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Australia confiscated 650,000 guns. Murders and suicides plummeted
- jkoll 9y agoHow could the US government confiscate 300 million guns without starting a civil war?
- makecheck 9y agoIt would have to be structured as a voluntary turn-in with a benefit that people would be crazy not to take advantage of (e.g. some gigantic tax relief).
- TomK32 9y agoYeah, don't try or even think about it, not worth the risk... But serious, why not start a voluntary buy-back program and see if gun owners respond to that. Or how about a law that makes it mandatory to offer the gun/ammo to the government when a private owner wants to sell? Private sales are a huge problem: no background checks. Stopping them while still giving owners a chance to sell could do some good.
- Chaebixi 9y ago> Now, Australia's homicide rate was already declining before the NFA was implemented, so you can't attribute all of the drops to the new laws. > Pinning down exactly how much the NFA contributed is harder. One study concluded that buying back 3,500 guns per 100,000 people correlated with up to a 50 percent drop in firearm homicides. But as my colleague Dylan Matthews points out, the results were not statistically significant because Australia has a pretty low number of murders already.
- TomK32 9y ago> imiting access to guns makes each attempt more likely to fail, thus making it more likely that people will survive and not attempt to harm themselves again. (I can cherry-pick too)
- Chaebixi 9y agoThat's kinda different since the quotes I pulled directly contradict the headline. The headline should've been: "Australia confiscated 650,000 guns. Suicides and maybe homicides dropped."