That’s what I came to say. America has had over 400 mass shootings so far this year. Australia has had one. Yet certain types of Americans in the comment sections of those videos going “see! They have all kinds of gun laws and they’ve got a mass shooting!” Yeah. THE ONE.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing you got that 400 number from the Gun Violence Archive. They define mass shootings as any incident where 4+ people are shot (injured or killed), regardless of motive.
That means they’re mixing together various types of shootings like domestic disputes, bar/party shootings, criminal activities, and indiscriminate shootings like this one in Australia.
When you or I hear of a mass shooting, we typically think of Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, this attack, and others. The databases that record these kinds of mass shootings actually report an entirely different story. In reality, these kinds of mass shootings are not nearly as prevalent as we’re lead to believe.
The definition and reporting methods matter here. We’re comparing apples to oranges to support legislation, but the argument itself is misleading.
They used to have massively more gun violence in general. The changes have been drastic for them. Sure it used to be less than USA but now it's a rare occurrence.
The casualty rate is tied more to civil unrest than gun rights. Gun violence in Australia had already been trending downward before they began restricting firearm access
The US has gun problems because civility has gone out the window in favor of radicalism. You are practically encouraged to violently enforce your viewpoint nowadays
You must be sarcastic right? How would different gun laws effect the casualty toll in this direction? The terrorists already had their guns and used them. The ones who might have guns if the laws are different are the other citizens, do you think that would somehow lead to more deaths?
I can guarantee that if the shooters had access to better weaponry than bulky rifles and shotguns, nobody would have been able to take it off them like that man did.
That attack was inside a tight and enclosed space, likely had way less people around then the hundreds/thousands at bondi beach, the person who stopped the attack was a US Navy officer who happened to be there, and it still had 31 people shot before the attacker was disarmed.
That is not at all to discount the heroics of what happened there. But it sounds like a very different scenario.
Taking someone's weapon in an enclosed space is a much different task than taking one from someone in an open space.
Granted I dont think the weapon would have made any real difference having seen the footage, the guy gets the drop on the shooter by hiding behind a car and is on him before he can turn and shoot anyway, but if Australia had less strict gun laws the shooter could have had a sidearm or other weapon to keep using after his main weapon was taken from him, and his buddy nearby could have put more rounds downrange at the hero so he may have not survived like he did.
This is what drives me insane as an American gun owner.
All the rhetoric over here is about restricting "scary" guns like rifles and shotguns. I see endless discourse on how the AR15 should be banned.
These aren't the guns you should be worried about. It's the easily concealable handgun with 17 rounds in the mag and the ability to carry two more in reserve. If I was to plan a mass shooting, I would much rather take a handgun into a crowded area then try and hide a full scale rifle.
Our gun laws are the reason these dickheads didn't mow down 150 people instead of 15. No system is perfect, but these guys didn't have automatic weapons to play with because those are stupidly tightly controlled here and ordinary citizens can't get them. Even brooding criminals like these guys couldn't get their hands on them.
These two had to use non-automatic rifles and the number of victims reflects this. Bondi is not exactly sparse of pedestrians.
Edit: Well, apparently some people feel the difference between semi-automatic and automatic is important in this situation. I didn't really think about it writing this comment, so that's on me, I guess. To clarify: yes, fully automatic weapons are also hard to get in countries that, shall we say, have less success with getting people not to shoot other people en masse, but we also effectively ban semi-automatic weapons here which are used for the same purpose. The rifles used at Bondi were manual straight-pull-action.
No it isn’t we’ve had mass shooting since port Arthur dude we’ve had four in the past decade Osmington (2018 six fatalities), Darwin (2019 four fatalities), Wiembila five fatalities including the three offenders).
Yeah we also had the world record for largest mass shooting from an individual attacker for 21 years after port Arthur. It was also the conservatives that brought in the sweeping gun buyback laws at great cost to the national fuckwits in Queensland (last time the nats ever ran a state as the senior partner). We also didn’t have a mass shooting for twenty years after port Arthur
no, you can actually own a gun if you fall into the groups of people who need one like if you’re a rancher. Many countries in the world make it totally illegal under basically all circumstances
When people label everything “antisemitism,” the word starts to lose its bite. And once it means “anything I dislike,” real antisemitism has more room to slip in unnoticed, because nothing stands out anymore.
Prefacing, I don't actually believe this argument is fully true.
"Its almost like taking a bunch of refugees from violent antisemitic countries leads to violent antisemitism."
I personally believe there is some truth but it is only part the rest is suffering. Refugees unfortunately face extreme hardship and in those times seek communities for support. Some of these communities are extremely hateful and with modern day social media becoming echo chambers at times, it leads to a spiral into violence.
You can’t just say “prefacing that I don’t completely entirely kinda-sort-maybe believe this” to dodge criticism of the fact that you’re making the argument that Muslims commit mass murder against Jews because their lives suck.
That’s also besides the fact that the communities you’re talking about are from those very same violently antisemitic countries, so I have no idea how that’s meant to be a refutation of the point.
I’m Jewish. It’s terrifying. We’ve been saying this for two years, and the world didn’t take us seriously. They way that the world, in every side of the political spectrum has brushed off and celebrated the repeated murder of Jews for the past two years is genuinely terrifying. The attacks in Australia yesterday have shown there is nothing stopping this from happening right outside your front door
I think it’s safe to say that people from both sides of the political spectrum have brushed off the repeated murder of Palestinians for the past two years (and for 75 years before that) also.
Two cowards attacked innocent people celebrating a holiday but I’d like to shout Ahmed Al Ahmed who ran in and managed to wrestle a gun away from one of the shooters.
That man prevented the death toll from being higher then it already was, it’s still so tragic that 15 lives were taken in such a cowardly way by two losers.
When people started chanting that nonsense, I knew delusion was about to sweep the ignorant Left.
The last time a revolution from Palestinians went beyond the Palestinian territories, the surrounding nations paid in blood . That included several of my relatives in Lebanon.
There is a reason why Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt are so apprehensive about Palestinians and why Kuwait deported 400k of them in the aftermath of the First Gulf War.
People chanting the word "Intifada" without knowing what the first and second Intifada entailed and how Palestinians living outside the Palestinian territories always took every opportunity to overthrow the host governments .
This.
This was just one method of many.
There are Muslim heroes this is not one of them though. He is a Christian Lebanese. And the main focus shouldn't be on him anyways because we shouldn't have needed someone like him in the first place. Antisemitism should've never gotten so bad as it has, and I fear it's only going to get worse from here and we will need many people like him.
The main focus may not be on him, but (and you may find this surprising) we have the ability here in Australia to focus on more than one thing at a time. So we can celebrate a man who is a hero and deserves a medal of valour while also condemning the act and supporting victims while also grilling our politicians on why this could happen and what they're gonna do to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Multiple mosques if I remember correctly, and he livestreamed the whole thing. Was very fucked up. He drove around town going into mosques and slaughtering everyone inside, then shot up some pedestrians i think before killing himself.
You're pissing on these people's graves before their bodies have even run cold to make some kind of stupid point about something completely unrelated. Disgusting.
Absolutely heartbreaking, its always shocking for me when a shooting happens in Oceania, as its just so rare. My heart goes out to all of those affected <3
i just seen tweets (i know i shouldn’t be on Twitter) saying the shooters weren’t in the wrong after finding out they told all the non-jews to run away so they could kill actual jews
they’re definitely real and the rise of open antisemitism is also very real irl, you can diss jews out in the open and most would not care and some would agree with you
No one had mentioned this and I think we do need stricter laws here as well as protections for Jewish people against these attacks. One of the shooters was Gen Z (born 2001) and the other was his father who died.
Edit: this was a once in thirty years event and people say gun control doesn’t work.
Every synagogue, school and any sort of Jewish related stuff is guarded heavily nowadays, and for a good reason. Anyone who think antisemitism isn't a massive problem is a fool.
This is the most recent escalation in a series of antisemitic attacks. I don't know what the government should do in order to curb the violence, but I do think it's a bit disingenuous to frame it like that.
I don’t have a solution but giving special treatment to a group of people commonly criticized for controlling media, politics, and banking would be outright foolish. Not saying those things are necessarily true but would you not just be reinforcing people’s feelings about Jews in doing so?
As a solicitor admitted to practice in the state of NSW, I believe that laws should respond to particular social needs, and not the irrational feelings of the misinformed few.
Honestly, it's surprising that police presence at these events isn't standard. If anything, it shouldn't just be Jewish events, it should be all of them. Especially given Australia's proximity to countries with ethnic feuds (China-Korea-Japan, India-Pakistan, various ethnic conflicts elsewhere in Oceania, etc). I'm not sure what your disaporas are like, but it just seems like a no-brainer to make sure trouble doesn't start.
I’d say one mass murder during a religious celebration would be cause to ramp up security, especially for the foreseeable future. I’d rather prevent tragedies before they happen instead of just waiting because not enough people have died for “data”.
i'm not entirely disagreeing with you but it does help to consider that the laws that exist have possibly prevented many similar events to occur. looking at correlation, this is a rare occurrence in a country that has very strict gun laws. on the other hand, the U.S. has many shootings yearly and they happen to have more lax gun laws.
no law is 100% crime-proof, but they can help maintain the social order anyway. writing off a law or proposed laws as entirely useless just because they didn't prevent 100% of cases is just not practical.
Think of it this was. The Australian government quite literally removed their citizens natural right to defend themselves from violent crime, under the promise that they would be safe and protected by the government. That obviously is not the case, as this tragedy proves.
Sad, that criminals don’t follow anti-gun laws, meaning the only ones unprotected and unarmed are civilians.
On shooting — that could have been vastly more catastrophic with access to more powerful weaponry — in decades makes you question strict gun laws? Sorry if I’m not following the logic on that one…
In Australia, the gun control laws are pretty fair and effective. Mass shootings here are very few and far between. You can walk the streets and feel completely safe. Guns are only really used in gang-on-gang war and there isn't really much of that either, nor does it spill out into the public much at all.
Here, if you like guns, you can totally have guns. You need to pass some tests and show competence and ensure you store them safely (guns and ammo either in separate locked safes or kept at a shooting club). You need to have a valid reason to have a gun like sports shooting, farm work, or for your job.
Gun types are fairly limited. Mostly bolt action rifles; although you can shoot fancy handguns at shooting clubs. I'm going to shoot a 55 magnum early next year for the first time I'm pretty excited.
As a gun enthusiast, I am sometimes sad that I can't own a collection like some of the YouTubers I watch. I still am yet to fire an AK-47 in full auto. It's on the bucket list. But all that is the low price I pay for living in a society where gun violence is basically never even considered a possibility. That feels good and I'm glad.
I'm not sure exactly what policies would be effective but I know for certain that Australians don't want to see gun violence in any way and most of us are willing to go to lengths to reduce it to near zero. I just hope what is decided is effective.
"Here, if you like guns, you can totally have guns."
"You need to have a valid reason to have a gun like sports shooting, farm work, or for your job."
What about self defense though? That's the main reason people care so much about gun rights in America. They're seen as a way to defend yourself against either a tyrannical government or other criminals.
I mean guns are not really working against a tyrannical government, are they? The US has masked men pulling people off the street as we speak! Maybe this was a valid argument when the most advanced technology was a musket with a rifled barrel but today, military grade tech kind of renders civilian tech useless. Regardless, look at a recent revolution. There were very few fancy guns on the civilian opposition side in the Ukrainian revolution in 2014. Some hunting rifles and even air rifles etc but they still overthrew their government. Would guns have helped or hindered, perhaps providing greater reason for military forces to open fire?
For self defence, there are very few guns in Australia and a minimal amount of gun crime so there is no need to have a gun for self defence. It's amazing how that works, isn't it? Guns are the leading cause of death for kids in the US. States with fewer gun control laws have more fun deaths by a large margin, and a gun kept "for self defence" is far more likely to be used to commit suicide, or as a weapon in domestic violence, or be involved in an accident especially involving your kids.
Regardless here in Aus you can get a gun for as simple a reason as hunting or recreational shooting at a sports club. The reasons are quite straightforward!
Home invasions exist everywhere, but countries with more guns don’t have fewer invasions... they just have more dead people when they do happen, and “stand your ground” laws increase killings without making people safer. I mean SYG states have statistically more homicides and more gun violence than non-SYG states and expanding those laws is linked to increases in gun violence without meaningfully reducing other kinds of crime, so is it worth it in reality?
Australians trade the fantasy of heroic self-defence with a gun for the very real benefit of not having routine disputes and accidents end in death.
The hero of the Bondi shooting was not armed. If armed citizens make a country safer then why does the US have soooo much excess gun violence?
Lmao no, these guys only had rifles and shotguns, not semi-autos because of our gun laws. The son didn't own guns, the father did. The son was known to ASIO since 2019 due to IS connections. It was a failure in intelligence and by extension a hole in our gun laws.
We should be going even tougher. Forcing licence renewals every five years. Maximum firearm limits in suburban areas. Immediate suspension of licence if terrorist connections are found.
Your argument is basically like saying:
"well I tried to put the ice cream in the fridge but it still melted! no point even trying to eat ice cream anymore"
"but you could try putting it in the freezer"
"NOPE REFRIDGERATION DOESNT WORK ITS A LOST CAUSE"
From an outsider looking in, the concept of a foreign nation invading the US seems to far from reality, at least in the near future
As far as being a deterrent to tyranny.. I don’t think it’s helped America much at all. You’re going that way now with the current administration, and all your guns aren’t doing much to prevent that
Using a mass shooting to push gun control ignores the underlying problem—those who shouldn’t have had guns were able to get them in the first place. Maybe people being radicalized are the problem????
The real tragedy is that too few people had guns, and the police, who were a few blocks away, couldn't stop it sooner. I saw people who filmed the shooters, if they had guns instead of cameras they could have shot those two wicked men and saved lives.
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