alister air wrote:


>As an aside, anyone from the US got any reaction as to the NRA lying about
>Australian crime stats since we banned automatic weapons?  Anyone find it
>strange that their "statistics" are almost the exact opposite of what's
>*actually* happened?

I've only seen superficial news reports of that. To the effect that the
Australian government was protesting about the US NRA taking the Australian
crime statistics "out of context".

The report showed the NRA were claiming that offenses involving firearms in
Aust. had increased since the ban on pump action shotguns and all semi-auto
(including hunting) weapons came into place, but I was unable to discern
exactly whether our government was disputing that.

It doesn't seem all that odd that offenses involving firearms would
increase following the introduction of new firearm laws. In fact it is
intuitive that new laws will create new potential offenses and thus an
increase in actual offenses. But I'm unclear about whether the Aust.
government is actually claiming that the NRA is "lying" in the technical
sense, or just using statistics.

For the record, I am a firearm owner and regard the recent Australian gun
laws as a knee-jerk over-reaction fed by an ignorance of the issues
prevalent in the metropolitan areas. Most gun owners in Australia support a
ban on military/assault rifles, only trouble is the Australian government
and most city people, were unable to distinguish between an assault rifle
of the type used by Martin Bryant and a .22 semi-auto rabbit gun.

Which is good news for the rabbits of course, including Pauline Hanson. ;-)

(Bucolic) Bill
Bracknell Tas