[fallingblock]

As in: "Trust us with our guns...we surely do not trust you peasants..."

***************************************************



Station:2GB
Date:04/06/2003
Program:ALAN JONES
Time:07:16 AM

Item:
JONES TALKS ABOUT NEW HANDGUN LEGISLATION AND SAYS
THAT A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE ASKING WHY WE ARE TAKING GUNS
OUT OF THE HANDS OF LAWFUL CITIZENS.

INTERVIEW: JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER.
ALAN JONES: Can I just raise this question which has
occupied a lot of interest from my listeners here
about handguns - to be illegal from July. They are
asking why are we taking guns from people who aren't
breaking the law because criminals are not going to
queue up to hand them in.

JOHN HOWARD: Yes, but if you leave them in the hands
of people who aren't necessarily breaking the law or
have no intention of the law, there's no guarantee
they won't get into the hands of people who will.

ALAN JONES: The London Daily Telegraph editorialised
on this in January, and it said - and I quote, "The
increased use of handguns bears out criticism that the
ban imposed after Dunblane took weapons out of
the hands of law-abiding shooting club members rather
than criminals, and had no impact on gun crime."
International statistics - and there's plenty of text
on all of this - suggests that violent crime has
increased when we've taken handguns away from
law-abiding citizens.

JOHN HOWARD: The experience in Australia on the
statistical evidence available in the past six years,
the experience in Australia, is that the homicide rate
from gun use has fallen since the gun laws were
brought in, in May of 1996. Now that's the Australian
experience. I don't answer for the experience of
other countries. And I'm responsible, of course, for
Australia. There has been a measured
improvement. It's not huge. But there has been a
measured improvement.

ALAN JONES: Just on that, though, so we should be
taking taxpayers' money, should we, to buy back guns
with a particular barrel length? So
when I get the money then for the gun that's been
bought back, I'll just buy a gun of a different barrel
length which fits within the law.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, you've got to strike a balance
between taking out of circulation as many guns as
possible. My starting point is that people
should not have a gun unless they establish a clear
need for it. I don't accept the view in our society
that people should have a gun as a right. I think
they are potentially dangerous weapons, even in a
domestic situation in the hands of law-abiding
citizens. People are capable of losing their temper,
in a fight, in an argument, and reaching for a gun and
using it - with lethal effect. There's
plenty of evidence around the world that that is what
happens, even in law-abiding families, even in
situations where you would never think criminal
behaviour would occur. We all are capable, I guess,
on occasions, of losing control. And if there's a
weapon at your disposal and you can use it
instantaneously, then people do. That is the
foundation of the belief. I know some people, who
normally support me on other issues, don't agree with
me on this. But I feel very strongly that in our kind
of society you have to establish a reason to have a
weapon, to have a gun of any type. Now there are
categories, there are obviously farmers,there are
sporting shooters, there are a whole group of people,
security people who, as part of their job, should have
guns. But beyond that, I think people have to be very
closely scrutinised before they have guns.
I think there's very little reason why they should
have guns.
****************************************************
:uhoh: :scrutiny: :uhoh: :scrutiny: :uhoh: :scrutiny: :uhoh:

[Tamara]

I think they are potentially dangerous weapons, even in a
domestic situation in the hands of law-abiding citizens. People are capable of losing their temper, in a fight, in an argument, and reaching for a gun and using it - with lethal effect.

That's always been one of my favorites.

Are there really people who think that they are likely to up and shoot someone over who got the last Chips Ahoy? If so, do they keep big knives in their kitchen?

[foghornl]

up and shoot someone over who got the last Chips Ahoy? No, but if you took my last Fig Newton..........:evil:

people should not have a gun unless they establish a clear need for it. Well, crime is going nutzo in Australia, and I NEED to be able to defend myself and family from those of malicious & felonious intent. Don't believe that's true Mr. Howard?
Then get rid of all YOUR guns, security/body guards, Secret Service (or equivalent) protection etc, and see how long you survive unscathed.

[T.Stahl]

People are capable of losing their temper, in a fight, in an argument, and reaching for a gun and using it - with lethal effect. (...) We all are capable, I guess, on occasions, of losing control. (...) That is the foundation of the belief.

IF this statement is true, it is true for you and me and every man and woman serving in the police, border patrol, customs, armed forces or any other public authority.
IF this statement is true and if it is used to argue against the private possession of guns, it MUST be used to argue against the official possession of guns by the police, the armed forces and any other public authority, too.
IF the state can't trust you or me with guns, they can't trust any police officer or soldier either.

[Zundfolge]

people should not have a gun unless they establish a clear need for it.

There's the dividing line between a free society and tyranny.

One should never have to declare a "need" for anything they want (assuming they can afford it).

[P95Carry]

What typical claptrap paranoia ....... control ...... control ........ and more control. Nanny ....... nanny ........ what a load of bolony ....:rolleyes:

Status patheticus australis maximus.

[fallingblock]

May think that he himself cannot be trusted with a gun.

He has certainly demonstrated he cannot be trusted with office:D

[Bruce in West Oz]

To his credit, Alan Jones (the compere), wasn't prepared to let this go ....

Station: 2GB Date: 05/06/2003
Program: ALAN JONES Time: 07:14 AM
Item: JONES DISCUSSES THE INITIATIVE TO BUY BACK HANDGUNS AT THE
TAXPAYER'S EXPENSE. HE COMMENTS THAT IT IS A
COMPLETE WASTE OF TAXPAYERS' MONEY. HE TALKS WITH JOYCE LEE MALCOLM, WHO
SAYS THAT AFTER THE DUNBLANE
MASSACRE IN BRITAIN, CRIMES USING GUNS HAVE ACTUALLY INCREASED.

INTERVIEW: JOYCE LEE MALCOLM, BENTLEY COLLEGE.

ALAN JONES: I questioned the Prime Minister yesterday on an issue
that's generated a lot of correspondence from you, and that is this
Federal Government backed initiative to buy back handguns with
taxpayers' money, $100 million of it, from July 1. It's another one of
these buy back schemes, so it only applies to guns with a certain barrel
length. I can't believe this, I have to tell you. So, police vans will
be touring the countryside, seizing and destroying the guns, and paying
compensation to their owners. Now, this is a phenomenal amount of
taxpayers' money that could be spent somewhere else. There are 47,100
registered handguns in New South Wales
alone. The buy back will only involve 21,000, so there'll still be
26,100 out there. And I venture to say that most, if not all of them,
are in the hands of law abiding licensed shooters.

And as you've heard me say many times, I can't understand why we
have these buy backs, when the only people handing in the guns, are the
people who aren't breaking the law. I've never seen criminals queuing
up to hand in their weapons. So we disarm the people who abide by the
law, do it with taxpayers' money, and the criminals think it's
Christmas.

Now the only place to go in determining what we should be doing
therefore, is to the statistics. Now I know that sometimes our eyes
glaze over with statistics. Let me try and be simple. I was reading
last night a paper from the Australian Institute of Criminology, and
it's very hard to get up to date statistics.

But this paper on firearm related deaths in Australia, and it
goes back to 1998, said, "In 1998 a total of 127,202 deaths were
registered in Australia. Of those only 328, or .26%, were firearm
related." It then said, "Suicide accounted for the majority of firearm
deaths, 71.6%." It made the point that 17.4% were for homicide, which
is murder, and deaths resulting from an accidental discharge of the
firearm, 6.4%, and then there was a 2.1% resulting from legal
intervention, that's as a result of law enforcement officers performing
their legal duties.

The report confirmed, in relation to firearm deaths, "A
noticeable decrease in comparison to 1997." Or as the report says, "In
other words, in 1998 Australia recorded 110 fewer firearm related deaths
than 1997, and 195 fewer than in 1996."

So what are we doing? The latest Australian Bureau of
Statistics report, demonstrates that in 2001, and they are the most up
to date figures I could find, only 49 people in Australia were killed
with firearms. Now this doesn't include just handguns, which we're
buying back, but rifles as well.

The Australian Institute of Criminology Report No 46 of April
this year, shows that homicides this year were 20% higher than the
previous year, but homicides by firearms actually fell. Yet we're
spending $100 million on buying back firearms, which really the
statistics don't support. It's clear that nowhere in the world, where
buy backs or firearm banning has been brought into being, has there been
improved citizen safety, in fact it's the reverse.

I mentioned to the Prime Minister yesterday the kerfuffle in
Britain at the beginning of the year. You see, in Britain, in the wake
of the Dunblane Massacre in 1996, the number of crimes involving
handguns more than doubled. You might recall a fellow broke into the
Dunblane primary school on March 13, 1996 in Scotland, opened fire on a
class in a gym, killing 16 children and a teacher. In addition to those
killed he injured 12 other children and two teachers, and then killed
himself. And then they banned firearms.

Well, in 2001/2002 in Britain, the total number of gun killings
was up 32% on the previous year. The Daily Telegraph in London
editorialised, and I quote: "The increased use of handguns bears out
criticism that the ban imposed after Dunblane took weapons out of the
hands of law abiding shooting club members, rather than criminals, and
had no impact on gun crime."

The United States seems to be moving in a different direction.
Since 1986 more than 25 states have passed new laws encouraging people
to carry concealed handguns. Dr Gary Mauser, in his 2001 publication,
Misfire, Firearm Registration in Canada, wrote: "As surprising as it is
for the media, these new laws have caused violent crime rates to drop,
including homicide rates. That's where they encourage people to carry
concealed firearms."

Of the UK, Dr Mauser said, "Clearly the firearm laws have not
caused firearm crime to fall, and the gun laws have probably increased
violence, by ensuring the general public is disarmed." He said,
"Despite banning and confiscating all handguns in Britain, violent crime
and firearm crime continue to grow."

Well, Joyce Lee Malcolm is an American Professor of History at
Bentley College, and a senior adviser to the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology's Security Studies Program. She is the author of a
nationally acclaimed text, To Keep and Bear Arms, The Origins of an
Anglo-American Right, as well as Guns and Violence, The English
Experience. And Professor Malcolm is on the line. Good morning.

JOYCE LEE MALCOLM: Good morning.

ALAN JONES: Thank you for your time. This Guns and Violence, The
English Experience. It's true to say, isn't it, that after the Dunblane
primary school episode, handguns were banned, crimes involving handguns
have more than doubled.

JOYCE LEE MALCOLM: Yes, they have. Crimes with the very same
weapon that was banned, have become much more prevalent, and it seems to
be just on an upward projectory for the last four years.

ALAN JONES: And yet since 1997 in Britain, 200,000 privately owned
pistols and revolvers have been surrendered.

JOYCE LEE MALCOLM: That's right. At great expense, as you can
imagine.

ALAN JONES: That's right.

JOYCE LEE MALCOLM: Also taking hundreds of thousands of police
hours, to survey and monitor and regulate them. So it's really had a
rather perverse effect. It's certainly not helped public safety, it's
just taken the police and put them on a program that doesn't seem to be
very effective at all.

ALAN JONES: Yes. I read a piece last night, where metropolitan
police service data, published in June 2001, indicated that gun related
murders in England tripled in the first half of the year, compared to
the year 2000. In other words, since Dunblane, the figures have got
worse.

JOYCE LEE MALCOLM: They have, and instead of really concentrating
on how to eliminate illegal weapons, the government simply banned the
legally held ones. And as you have pointed out in some of your
statistics, very, very little violent crime had ever occurred with
legally registered weapons. It was just an infinitesimal amount in
strips.

ALAN JONES: But why do governments behave in contradiction of
research, established research? I read last night the Centre for
Defence studies in Britain said, "The British experience clearly shows
that prohibiting the possession of handguns by licensed owners, is
ineffective in reducing the criminal misuse of firearms."

JOYCE LEE MALCOLM: I think it's simpler. It's easier to pass a law
that will affect law abiding people, and very much more difficult to
actually figure out how to stop potential criminals from getting weapons
and using them. But the trouble is, that when you disarm law abiding
citizens, then you make them much more tempting targets for the
potential criminal.

ALAN JONES: But as you say in your book, I mean, the safety of
English people, and the same with Australian people, is being staked on
this thesis that fewer private guns means less crime.

JOYCE LEE MALCOLM: Yes, and it simply isn't true. And you
mentioned the United States experiment. Because we have a Federal
system, the states have taken different tacks, and the fact that states
have begun to allow law abiding people to carry concealed weapons, seems
to have worked, and as some states watched the crime go down, other
states that have that system, they've copied it.

So just in the last month another two states have joined the
list. There are now 35 states that insist that the police issue
certificates to people, to carry concealed handguns, and presumably with
special training. But nonetheless they have to allow it. And ordinary
people are extremely responsible.

ALAN JONES: You're a scholar, and you've researched all of this.
Here we are, about to embark, on July 1, on a $100 million buy back
program from private owners of handguns. If you were advising the
Federal Government, what would you say?

JOYCE LEE MALCOLM: I would say to save the public's money, don't do
that, and instead, direct it towards putting more police on the streets,
other programs that really have some kind of chance of making the
country safer.

ALAN JONES: And customs, of course. About how we get things into
the country?

JOYCE LEE MALCOLM: Yes. You know, Australia is a continent,
everything has to come in by air or sea, there ought to be able to be a
way of regulating guns as they come in, and making sure that illegal
ones are not on the streets, or not coming into the country. But that
would be far better use of public resources, than spending so much
money, and also disarming law abiding people.

ALAN JONES: Yes. So would it be fair to say, and I don't want to
put words in your mouth, is this a waste of money?

JOYCE LEE MALCOLM: I think it is. It's a waste of money, and it's
a tremendous waste of police time. And there's just so much public
resources available, and if it's spent on this kind of buy back, it
isn't being used for more effective ways of promoting public safety.

ALAN JONES: Good on you. Good to talk to you, and thank you for
your time.
JOYCE LEE MALCOLM: Oh, you're welcome.

ALAN JONES: That's Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm, an acclaimed
academic in this field, a senior adviser at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, which is where I was speaking to her from, just then, in
security studies, and an acclaimed author of many texts on this issue,
including one entitled Guns and Violence, The English Experience, in
which she made quite plain that following the claim of guns after the
Dunblane Massacre, crime in England escalated.

This has to be thr first time I have seen a major radio station and major on-air personality actually support legitimate gun owners. Jones has a h-u-g-e audience, who take what he says very seriously. I hope -- I pray -- this is the start of a groundswell against the Australian anti-gun phobics.

Bruce

[P95Carry]

Bruce .... wow ... that's one for the record books!! I wonder how large an audience it had ... i would hope substantial at least.

Sadly tho I guess ... it'll have little or no impact on the lunacy that is planned .......... how I wish genuine logic and common sense could be applied for once .....:(

[twoblink]

Err..

Refresh my memory here.. who there lives in a "need based" society? Are we all a "want" based society??

Do you REALLY need a car? After all, if Tamara took you last chip ahoy, you might want to run her over! The arguement is so stupid, it's incredible..

His Pompous rear end is just trying to say, I NEED to survive and not die, while you don't, because you are peasents of a different cast..

It's the same Feinstein arguement..

Yuk.. I said Feinstein before breakfast...:barf:

[fallingblock]

It's really encouraging to see Alan Jones swatting back at the Emperor, er, P.M.:D

Twoblink....Yup, the elitists really think they know what's best for the rest of us....

And try not to utter those profanities before a meal:)

[Radagast]

p95carry, Alan Jones has the second largest talk back radio audience in Australia. I think in the realm of 15% of the national mornng radio audience.

Unfortunately Howard has a monomania about guns, so this won't change his stand, but it may sway the state governments that have to actually legislate to ban firearms.

Time will tell.

Radagast

[Esky]

Hey, thanks for posting these entries- I didn't realize that Alan Jones was on our side, I'll make a point of listening to him in future.

Too bad that John Howard, who has many sterling qualities, has a complete blind spot where it concerns guns, although he knows that many (if not most?) of his supporters disagree. He even acknowledges it himself:
I know some people, who normally support me on other issues, don't agree with me on this.
I'd really like to know where Howard gets this from:JOHN HOWARD: The experience in Australia on the statistical evidence available in the past six years, the experience in Australia, is that the homicide rate from gun use has fallen since the gun laws were brought in, in May of 1996. Now that's the Australian experience. I don't answer for the experience of other countries. And I'm responsible, of course, for Australia. There has been a measured improvement. It's not huge. But there has been a measured improvement.Maybe I'm getting square eyes here, I've been over and over Alan Jones' statistics, and every time I think I've figured it out, I'm in error. Seems like there has been a reduction in firearms deaths; but I'm sure I've read elsewhere that firearm deaths have actually risen, not fallen, since the 1996 laws were passed. Of course Alan Jones points out that the overall homicide rate has risen tremendously (20%!)-

I admit, I'm confused as hell about these various "statistics". Wasn't it Mark Twain who said, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics?"

Esky
who can count up to twenty if he takes his shoes off

[fallingblock]

the way I see it, Littly Johnny is hoping that we all really believe that it's better to be beaten-strangled-bludgeoned-stabbed-or whatever than shot to death:rolleyes:

****************************************************
" John Howard, who has many sterling qualities, has a complete blind spot where it concerns guns, although he knows that many (if not most?) of his supporters disagree.
***************************************************

I suspect that, like most arrogant and irrational hoplophobes, Johnny is 'doing it for us', regardless of what we think.:fire:

He is a very oddball 'conservative', I'll agree.

[Esky]

Yeah fallingblock,

I guess you're right, he's an "oddball conservative." He sure keeps me scratching my head! And he seems sincere, he really does seem to believe that removing guns from law-abiding people will somehow "trickle down" to prevent criminals from being armed. (Yah, it's much better to be "beaten-strangled-bludgeoned-stabbed-or whatever" ain't it!)

This very typical belief, in the complete absence of any facts or evidence to support it, has always amazed me.

Esky
who would like to sell you the Sydney Harbour Bridge, if you share in this kind of belief (legit reason for sale, I'm not using it any more)

[DrPsycho]

I saw the ad that was replayed on the late news last night, regarding this new buyback (Channel Ten, Sydney). It was a campaign to ban outright ALL semi-auto handguns in Aust. Truly sad... The way things are going, it would probably happen in the next decade.

[hipower22]

I guess you're right, he's an "oddball conservative." He sure keeps me scratching my head! And he seems sincere,

Esky, you should know by now that, in John Howard's case, sincerity is a euphemism for bending the truth. After all this is the man who distinguishes between "core promises and non-core promises".

This is the man who "promised" to "never ever" introduce a goods and services tax. This is the man who, when quizzed about the GST said that he only promised not introduce it in his previous term, so "never" now has a finite duration.

This is the man who claimed that children were thrown deliberately overboard to provoke sympathy only to be exposed as a manipulator by an Australian Navy video and who still will not admit his error.

I detest the sawn-off little runt.

[fallingblock]

how you really feel, hipower22..but this is The High Road:D

Esky:

You're certainly right about the amazing fact that people seem quite willing to believe that guns are capable of 'causing' violence.
I've had many discussions with otherwise quite reasonable people, particularly here in Australia, who seem to have a big reasoning 'black hole' on this issue.
You can ask why these public shootings weren't happening until the last 15 years or so, despite firearms being much more easily available then, and they don't seem to hear:rolleyes:

Perhaps now is the time to sell your bridge?:)