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.
The statistics for the years following the ban are now in:
Accidental gun deaths are 300% higher than the pre-1997 ban rate
The assault rate has increased 800% since 1991, and increased 200% since the 1997 gun ban.
Robbery and armed robbery have increase 20% from the pre-97 ban rate.
From immediately after the ban was instituted in 1997 through 2002, the robbery and armed robbery rate was up 200% over the pre-ban rates.
In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 171 percent.
Let's examine the overall murder rate and the gun murder rate in Australia. Take note both are virtually unchanged and unaffected by the gun ban. The Australian experience and the other historical facts above prove it. While the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not, and criminals still possess their guns.
Oh look. after we banned guns in 1997, people murdered by guns decreased by 10%. On the other hand, people murdered by knives increased by 10%. Well, at least you weren't shot to death and thank goodness no criminals were hurt in the commission of their murders. Awesome!
There has been a pronounced change in the type of weapons used in homicide since monitoring began. Firearm use has declined by more than half since 1989-90 as a proportion of homicide methods, and there has been an upward trend in the use of knives and sharp instruments, which in 2006-07 accounted for nearly half of all homicide victims.
Reported sexual assaults have increased by 51 percent since 1995, at an average of four percent each year.