When facts lie
by Paul Peake
Australian Shooter
September 2000
“New figures reveal a rise in the number of murder victims last year but the Bureau of Statistics says there has been a five-year low in the number of people killed by guns, hinting the Federal Government’s gun buy-back scheme has worked.”
RADIO: 104.3 GOLD FM JUNE 28, 2000
Interviewee: Amanda Vanstone, Federal Justice Minister
When it comes to scientific propositions the cardinal rule is consistency. In order for a theory to be valid it must work across a range of settings given similar variables. A simple example might be the notion of gravity - the theory says it doesn’t matter where you are on earth, objects will always fall to the ground. The idea is accepted because you can carry out repeatable experiments that prove the point. When it comes to the social sciences however, things are rarely so certain. Nevertheless, the same basic rule applies. In order for a theory to be sound it must produce predictable outcomes given similar inputs.
The problem with theorising about the government’s buy-back scheme and its impact on firearm-related crime is the lack of consistent results. While the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures show that on a national basis shootings declined in proportion to the total number of murders in 1999, the same statistics indicate that the ratio actually went up in two states. Compared to the previous year, the rate in Western Australia increased by 19.5 per cent and by 40 per cent in Tasmania.¹ Similarly, the ratio of gun-related murders in Victoria was 21 per cent - almost eight per cent higher than before the government’s confiscation program took 200,000 firearms out of the state.
Table 1
Looking at the national figures, Table 1 shows that the percentage of murder victims killed with firearms was actually about the same in 1999 (17.8 per cent) as it was in the two years before the government’s buy-back scheme, despite the fact that 640,000 guns were subsequently removed from private hands.
In other words, not only did the total number of murders show a six-year high in 1999 and the total number of shootings increase over the aggregate for 1998, but the ratio of firearm related killings was no different than before the government spent $500 million confiscating people’s guns.
Similarly, the latest ABS data dealing with attempted murders hows that while the total number of victims declined slightly in 1999, the overall number of firearm-related crimes and the ratio of offences compared to the total was the highest it has been for six years - even outstripping the rate in 1996, the year of the Port Arthur incident. Table 2 shows a 33 per cent jump in the number of victims and a 12 per cent increase in firearm-related crimes.
Table 2
The situation raises some important questions for the Federal Justice Minister and her fellow travellers in the anti-gun movement. If confiscating firearms from average shooters leads to fewer crimes and a supposedly “safer community”,² then how do you explain the fact that in some jurisdictions, not only did the total number of murders increase, but the ratio of firearm-related killings actually went up along with the ratio of attempted killings?
Furthermore, if the government’s buy-back scheme has really had any impact on serious crime, then why are gun-related attempted murders at a six-year high and firearm-based offences, as a percentage of all murders, the same as they were when there was more than half a million additional guns in the community?
The facts, as opposed to the theories, are clear - more people were murdered in 1999 than in 1998; more people were murdered with guns in 1999 than in 1998; more attempted murders were undertaken with guns in 1999 than in 1998; the ratio of gun-related attempted murders grew by an alarming 12 per cent, while the rate of gun-related murders was no different than it was before the Federal Government wasted half a billion dollars trying to make an impuissant Prime Minister look good.
References:
1. (2000). 1999 Recorded Crime: Australia. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics.
2. Gordon, M. (1996, June 17). PM braves angry crowd. The Australian, p. 1.
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