USA - Obama Doubles Down On Confiscation By Praising Australia’s Gun Laws

OFF THE WIRE
by Ben Bullard
      Not wishing to let a tragedy go to waste, President Barack Obama on Tuesday reacted to recent highly publicized shootings in California, Nevada and Oregon by telling an Internet audience the United States should emulate Australia’s infamous “assault weapons” ban.
Responding to a gun control question from a student at the University of California at Santa Barbara — the same school attended by former student Elliott Rodger before he gunned down six people and then killed himself last month — Obama told a Tumblr blog audience that a lack of Congressional action on gun control has been one of the biggest disappointments of his Administration.
“I’ve got two and a half years left,” began Obama. “My biggest frustration so far is the fact that this society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of… of people who… can, can do just unbelievable damage.
“We’re the only developed country on Earth where this happens. It happens now once a week. And it’s a one-day story. There’s no place else like this.”
Then Obama brought up Australia, which instituted gun restrictions, a national registry and gun buy-back program following a 1996 massacre in Tasmania that claimed the lives of 35 people.
“Couple of decades ago, Australia had a mass shooting, similar to Columbine or Newtown. And Australia just said, ‘well, that’s it; we’re not doing — we’re not seeing that again,’ and basically imposed very severe, tough gun laws, and they haven’t had a mass shooting since,” said Obama. “I mean, our levels of gun violence are off the charts. There’s no advanced, developed country on Earth that would put up with this.
“Now, we have a different tradition — we have a 2^nd Amendment. We have historically respected gun rights. I respect gun rights.”
Obama then went on to outline some of the Democratic Party’s gun control ideas that Congress has so far declined to pass.
It’s worth revisiting the President’s claim that “our levels of gun violence are off the charts.” They do have charts for these sorts of things, and the charts don’t reflect Obama’s claim.
Here’s one from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for 2007-2011 that tracks the overall U.S. rate of violent crime:

And here’s another from the Pew Research Center that shows a general overall trend of decline in the rate of homicide deaths involving firearms since 1981:

       Related Links

• 17 Years After Gun Bans in Australia …Police Say Gun Crime is Out of Control In 1996 Australia unloaded some of the most severe gun bans and gun confiscation programs on record. And for the guns that were not confiscated gun owners were forced to enter into license agreements and have their guns registered so the government knew what guns everyone had.

• Australian Gun Ban Facts & Statistics It has now been over 10 years since gun owners in Australia were forced by new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by their own Government, a program costing Australia taxpayers more than $500 million dollars.

• Gun Homicide Rate Down 49% Since 1993 Peak; Public Unaware National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. Beneath the long-term trend, though, are big differences by decade: Violence plunged through the 1990s, but has declined less dramatically since 2000.