Australian gun laws back in the news in the U.S. following mass shooting in South Carolina

[CBHagman]

Last edited Thu Jul 2, 2015, 10:58 AM - Edit history (1)

I hesitated to post this because A) I'm not Australian, B) can't speak for news coverage across the United States, and C) realize that on DU guns can be an extremely incendiary topic.

All that said, the June 17th shooting of nine African-American Bible study members at a historic church in Charleston, South Carolina, has intensified the public discussion of gun laws, and the president himself actually referred to the Australian response to the Port Arthur massacre.

So I present without further comment two links, one from a blog at The Washington Post and the other to a YouTube video of a performance by comedian Jim Jefferies. The latter has been making the rounds on Facebook for quite some time.

[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/23/what-happened-after-australia-banned-lots-of-guns-after-a-massacre/[/url]

John Howard, who served as prime minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, is no one's idea of a left-wing politician. He was one of George W. Bush's closest allies, backing the Iraq war, and took a hard line domestically against increased immigration and union organizing.

But one of Howard's other lasting legacies is Australia's gun control regime. The law banned semi-automatic and automatic rifles and shotguns. It also instituted a mandatory buy-back program for newly banned weapons.

In the summer of 2012, after a gunman killed people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., using several weapons including an assault rifle, Howard called on the U.S. to follow Australia's lead...

Comedian Jim Jefferies on the U.S. Constitution, guns, and a lot more:

[url]

[/url]

On edit: I had to change the link for the Jim Jefferies video, as the first was taken down. I also realize now that I misspelled his name.

[randys1]

1. Big fan of Jim, saw this when it first came out. Australia is not handicapped by severely

greedy, hateful politicians (teaparty) and corporations which will never do the right thing.

The rest of the world sincerely does not understand.

I do, though.

I know why this is happening, same reason we have a war on Women and minorities and the poor.

Conservatism is a disease.

[Matilda]

2. We may not have the number of right-wing loonies in parliament as in U.S.,

but as a ratio of population, we're probably running close.

Under Tony Abbott's regime, many teaparty style politicians have raised their heads. Abbott himself is a total RWNJ, and his front bench is full of similar types. Only the Independents and cross-benchers in the Senate have stopped them from cutting the dole and pensions, to both the elderly and the disabled, and from smashing our once-excellent public health system and our state-funded schools.

These people have as their motto,"If you can't afford to pay for it, you don't deserve to have it". Sound familiar?

And see my reply to Judi Lynne's post on Baiada above. There's something very crooked going on there.

And let's not forget Gina Rinehart and her mining operations - Australia's richest woman thinks Australian workers should live like workers in India (her words). They should be grateful to be paid $2 a day; again, her words.

[CBHagman]

3. And now the NRA is bothering you.

[url]http://www.theage.com.au/world/your-gun-laws-are-a-mistake-national-rifle-association-to-australia-20150712-giaqal.html[/url]

In an article entitled Australia: There Will be Blood, the National Rifle Association in the US has launched an attack on Australia's gun laws in the latest edition of its most militant gun rights publication, America's First Freedom.

The article claims there is a "growing consensus" in Australia that the gun buyback and ban on semi-automatic weapons introduced after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 had failed to make the nation safer.

Not that I'd trust the NRA to tell me whether it was raining outside, but here are the figures for combating their nonsense:

[url]http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/17/lisa-bloom/americans-are-20-times-likely-die-gun-violence-cit/[/url]

The United States is tops -- way tops -- for gun deaths, with a 2010 rate of 3.2 firearm-related deaths per 100,000 population, according to statistics collected by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Chile was second at 2.2, followed by Turkey and Switzerland, tied for third at 0.8. The rest of the countries fell below 1, if they made the map at all.

The U.S. rate is more than 20 times the rate of Australia, France, the United Kingdom (excluding Northern Ireland), Israel, South Korea, Japan, Norway, Poland and Slovenia. The U.S. rate firearm-related deaths is closer to 10 or 16 times the rates of countries such as Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain.