Gun-Controlled Melbourne: More Than One Shooting A Week Since January 2015

Gun-controlled Melbourne, Australia, has witnessed more than one shooting a week every week on average since January 2015.

According to The Age, “Crimes associated with firearm possession have also more than doubled, driven by the easy availability of handguns, semi-automatic rifles, shotguns and, increasingly, machine guns, that are smuggled into the country or stolen from licensed owners.” In fact, “criminals are now better armed than at any time since then-Prime Minister John Howard introduced a nationwide firearm buyback scheme in response to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.”

It is interesting to note that Hillary Clinton praised Howard’s gun confiscation scheme during an October 16 town hall, describing it as “worth looking at” for policy in the U.S. Yet the example of Melbourne shows the outcome of such confiscatory policy is an environment more reminiscent of Chicago than utopia.

For example, The Age points out that gun crime became extremely elevated in March 2016 with “two shootings a day for a week” and police “seizing a firearm every two days.” And in October–the very month that Clinton was praising Australia’s gun ban–“a 54-year-old father was killed and his four-year-old son wounded in a drive-by shooting on a Thomastown home that now appears to be a tragic case of mistaken identity.” Such drive-by incidents are now commonplace in the north-western suburbs of Melbourne.

The Age summarizes:

• There have been at least 99 shootings in the past 20 months – more than one incident a week since January 2015
• Known criminals were caught with firearms 755 times last year, compared to 143 times in 2011
• The epicentre of the problem is a triangle between Coolaroo, Campbellfield and Glenroy in the north-west, with Cranbourne, Narre Warren and Dandenong in the south-east close behind
• Criminals are using gunshot wounds to the arms and legs as warnings to pay debts
• Assault rifles and handguns are being smuggled into Australia via shipments of electronics and metal parts

In his latest book, The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies, John R. Lott Jr. gives readers a glimpse at the impotency of gun control in Australia as a whole. He points out that the confiscatory policies that took in and destroyed over one million guns in 1996 and 1997 had–for all intents and purposes–been undone by 2010, when “the number of privately owned guns was back to the 1996 level.” Lott writes, “While Australia’s population grew by 19 percent between 1997 and 2010, the total number of guns soared by 45 percent.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.