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by McP 1485 days ago
Good list, but the closest thing to a mass shooting after 1996 is a familicide with 7 killed [1]. It doesn't really compare to the Port Arthur massacre.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmington_shooting

1 comments

So, it works? But it's not enough to prove that something works (or maybe it is), there should ideally be some hypothetical method of action. What's the best theory on a voluntary buyback program stopping mass shootings?
No, it doesn't work. Picking one place an outcome happened after a law was passed, while ignoring all places similar laws were passed, is not how you evaluate evidence.

For example, New Zealand didn't pass such a law, but had the same reduction. The first world actually saw a massive homicide reduction during the same period. Some hypotheses include reduction of lead in the environment for ~prev 15-20 years, resulting in less violent people. Econ lit is full of references on all this stuff.

If you do stuff like try to correlate overall homicide rate among OECD countries (or even US states, or all countries) with gun ownership rates, you get a slightly negative correlation. If you expect less guns means less homicides, this should surprise you.

Lots of other countries also have passed similar laws - some saw increases in violence, some didn't. Picking one where violence went up and concluding laws don't work is as incorrect as picking Australia.

> New Zealand didn't pass such a law

Yes, they bloody well did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arms_(Prohibited_Firearms,_Mag...

Cherry-picking and failure to do basic research aren't good for discussion. Not when others do it - an accusation you've slung in multiple branches of this thread - and not when you do it. Please do your part to keep this from deteriorating even further.

>Yes, they bloody well did.

Yes, they passed one in 2019.

They didn't pass one in 1990s and they saw the same violence reduction that pretty much all first world countries saw from then till now. So attributing changes in Australia to a 1996 law without noticing the evidence for the same reduction elsewhere without such laws is still the same erroneous logic.

>Cherry-picking and failure to do basic research aren't good for discussion.

Maybe if you read what I wrote "For example, New Zealand didn't pass such a law, but had the same reduction. " and understood that to mean what it says - there was a reduction over that time without such a law. Passing one 20+ years after the fact does not change that those reductions were seen around the world, including New Zealand.

If they pass more next year it doesn't invalidate that without such a law they saw reductions. If they remove all laws in a decade it doesn't change the fact that without such a law they saw reductions. If the world ends it doesn't change the fact that without such a law they saw reductions.

See the difference?

>Please do your part to keep this from deteriorating even further.

Indeed.

> They didn't pass one in 1990s

Wow, those goalposts sure moved a long way! We were talking about the Osmington shooting in 2018, so 2019 is totally relevant. Also, New Zealand did pass an amendment to the Arms Act in 1992, in response to the Aramoana massacre. So even if you did want to restrict this to that narrower time range you're still very very wrong. You cherry-picked the numbers for reduction in deaths (without citation) and claimed it was unrelated to any law change only because you failed to do the basic research which would have shown that there was such a change after all. That's exactly the dishonesty you project onto others.

According to the guidelines, we're supposed to be curious, and not merely polemical. If you're not willing to learn the facts on your own, maybe at least engage people in actual dialogue instead of always attacking them for having reached different conclusions based on those facts.

>Wow, those goalposts sure moved a long way!

Read the thread your replying into. Here's the descending comments:

1. Topic: Australia confiscated 650k guns. Murder and suicides plummeted. This was 1996

2. Death plummets in the decades following 1996.

3. There were more mass shootings in Australia before the 1996 law than after.

4. List with shootings since 1996.

5. List doesn't compare to the shooting in 1996.

6. Question on evidence about effectiveness of such buybacks, asking about the buyback from Australia working.....

7. Me: It doesn't necessarily work. Similarly to Australia since 1996, other countries saw similar reductions in murder, even without passing such a law. New Zealand for example saw this reduction without passing such a law (around the same time clearly implied, since we were talking about reduction in crime from around 1996....)

8. You: derailed by ignoring the thread and pointing out New Zealand passed a law in 2019, well after the crime drop.

You are really the only one in this thread confused about how to demonstrate if such laws work by looking at the evidence.

>We were talking about the Osmington shooting in 2018

Um no, we were not. It was mentioned in a comment about items on a list. The nest comment went back to asking about effectiveness of laws like the 1996 law, and the one after that clearly went back to discussing evidence for or against such laws by using other places, again from 1996. No one else jumped back to it except you much later...

>Also, New Zealand did pass an amendment to the Arms Act in 1992

Yep, and tell me exactly how many and which guns this removed? Oh, none? So they didn't remove any guns.... And how is this evidence in a thread asking about gun buyback law effectiveness? The summaries of the law even state that it did not change much, because like the US Assault Weapons Ban, it was based on scary looking things instead of important things like lethality.

But it didn't remove guns, and apparently didn't change much at all.

Since you seem unable to note the discussion is about homicide rates dropping pretty consistently despite local laws, here is New Zealand's homicide rate over the entire period in question [1]. Which laws caused this? Is there clear jumps?

Now do the same for pretty much any first world country, note the same reductions, note the variety of laws passed or not, and pretty soon you notice the laws do not seem to be the driving force in homicide reduction.

But go ahead and keep losing the thread and moving the goal posts.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NZL/new-zealand/murder...