g'day Free Will,just a couple of points in reply to you, mate,...

g'day Free Will,

just a couple of points in reply to you, mate, starting with that old chestnut "Guns dont kill people, people kill people", and then "Gun Control DOESNT Work".

You mention Martin Bryant......the only reason he killed so many is that other people werent armed. That horrific restaurant scenario, where he mowed down people innocently eating would NOT have happened in the United States....because 75% of the diners would have pulled theirs & shot him to pieces. Also, one of the assault rifles used by Bryant had been handed in for destruction to Victorian Police. Strange how it re-surfaced in Tassie, eh?
Great Britain banned all handguns after their last massacre.
Even their Olympic pistol team has to go to Europe to practice. Not a handgun allowed in the country. Yet hand-gun related deaths have risen astronomically. One reads frequently of teen gang members shot in drive-by's by other teens with their illegal Glocks.
All John Howard did was to take certain categories of firearms away from LICENSED HOLDERS. You dont think the Bandidos, Commancheros & gangs handed theirs in, do you?
But guns they had a record of through licensing were called in. The illegal weapons remain in the street. The only instance of a licensed shooter killing anyone that I can think of was that Asian student (in Vic ?) who amassed several handguns & went berserk. Recent kneejerk call for banning guns again over the armoured car robbery in the East, where a guard was shot dead.....you think the robbers were licensed gun owners using their own weapons?
Gun control of law-abiding citizens achieves nothing.....
In Switzerland, every household has a military weapon and ammunition....yet how many shootings do you hear from there?
They obviously think different to us.
US shootings one reads about give a wrong impression. They are mainly crime-related and by people with illegal guns.
I did say mainly. And they occur in places like New York where handgun ownership was banned (till recently) and only the baddies had guns. In states where gun ownership is high, and some counties have MANDATORY gun ownership, crime is reduced to virtually ZERO. Baddies dont want to risk robbing someone who they know has a gun and can legally defend himself and his property. But in those areas, everyone behaves and avoids confrontation for that reason.
Mind you, I concede that with our Australian culture of drunken & drug-induced violence at present, with the unprovoked "glassings" & bashings , it would be crazy to give everyone a gun. Our young people have the wrong mentality.
But a total ban on guns in Australia would achieve nothing.
The bikies & crime gangs would still have theirs.....and 90% of law-abiding legal gun owners would become criminals and replace their wrongfully confiscated guns with illegal ones.
If you want to rid Australia of violent deaths, ban glasses & bottles, knives, cricket bats, star pickets,......and motor cars....and maybe do something about the twits running Family Law Courts........leave our guns alone.
The guns would still exist.
And Martin Bryants would still get their weapons from criminal sources.
Its people's thinking and conduct that needs to change, not gun laws.

cheers
GZ