Banning guns saves 200 lives a year

[Nervous God]

http://www.smh.com.au/national/howards-gun-legacy--200-lives-saved-a-year-20100829-13xne.html

 

TEN years of suicide data after John Howard's decision to ban and then buy back 600,000 semi-automatic rifles and shotguns has had a stunning effect.

 

The buyback cut firearm suicides by 74 per cent, saving 200 lives a year, according to research to be published in The American Law and Economics Review.

 

A former Australian Treasury economist, Christine Neill, now with Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, said she found the research result so surprising she tried to redo her calculations on the off chance the total could have been smaller.

 

''I fully expected to find no effect at all,'' she told the Herald. ''That we found such a big effect and that it meshed with a range of other data was just shocking, completely unexpected.''

 

Mr Howard's agreement with the states to ban and buy back more than 600,000 weapons after the massacre at Port Arthur in April 1996 cut the country's stock of firearms by 20 per cent and roughly halved the number of households with access to guns.

 

Two of the independent rural MPs now holding the balance of power in Parliament opposed the plan. At the time the Queensland MP Bob Katter said Australia had got ''to the ludicrous point of completely disarming the nation'' and said ''everywhere they ban guns the death rates from guns go up''.

 

Tony Windsor, then in the NSW Parliament, tried to introduce an amendment that would have registered gun owners rather than firearms.

 

Dr Neill says that while it seems surprising that a 20 per cent cut in the number of firearms would have cut the number of suicides from firearms by 74 per cent, none of her academic colleagues have found fault with her finding.

 

Her co-author is the Australian National University academic Dr Andrew Leigh, elected nine days ago as Labor MP for the ACT.

 

They used what is known as a difference-in-differences approach, exploiting the fact that some states withdrew guns more quickly than others and examining whether their firearm suicide rates fell faster.

 

A previous study had found no nationwide effect, noting that firearm suicides began falling before the buyback. However, Dr Neill and Dr Leigh found that states such as Tasmania that withdrew guns quickly had a much bigger decline in firearm suicides than states such as NSW that withdrew more slowly. Whereas the earlier study had found an increase in suicides by other methods, suggesting substitution, Dr Neill's study found no evidence of substitution within any state.

 

''It is simply not the case that there was an increase in non-firearm suicide deaths in states that brought back more firearms,'' she said.

 

''I am confident these lives were saved.''

 

Most of Australia's 2100 suicides each year do not involve firearms, making the 200 lives saved as a result of the firearm ban small in relation to the suicide total. But Dr Neill said applying an accepted financial value to each of these human lives resulted in an economic boost of $500 million a year - an outcome, she said, that represented $800,000 for each weapon destroyed.

 

''This is clearly one of John Howard's greatest legacies - perhaps even one of his greatest economic legacies,'' Dr Neill said.

 

''It also succeeded in its stated goal. Before the buyback, Australia used to have a multiple shooting every year or two.

 

''In the 13 years since, there have been none. I have calculated the probability of that happening by chance. It's extraordinarily low.''

[Old Hippie]

"...The buyback cut firearm suicides by 74 per cent, saving 200 lives a year, according to research to be published in The American Law and Economics Review..."

 

So they found another method?

 

[TheCorinthian]

I wonder what the national rate is and how it has changed too, if at all. That would be the only way to have any significance at all.

[Old Hippie]

Gun stats are often skewed by either side to suit their agenda...

[Guest lazyphil]

i wonder how many lives would be saved banning alcohol. it fucks up society as much as guns, no question.

[khunsanuk]

Hi,

 

Funny to see the reaction of Americans here

The stats do not mesh with their ideas/opinions so they must be wrong. After all, owning a gun is a GOD GIVEN RIGHT!!!

 

Sanuk!

 

PS Banning alcohol would likely have an adverse effect as it would mean it would go underground. People would still (ab)use it, but would likely have to spend a lot more money on it.

They tried this in the US, didn't work.

 

[Mekong]

Phil,

 

You sound like a recovering alcoholic who whinges about your old addiction to substantiate your own station in life.

 

Guns Kill, Vehicles Kill, Alcohol Kills etc ad nauseum.

 

It all comes down to individual responsability, whilst I personaly have no desire to own a firearm my own opinions should not infringe upon the rights of responsible people who wish to do so.

 

I don't have figures at my fingertips, but I would have at a guess that over 90% of gun crime in the UK involves unregistered weapons.

 

People Kill no matter what weapon we allow them to hold ... For the record I am anti gun and would never allow one in my home but a lot of the anti gun clap trap that gets repeated is a bad argument

[Flashermac]

KS - in the USA owning firearms is a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT. God had nothing to do with it. The human creators of the US wrote it in.

 

One cannot expect people from crowded European countries whose "frontier period" was over 1000 years ago to understand the feelings of people who grew up in a huge country with plenty of space and a long tradition of firearms ownership. Americans don't trust their government - and with good reason. If the 2nd Amendment can be done away with, then why not the 1st/ Why not the 14th?

 

What has happened today is that people have changed! When I was a kid most of my friends owned a .22 cal rifle. We plinked at tin cans and such and never pointed them at each other. We also carried pocket knives and never used them to carve each other up. Nowadays there are simply a helluva lot of lunatics running around who should even be allowed access to a baseball bat. So what happened? Why have Americans suddenly become more violent?

 

As to Oz, there has never been the same historic need for individuals to own firearms. Australia is huge, but go a couple of hundred miles from the sea (or less) and who wants to live there? The aborigines were hardly much of a threat, armed with only spears or bows and arrows. I know that several of my ancestors who were killed in 19th century Indian attacks. How many Aussies were killed by aborigines?

 

Something I don't understand from this survey is why the firearms suicides have dropped so much. Presumably it is because city people are not buying handguns. Firearms are not illegal in Oz, only semi-automatic weapons are. But a single shot weapon is fine for blowing one's own brains out.

 

p.s. Interesting comparison to banning booze. Most of the weapons used in crimes are stolen. No one can walk into a shop, purchase a weapon and waltz out the door with it. One has to wait for several days while a police check is being done on them. This means that the bad guys buy theirs on the underground - the same way that illegal drugs are bought. Criminals don't pay attention to any laws, period. We saw that during National Prohibition.

 

[chuckwoww]

'Why have Americans suddenly become more violent?'

 

I'm not sure they have. But there are a lot more Americans these days. It's still a huge country but it's getting a little crowded in places. There are a lot more social pressures nowadays which means more people going postal.

[Flashermac]

Nobody went off on mass killing sprees before. Kids didn't go gun down their classmates. I remember that movies and TV were much less violent - a connection ... or a reflection?