Australia had no School Shootings
Before Extreme Gun Restrictions
Dean Weingarten. February 27th, 2018
Original Article Source
In the presidential listening session where students expressed their emotions to President Donald Trump, about the Parkland school mass murder, one of the students made a comment about school murders and Australia. Sam Zeif in video from the presidential listening session, February 21, 2018:
In Australia there was a shooting at a school in 1999.
I am reminded of the scene from Animal House, where Bluto exclaims:
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
and a listener replies "Forget it, he's rolling."
But Zeif has much more wrong than Bluto did about Pearl Harbor.
Australia did not have any rampage school murders before 1996, when they implemented their extreme gun ownership and use scheme.
Zeif then claims that the Australian parliament then "stopped it", and that there have been zero students murdered in Australia since their extreme restrictions on gun ownership and use were implemented.
In fact, the closest Australia has had in a rampage school shooting was in 2002, six years after the gun restrictions were put into effect. The events took place at Monash University, not a grade or high school. That shooter did not use a rifle. He used six pistols.
The Australian parliament responded by passing even more restrictions on gun ownership and use.
The next closest Australian mass murder took place in 2000, four years after the extreme restrictions on gun ownership and use were put in place. That mass murder did not involve guns. The murderer used arson to murder 15 international backpackers in Childers, Queensland, in the Childers Backpackers Hostel fire.
Emotional diatribes that have little to no fact behind them are useful to stir up support in an audience. They are terrible ways to formulate policy.
©2018 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included. Gun Watch
More gun restrictions provide no guarantee against mass murder - the biggest factors that seem to have emerged over the last three or so decades include societal, mental conditions and even possibly the increased use of anti-depressive drugs (and withdrawal from same) - not forgetting "copycat" episodes. Leave law abiding people alone who deserve no penalties - but there must be better efforts to spot potentially dangerous people, and also 'harden' places of learning and even churches as well. 'Gun-free-zones' must be abolished.