You're still wrong, Yankee....
I have to humbly disagree with you here and stand by my claim that it is virtually impossible for a whack job loner to obtain something like an AR-15 or SLR. In fact, it is virtually impossible for anybody to get them.
"Anybody" covers a lot of territory.
An autoloading pistol is as close as the nearest cop.
Even a steel bollard would suffice.
In any case, organised crime gangs which do trade in illegal guns are not in the business of committing the sort of mass-murder which the laws were set up to try and prevent. I'm not concerned about a member of the Hell's Angels going postal in my office building or my kid's school.
And the Australian office building/school shootings happened when?
Before johnnie's laws?
No? So how do you figure the laws are preventing something that didn't happen prior to their enactment?
Many of our spree killers were legal licenced shooters and some had very respectable professional lives - psychological assessment simply doesn't cut it.
Respectable professional lives?
Australian spree shooters?
Could you provide examples?
....Thirteen years later and we're still waiting for your 'reality' to come true. Just how happy will you be when some psychopath finally manages to get his hands on a highly restricted weapon and commit mass-murder with it? If some wacko finally manages to circumvent the law and kill a bunch of innocents, are you going to somehow see that as proof that the laws shouldn't exist or don't work?
Thirteen years after 1960 no "spree" shootings happened.
They are exceedingly rare in Australia.
With or without little johnnies laws.
Yes, when another one happens that will certainly demonstrate conclusively that the law didn't prevent it. Never does.
It's not rocket science, Yankee.
We have laws against drink-driving but just because some idiots still do it doesn't mean that the laws should be thrown out or were wrong in the first place.
Ah yes, but do the laws stop drunk driving?
Same with little johnnie's "tough gun laws".
They won't prevent a 'spree shooting" when someone is determined to commit one.
Explain to me why we had ten mass shootings in the decade before the laws and exactly zero, zip, nada, nil in the decade since. My theory is that spree killers who could previously pick up military style semi-automatic weapons and commit mass murder no longer have the means to do so because of draconian gun laws.
Again, "Spree" shootings are extremely rare in Australia. Look before the decade you reference. A MSSA is not necessary for a 'spree' killing.
Google Charles Whitman at University of Texas.
I believe that those people still exist in our society and I suspect that their number is increasing but I believe that the primary means to commit their crime has been effectively denied to them. I believe that some try to find other means to carry out the crime but I suspect that a great many end up comitting suicide without hurting anyone else (it is an almost universal character of spree killers that they had previously attempted suicide or that they kill themselves after comitting their crime).
Surely those folks are among us, likely in increasing numbers as the media continues to glorify 'spree' killing with each incident overseas.
The 'type' to 'spree' kill and then suicide wants revenge/attention/satisfaction. They are seldom content with a simple suicide. Certainly
something as vacuous as little johnnie's gun laws wouldn't put them off.
See Childers, QLD example.
Not impossible but it is so difficult and expensive that it is a genuine barrier to them.
Anyone with Martin Bryant's purchasing power could obtain a firearm easily anywhere in Australia today. Do you believe the Glocks being used regularly in SW Sydney criminal shootings are stolen from legitimate owners?
The laws at the time provided no barrier whatsoever to Bryant getting those guns legally.
He had no firearms licence. Nor were several pleas to do something about Martin's shooting behind his home acted upon. Sloppy enforcement, but the law did prevent him from
legally owning his weapons. He simply did what any determined killer would do today. He bought them off the books. Enough money and it will happen.
Again, you are seriously overstating the reality of the black market for guns in this country.
No, Yankee, you are seriously UNDERSTATING that market.
See drugs for example - Doesn't matter how "illegal" the commodity...
If there is enough money, there is supply.
No, they were becomming a relatively common event in Australia but now they don't happen at all.
Common event? How so? One for every 20 years of Australian history?
I think you could call it anecdotal if we had not seen this sort of crime for one or two years but not for thirteen. So you just think that its an amazing miraculous coincidence that these sort of crimes stopped in Australia at exactly the same time as we introduced some of the harshest gun laws in the world?. That all of the loners, losers and psychopaths in the country who might have picked up a gun during the last thirteen years are just biding their time and waiting for the right moment to commit their crime?. Give me a break.
Ah yes, certainly anecdotal. You are dealing with an exceedingly rare type of crime. None occurred in the first 190 years of Australian history.
There were a few instances and then a hiatus of thirteen years - that's certainly not sufficient time to justify cheering for little johnnie's legislation.
The loners, losers, psychopaths etc. are still with us, and they don't require a MSSA to do the deed.
But more to the point, those killed by arson, poison, vehicle or whatever are just as dead as those killed with a firearm.
Murderers cannot be prevented from murdering by banning a tool.
Never has worked.
Focus on interdiction of the murderer - it's far more cost-effective, and less destructive of our freedoms than johnnie's (and Becky Peters) approach.
