GCA and Labor wimp Luke Foley don’t want Australians defending themselves against criminals

Straya, where self-defence is frowned upon:

Deputy Premier John Barilaro has been accused by Labor of encouraging vigilantes and seeking to foster “an American-style guns culture” after calling for an inquiry into the issue of self-defence using a firearm. Mr Barilaro, who is Nationals leader, has written to the Legislative Assembly committee on Law and Safety seeking an inquiry into the operation of the Firearms Act “in relation to persons who believe they are reasonably and proportionately responding to a threat imposed on themselves of their family”.

So, it appears that Barilaro is making good on his post-Dunstan pledge to review the state’s self-defence laws. Whether this is just lip service from the crumbling Nationals or genuine remains to be seen.

Then this from NSW Labor’s Luke Foley:

“I don’t want a bar of an American-style guns culture here in Australia,” he said. “The last thing our political leaders should be doing is giving encouragement to vigilantes. Mr Barilaro should not walk away from the current bipartisan support for Australia’s strong gun laws”.

In other words: “I don’t want a bar of people being able to defend themselves.”

Disgraceful. I guess David Dunstan, Ben Batterham and the rest are all just irresponsible and should have been good victims. Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Steve Fontana seems to agree. Essentially, Luke Foley and his ilk are saying that no-one should be able to prevent assault, robbery, rape or murder with a legally held firearm. It’s this kind of hubris from the armed security loving politicians towards the plebs which have many looking for alternatives.

“US style gun culture” is just another of the usual buzzwords thrown about by idiots like Foley in place of an actual argument. No definition of terms, no exploration of the facts: just cheap throwaway soundbites. Maybe he should go tell Stephen Willeford that he should not have intervened at Sutherland Springs church.

And on that note, Sam Lee then put out a press release:

“There is no other way to describe the call for the use of guns for self-defence other than dumb and dangerous. Mr. Barilaro has been watching too many movies.

Self-defence is the same argument used time and time again by the National Rifle Association (NRA) to justify the blocking of any restriction on the availability of high powered firearms, and look at how well that has panned out for the America”, says MS Lee. “If Mr. Barilaro were to look at the statistics he would discover that guns kept in the home for self–defence is more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal accidental shooting, criminal assault, or suicide attempt.

Research released this year by the Violence Policy Centre in America shows that in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available, there were only 224 homicides where a person was found to have legally used a gun for self-defence, compared to 7,670 criminal firearm homicides. The study also reveals that in eighteen States there were zero justifiable homicides.”

Criminal firearm homicides? You mean like people with criminal records who aren’t able to access firearms legally killing each other? Ridiculous comparison.

Let’s actually have a look at what the Center for Disease Control themselves found in 2015:

“Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the other hand, some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (Cook et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the field. The estimate of 3 million defensive uses per year is based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys.”

So DGU’s are several factors higher than firearm homicides and prevent more crimes.

It goes on:

“A different issue is whether defensive uses of guns, however numerous or rare they may be, are effective in preventing injury to the gun-wielding crime victim. Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual Bottom of Form defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies (Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004). Effectiveness of defensive tactics, however, is likely to vary across types of victims, types of offenders, and circumstances of the crime, so further research is needed both to explore these contingencies and to confirm or discount earlier findings.”

So not only are DGU’s higher than homicides, you are less likely to be injured armed than unarmed.

FBI Data on Justifiable Homicide:

Furthermore, “law enforcement reported 770 justifiable homicides in 2015. Of those, law enforcement officers justifiably killed 442 felons, and private citizens justifiably killed 328 people during the commission of crimes. (See Expanded Homicide Data Tables 14 and 15.)”

It is worth noting that successful Defensive Gun Uses do not necessarily mean you have to kill someone for it to be considered a successful Defensive Gun Use. If the act of brandishing a firearm prevents or ceases the commission of a crime, a la David Dunstan, then that is a successful Defensive Gun Use.

On the basis of the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, the US has also experienced a nearly 49% decline in the per capita homicide rate since 1991 and in the same time period nearly 200 million firearms have been added to supply:

There is also dramatic variance at the state level in terms of crime and it can be difficult to assign a national homicide rate given the variance in laws, demographics and crime patterns. There are an estimated 2.5 million Americans in gangs.

Thank for playing, Sam.

If you don’t want to waste 5 minutes of your life you aren’t going to get back, Lee then goes on to use US car deaths to bolster her argument (which are far higher than firearms) and then makes a reference about white children being killed at Sandy Hook. What does the colour of the victims’ skin have to do with anything? Does Lee wish to discuss the incredibly high and disproportionate representation of African-Americans in US crime and homicide statistics? Or does she not care about them?

The reality of self-defence with firearms in the United States, and other countries such as the Czech Republic, is almost always never discussed in Australia for obvious reasons. The David Dunstan case has however, red pilled many folks on said reality both here and in Australia.

The only thing “Dumb and Dangerous” is Sam Lee when she’s within 3 metres of a computer or microphone.

And perhaps Luke Foley should have another glass of soy milk and reconsider his position on whether he supports the law abiding or criminals.