Massacres - legal gun owners main perpetrators

This week there was widespread outrage when the news broke that a gun shop would open up in a residential retail area in Ku-ring-gai, a northern Sydney suburb. Many parents spoke of their concern as the shop will be located near a child care centre.

 

True to form, the gun lobby quickly went into action to portray firearm ownership as a family friendly exercise. And who best to put the gloss on this hard to sell story but women shooters.

 

This time it was WiSH

- the International Coalition for Women in Shooting and Hunting – who did the dirty work for the gun lobby.

 

WiSH chairwoman Dr Samara McPhedran argued

that "Licensed firearm owners undergo extensive background checks by the police before being permitted to use or own a firearm."

 

What Dr McPhedran failed to acknowledge is that it has been licensed gun owners who have perpetrated the majority of gun massacres in Australia and overseas.

 

This is the ugly side of gun ownership that the gun lobby works hard to hide. Sadly the facts on gun massacres tell the story and clearly show why Ku-ring-gai parents and the Greens were the responsible ones in this debate when they voiced their opposition to a gun shop being located near a child care centre.

 

An examination

of 14 of the deadliest mass shootings committed in wealthy nations over the last 35 years reveals that 79 percent of the victims were shot with lawfully held firearms (185 of 233 victims) and 86 percent of these mass shootings (12 of 14) were committed by lawful gun owners.

 

This list includes the massacre of 16 children and their teacher at a school in Dunblane, Scotland, by a former shopkeeper wielding his legally obtained semi-automatic handguns.

 

This is not the first time that Dr McPhedran has attempted to push the responsible gun owners line. Her 2006 paper co-authored with Dr Jeanine Baker and printed in the British Journal of Criminology, argues that Australia’s gun buyback had no effect on homicide or suicide rates.

 

This is a popular gun lobby theme – asserting there is no evidence that the major advances in gun control in 1987, 1996 and 2002 have had any impact in reducing gun deaths in Australia. Remember their bumper sticker "Guns don’t kill people, people do".

 

Although the McPhedran -White paper appeared in the prestigious British Journal of Criminology the research methods the study relies on have been criticised as seriously flawed by economists Dr Christine Neill, of Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada and Dr Andrew Leigh from The Australian National University.

 

Their paper

is worth reading. The argument about methodology will probably go around and around on this one but it is worth remembering that in the 18 years prior to the Port Arthur massacre there were 13 mass shootings and in the decade since 1996 there have been none.

 

A study

by the Australian Institute of Criminology found that there has been a decline in firearm related death rates, mainly in the number of suicides, in most jurisdictions in Australia since the gun laws were tightened.

 

The 1996 gun law changes supported by Prime Minister John Howard and all state Premiers have made Australia a safer place. But that legislation only banned semi-automatic long arms. We still need to ban semi-automatic hand guns,

 

The Greens are not trying to stop Dr McPhedran and her gun enthusiastic colleagues from engaging in shooting as a sport.

 

Dr McPhedran and the rest of the gun lobby would gain more support and understanding if they too worked to make Australia safer by supporting the campaign to ban semi-automatic handguns. Such a ban would still leave lots of firearms available for the sporting shooters to continue to enjoy their chosen sport.

 

But for now Dr McPhedran and her colleagues are backing gun shops opening in residential areas and resisting tightening gun laws.

 

The black market in hand guns is flourishing via theft from licensed gun owners, similar to the one preparing to open in Ku-ring-gai.

 

The significant changes to Australian gun laws that have put in place importance controls have come about in the immediate aftermath of a massacre. Let's hope it does not take a massacre to bring in the much need ban on semi-automatic handguns. < Previous Next > Social and Economic Justice | Grassroots Democracy | Ecological Sustainability | Peace and Non-Violence