed robbery (any weapon). In fact less than one in five Australian armed robberies involve a firearm. "Although armed robberies increased by nearly 20%, the number of armed robberies involving a firearm decreased to a six-year low." -- Recorded Crime, Australia, 1998. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Jun 1999 Firearm-Related Crime in Tasmania "A declining firearm suicide rate, a declining firearm assault rate, a stable firearm robbery rate with a declining proportion of robberies committed with a firearm and a declining proportion of damage to property offences committed with a firearm suggest that firearm regulation has been successful in Tasmania." -- Warner, Prof K. Firearm Deaths and Firearm Crime After Gun Licensing in Tasmania. Australian Institute of Criminology, 3rd National Outlook Symposium on Crime in Australia. Canberra, 22-23 Mar 1999. Curbing Gun Proliferation in Australia In the 1996-97 Australian gun buy-back, two-thirds of a million semi-automatic and pump-action rifles and shotguns were sold to the government at market value. Thousands more gun owners volunteered their firearms for free, and nearly 700,000 guns were destroyed. By destroying one-seventh of its estimated stock of firearms (the equivalent figure in the USA would be 30 million), Australia has significantly altered the composition of its civilian arsenal. In addition, all remaining guns must be individually registered to their licensed owners, private firearm sales are no longer permitted and each gun purchase through a licensed arms dealer is scrutinised by police to establish a "genuine reason" for ownership. All the nation's governments, police forces and police unions support the current gun laws. Other Countries Similar reductions in gun death and injury have been noted in several countries whose gun controls have been recently tightened. In Canada, where new gun laws were introduced in 1991 and 1995, the number of gun deaths has reached a 30-year low. Two years ago in the United Kingdom, civilian handguns were banned, bought back from their owners and destroyed. In the year following the law change, Scotland recorded a 17% drop in all firearm-related offences. The British Home Office reports that in the nine months following the handgun ban, firearm-related offences in England and Wales dropped by 13%. A British citizen is still 50 times less likely to be a victim of gun homicide than an American.

Tougher laws & gun buyback on target
January 15, 2013 Andrew Leigh

Since the 1997 gun buyback, your chance of being a victim of gun violence has more than halved.

To understand the policy success of the National Firearms Agreement, it's important to recognise precisely what happened. Alongside the gun buyback, what had been a patchwork of state and territory regulations was strengthened and harmonised. Self-loading rifles, self-loading shotguns and pump-action shotguns were banned. Firearm owners were required to obtain licences and register their weapons.

While the changes were backed by the then Labor opposition, political credit must go to then prime minister John Howard and National Party leader Tim Fischer for standing up to the hardliners in their own parties. They paid a short-term electoral price but history will judge them well.

In the 1990s some argued that the gun buyback would make no difference to the firearms homicide and suicide rates. Yet careful studies have shown otherwise. In the decade before Port Arthur, Australia had an average of one mass shooting (involving five or more deaths) every year. Since then, we have not had a single mass shooting. The odds of this being a coincidence are less than one in 100.

The gun buyback also had some unexpected payoffs. While at the Australian National University, in work with my former academic colleague Christine Neill, I looked at the effect of the Australian gun buyback on firearm suicide and homicide rates. Shocking as mass shootings are, they represent a tiny fraction of all gun deaths. If there's a gun in your home, the person most likely to kill you with it is yourself, followed by your spouse.

Neill and I found that the firearm suicide and homicide rates more than halved after the Australian gun buyback. Although the gun death rate was falling before 1997, it accelerated downwards after the buyback. Looking across states, we also found that jurisdictions where more guns were bought back experienced a greater reduction in firearms homicide and suicide.

We estimate that the Australian gun buyback continues to save about 200 lives per year. That means thousands of people are walking the streets today who would not be alive without the National Firearms Agreement. Other work, including that by public health researchers Simon Chapman, Philip Alpers, Kingsley Agho and Michael Jones, reaches a similar conclusion.

For the United States, where Alpers will present research on the Australian experience at the Summit on Reducing Gun Violence in America this week, reform is tougher. According to the General Social Survey, 32 per cent of US households own a gun, and a patchwork of city and state laws means that restrictions in one jurisdiction are often undercut by people travelling interstate to buy a weapon.

Historically, the US National Rifle Association was a moderate body, akin to some Australian shooting groups. It supported the first federal gun laws in the 1930s, and backed a ban on cheap ''Saturday night specials'' in the 1960s. Since the 1977 ''Cincinnati Revolt'', when hardliners took over, the NRA has opposed all restrictions on firearms ownership, including bans on assault rifles and armour-piercing bullets (''cop killers'').
Members of Congress rate the NRA the most powerful lobbying organisation in the nation.

The challenge for American legislators today is to stand up to these powerful extremists, and follow the example of Australia's leaders in 1996. With 86 Americans dying each day because of gun accidents, suicides or homicides, perhaps our experience can persuade sensible US legislators that there is a better way. As in Australia, the onus is on the conservative side of politics.

For Australia, the challenges in firearms policy are more modest, but still real. All states and territories should heed the call from the Minister for Justice, Jason Clare, to implement a national firearms register. This will help to keep track of weapons when they are sold or their owners move interstate. And it will help to ensure that Australian firearms do not fall into the wrong hands.

Andrew Leigh is the federal member for Fraser, and a former professor of economics at the Australian National University.