Research archive

Firearm Ownership, Government Policy and the Conference Connection

by SSAA Research Team
Australian Shooters Journal
March 1998

Australian law is enacted from the ruling government's policies, which in turn are generally formulated in two ways. Firstly, policy results from the views of the party membership. Secondly, it can originate from think-tanks composed of "experts", academics and bureaucrats. Both types of policy formulation are currently having a profound impact upon firearm owners and urgently need to be addressed.

Not having had a big enough impact in either policy-making forum is a major part of why the firearm-owning community is in its current difficulties.

Individual firearm owners should make their thoughts well known to political parties and their elected representatives. They can thereby influence the first type of policy formulation to some degree. There is little, however, that unqualified or inexperienced firearm owners can do to influence the second.

Think-tank policy is developed collectively. Academics, researchers, bureaucrats and "experts" conduct work in their own inter-related fields and come up with opinions. Their conclusions are shared in peer review and discussion.

There are two primary methods whereby such cross-pollination occurs, firstly through academic journals of high repute, and secondly in the conference circuit. Above all, certain standards of academic rigour are supposed to be maintained.

Conferences
Attending conferences has become an entrenched part of academic, bureaucratic and business life in Australia. People from a range of disciplines meet regularly to keep abreast of current perspectives. Organisers invite keynote speakers, ideally specialists in the field under discussion, to contribute from their academic endeavours and experience.

Meals are shared, discussions held. Networking occurs, outings are enjoyed and lasting friendships are established. The conferences are usually expensive and become cost-prohibitive for many small community or interest groups to attend.

Even if it is not immediately obvious, this has a crucial impact on firearm ownership.

Keynote speakers are influential and held in high regard as views are shared and mutual affirmations are made. These often then become the popularly held beliefs of those at the conference. Such beliefs are then reflected in policy in a variety of localities and ways.

Conference attendance is a very effective means to promote and spread beliefs of a particular type and thereby have them accepted as a part of popular academic and bureaucratic culture.

While such a process may initially seem positive, what happens if keynote speakers are not fully competent in their subjects or if their research is inaccurate, incomplete or just plain wrong?

Experience teaches that if there is nobody present to give an alternative view, such perspectives are not aired and are assumed to be non-existent, incorrect or unimportant.

Indeed, what happens if conferences are designed to have certain views presented? - and if certain keynote speakers are invited in accordance with the perspective that is being promoted?

"Violence, Crime and the Entertainment Media"
In December, 1997, the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) and the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) jointly held a two-day conference entitled "Violence, Crime and the Entertainment Media". SSAA staff attended, finding it an enlightening and sobering experience.

Both the AIC and the OFLC are Commonwealth agencies under the Attorney-General's portfolio. There were about 135 participants, with nine overseas and twelve Australian speakers.

From the outset it was a conference with an anti-firearm flavour. A copy of the AIC's anti-firearm paper, "Firearm-related violence in Australia", by Satyanshu Mukherjee, was given free to all participants in their conference satchels. Other AIC publications were available for purchase.

The speakers were of a widely representative international nature, yet largely failed to examine any of the real issues or address hard questions. The point was well made, however, that the media plays a crucial role in the creation of "moral panic" and in generating an unwarranted "fear of crime" in Australian society.

Whenever the topic was actually addressed, the majority of speakers were endorsing the view that there is little or no connection between violence, crime and the entertainment media, whilst only a few speakers presented a definite-connection perspective. Bureaucrats and people from within the film, media and classification industry dominated the conference and appeared not to want any real connections to be made. Consequently, any causal or contributory relationship between violence, crime and the entertainment media was never really established even though there is a substantial body of evidence to demonstrate that there is a relationship.

Issues were sidelined and not followed up; attempts were made to pass off glib and inaccurate generalisations about homicide and firearms as fact because those in attendance did not know any better. Anti-firearm attitudes abounded.

Speakers were subsequently questioned and challenged by SSAA staff and other conference participants not unsympathetic to private firearm ownership. The following represent a few examples.

Mr Reaburn, in giving the opening address in place of the Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, spoke at length about how Australians can now all feel so much safer after independent studies had shown the gun "buyback" program to be a success. When personally questioned later, he failed to substantiate his claims, name the studies or their authors, or to explain their methodology.

In attempting to dismiss any link between the entertainment media and the Port Arthur murders, Mr Reaburn derisively mentioned that the perpetrator's video library consisted of such innocuous titles as "The Sound of Music" and other films of the 1950s era, inappropriately quipping that they would be enough to send anybody mad. The full list of videos in the murderer's possession has still not been presented for public scrutiny.

Much of Mr Reaburn's address simply appeared to be more of the same unsubstantiated, self-promotional government material so often presented.

Despite what conference participants might have expected of the Director of the AIC, Dr Graycar did not address the relationship between violence, crime and the entertainment media, even though it was the topic of the conference. Instead, he spoke persistently on the issue of the relationship between firearms and homicide. He did note, however, that many people had a perception of homicide rates as being much higher than they are in reality, a clear pointer to media influence.

Dr Graycar made a number of incredible statements, including: "The US homicide rate can be explained entirely by the presence of firearms". Later, during question time, he was challenged regarding his comments, graphs and statistics. He was unable to explain why some European cities had higher murder rates than most US states, and why US whites had murder rates in line with Europe, blacks having a murder rate five or six times that of whites with the same access to firearms.

Such vigorous rebuttal was apparently not expected by Dr Graycar who appeared unprepared for challenge from the floor. He was unable or unwilling to provide satisfactory replies.

Furthermore, Dr Graycar was asked why he had not shown the US homicide figures for whites only. If US figures were to be compared with Australian figures, once figures for Hispanics and Blacks are removed, the US murder rate is much the same as that of Western Europe. Dr Graycar admitted that there are major differences in murder rates for different ethnic groups in the US but said that the AIC did not have the murder rate figures for such groups.

This is surprising, as the figures are easily accessible.

Professor Polk's address concerned the realities of homicide and the fear of crime. He noted the clear difference between the media portrayal of random homicides and the reality (which is that people who know the victim commit the majority of murders).

Most conference speakers and participants agreed with Professor Polk that the media depiction of crime elicits an unwarranted fear "that is grossly exaggerated and out of proportion to actual crime", and that "such imagery can feed into public policy".

Unfortunately, Professor Polk asserted that men kill their wives because "the wife is getting out of the male's control". Such a simplistic generalisation demonstrates little understanding of the dynamics of interpersonal relationship breakdown and is more in line with feminist ideology than reality. In addition, he noted that 85% of homicides are alcohol related, clearly a far greater issue to be addressed than that of firearm involvement in homicides, at only 21%.

According to Professor Polk, the overall Australian homicide rate has not been increasing in recent years, and he reasserted this when challenged in question time. But the fact is that while the rate has remained relatively stable at between 1 and 2 per 100,000 of population over most of this century, Australian Bureau of Statistics figures do clearly demonstrate an upward trend over the last thirty years.

When pressed, Professor Polk conceded "We don't have the resources" to carry out research of the detail alluded to in the area under discussion.

Furthermore, when asked why he concentrated on firearms if more people were killed with knives and other piercing instruments, Polk replied that this was "sensible" but that he was concerned that current initiatives against violence seemed to be concentrated on domestic violence. Professor Polk was also asked what purpose was served by a 28-day cooling-off period for second and subsequent firearms when the applicant already had firearms. He replied that the majority of murders were very carefully planned but there were some which were "spontaneous" and that "the removal of firearms, particularly handguns" would reduce deaths. In neither case did Professor Polk answer the questions. He was apparently promoting ideology, not facts based upon rigorous research.

Professor Polk's response to a final question concerning the buyback was that he felt government money was being spent in the wrong areas, but added: "With that much money being spent I suppose it must do some good".

During a panel presentation, Ms Arrback referred to Dr Graycar's address as showing that the availability of weapons, particularly firearms, was the major factor in homicides and violence.

Ms Arrback is hardly qualified to express such an opinion.

In the question time it was pointed out to her that the presence of firearms does not explain the high US homicide rate. She was advised that if all firearm homicides were excluded from the overall US homicide rate statistics, the US homicide rate (that is, minus firearm deaths) is still double that of the overall Australian homicide rate (that is, including firearm deaths).

Ms Arrback was then questioned further and seemed unable to either comprehend or respond to the issues raised, and declined to answer. Panel chairman John Dickie replied, "I think we'll take that as a rhetorical question" and moved on to the next question. Such a refusal to respond was astonishing.

In Summary
Many keynote speakers have not been called to account for the unsubstantiated comments and claims they have made. Speakers at such conferences must be held accountable for any tendencies to bring with them ideological myths for airing in public. Whilst a few speakers at this conference did actually attempt to address the real issues, they generally received derisive and negative responses.

Conference participants who were sympathetic to the firearm owning community clearly knew more about the actual figures than did many of the so-called experts who, without exception, crumbled when challenged.

Few conference participants demonstrated an understanding of the deeper issues, or even knowledge of the facts. Apparently, most gain their perceptions about firearms from films and the (news) media. Guns are simply seen as bad, indicating the degree of irrational mindset many people hold as a result of media influence. It was not possible to make this point at the conference because the guns-are-bad concept is now so deeply ingrained.

The hard questions were passed over at the AIC's Sydney conference, yet still must be asked. What does the portrayal of violence and pornography add to our society? How do we benefit from viewing and ingesting such material? Is the community better off for having seen it?

Political correctness is about suspending notions of common sense, responsibility and rigorous analysis for the sake of the pursuit of an ideology. Conferences such as "Violence, Crime and the Entertainment Media" serve to promote and reinforce the politically correct ideology of the time.

They can be self-congratulatory back-patting exercises that indulge in circular reasoning where a majority of like-minded people never properly challenge underlying premises or question the accuracy of the facts presented.

The conference connection represents an important link in the chain of government policy formulation. If proper policy is to be developed, material presented at such conferences must actually address the issues, must be delivered objectively, and must then be open to detailed scrutiny and honest debate.

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