Working on some stats

[Fritz]

Been lurking for a little while and figured I'd make my first post.
I'm doing it here in the "media and politics" forum as it's directly connected to the misinformation all the anti-gun nuts are putting out there. How they can get away with flat out lies like they are is just beyond me.
Like this for example:

Alarmingly, in 22 of the state's 600 postcodes, registered guns outnumber people.
This includes four postcodes where guns outnumber people two to one.

I picked one of the post Codes they were talking about (2878). I chose this one because it had the highest "ratio's" of guns per people (2.34)
Their reference of guns outnumbering people two to one in this instance is far far from the truth.
The postcode 2878 is in a rural area (outback NSW) and contains the townships of Beilpajah, Conoble, Ivanhoe, Manara, Mossgiel and Trida.
The population of this post code is 400 people (ABS 2006 Census) The number of Firearms Licence Holders is 115 (NSW Police FOI 05/02/2015) and the number of Firearms is 468.
Which would actually put the Ratio of firearms per people at 1.17 (NOT 2.34) and with 186 Dwellings, approximately 2.5 firearms per household which, considering the area, is no real surprise.
With just a quick Google search the last time somebody was murdered in this area was in 2008, With a knife.


My main Aim is to collect as much Data as possible and put it in one place. Either an Excel File or a web accessible Database so that people can shoot down (parden the pun) the numbnut Pollies and media organisations that just like to cherry pick the numbers that suit their needs. (has anybody ever been shot/assualted/robbed with a lever action shotgun?? )

It's going to take some time, which I don't really have a lot of, and will be primarily focused on NSW, for two reasons: Almost all of the "arguments" made by the Anti's refer to NSW, and secondly (I'll Give the NSW Police Props for this) the amount of Data available far outweighs the amount for the other States/Territories.

So far this is What I'm looking at Compiling.
Locality
Population of Locality
Number of Registered Firearms
Number of Licence Holders
Number of Robberies with a Firearm
Number of Murders with a Firearm
Numbers of robberies/murders NOT carried out with a firearm.

What I would really like is the number of firearms offences by Licensed Firearms Holders and the number of firearms offences by criminals but I don't think a simple FOI will cover that.
What I would really love is that a non-biased media organisation to pick up on this and show the people of this country that the only firearms they really need to worry about are the ones held by criminals and not the ones held by law abiding firearms holders.
Information should be a 2 way street, and it's blindingly obvious that right now it's only heading in one direction. A perfect example is the soon to be non Prime minister of this country banning the importation of a perfectly legal Shotgun due, seemingly, to nothing but Media misinformation.

My disclaimer.... I own a .22 for dog food, shopping for a centrefire for Deer. I don't want a lever action shotgun, I don't want a Semi-auto, I just want the people to know the truth. Because at the moment all they are being fed are lies.

Time is not on my side for this. Just looking at it quickly there is quite a lot of work invloved and a lot of it needs to be done manually so don't expect anything tomorrow, just know that somebody is working on it

[Noisydad]

Good job Fritz! I'll be looking out for your posts on this one!

[Heckler303]

This is really good stuff Fritz, I'm going to watch this topic for more goodies

[brett1868]

Maybe each of us can get the stats for our respective postcodes and forward onto you. I'll get into mine tonight and post what I can find. Any chance you can post some links of where you got various statistics from, might save some time. I have to talk to my local licensing Snr Constable today (to invite her out for a shoot and will see what she can provide.

[KWhorenet]

Good work.

For the sake of consistent data gathering, please do a dot point of the method including as Brett said, the references to use.

Will mean less erroneous data.

This sort of thing is well worth providing to the members of parliament who do care about shooters rights and privileges.

[David Brown]

And make sure you present your well reasoned thoughts to all the relevant state and federal politicians. That is your local members, the states Police minters and attorney general & Premier, plus the prime minister, the AG and all the senators in your state.

Write to them all, the same letter CC to the rest. Post them and expect to follow up.

Polite rational pressure can't be ignored.

Good work!

[RoginaJack]

I was watching the news last night re Indian train derailment and the reporter stated that 25,000 (Yep, Twenty-five THOUSAND) people are killed each year as a result of train crashes. Shocking!!

[sandgroperbill]

Trains?

Sounds like scary new technology to me. They should be banned!

And excellent work, Fritz!

[Baronvonrort]

I was watching the news last night re Indian train derailment and the reporter stated that 25,000 (Yep, Twenty-five THOUSAND) people are killed each year as a result of train crashes. Shocking!!

The numbers i saw recently have around 120 people getting killed every year trying to cross the road at Central,Town hall and Wynard railway stations in Sydney.

Accidental falls also take a large number of people.

[Baronvonrort]

I'm doing it here in the "media and politics" forum as it's directly connected to the misinformation all the anti-gun nuts are putting out there. How they can get away with flat out lies like they are is just beyond me.

What I would really like is the number of firearms offences by Licensed Firearms Holders and the number of firearms offences by criminals but I don't think a simple FOI will cover that.

If we can point out when they are telling lies then a reasonable person should think they have no credibility when caught out,i think telling lies backfires when caught out.

I would also like the number of offences and types by licenced shooters, the best i have is the Police saying at the senate inquiry licenced firearm owners are not the problem and over 90% of all gun crime is done with unlicensed people with unregistered semi auto pistols.

[Gwion]

Commendable, Fritz!

[Oldbloke]

A stats man, I love it. Always remember. "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

[Wes]

Top effort

Bring on part 2

[Fritz]

Well, I've pretty much hit a brick wall.
The info I need to narrow this all down just isn't there.
Don't get me wrong, there is a tremendous amount of info out there when you start digging. The only problem is is that it is scattered all over the place. There are reports that have no sources, reports that have been tainted by Alpers' "estimations", a majority of reports that do actually cite their references, only they all point to dead links on the NSW justice website. (temporarily unavailable even though the page was last modified 5 years ago) and some other reports that contradict the rest of them. Almost all of them don't have the numbers I need to begin with. Even court and coroners reports don't even mention that an offender was licenced or not.
So, without turning this into a full time job and bombarding the government with right to information requests, the whole goal seems to be pretty much impossible at the moment.

I did manage to learn a few things on the way might share.

-> There really has been a fairly major increase in firearm ownership over the past 5 years. A little over 850,000 registered firearms in NSW currently. Almost 38,000 new licences issued over the past 5 years (215,462 March 2015)

-> Even with the increase in Firearms and Licences the crime rate has been stable with a minor decrease in some areas and some other areas have a noticeable decrease.

-> In March the government tried to introduce a new law that involved tougher penalties and mandatory sentences to anybody caught trafficking firearms. The Greens rejected it saying that mandatory sentences don't work. Maybe they are waiting until everybody forgets about it, then the next headline will be something like "Greens take a tough stance on firearms and introduce a new bill that involves mandatory sentences for firearms traffickers"

-> Almost all firearm related crime can be directly connected to gangs, drugs or organised crime. We already knew that, so does the government. But I guess it's easier to hit the law abiding firearms owners when you know where they live and it's cheaper to take their guns away from them instead of going after the ones that really matter.

-> There are currently 30 different firearms registers across the country. They lose track of 14000 firearms every year. How does that even happen??

-> Of the list of major crimes on Wikipedia over the past 5 years there were 37 incidents. Out of these 37, 14 involved firearms. 2 offenders had licences, one is unknown, 4 were unlicenced, 2 involved unregistered guns and the other 5 were drug or gang related.

-> Martin Bryant was unlicenced and used unregistered firearms, including one that was handed in to police beforehand and marked for destruction. Man Monis also didn't have a licence and used an unregistered shotgun. Maybe they should have sent a few roo shooters in to end that siege, it may have ended a little differently. One bullet fired and one offender dead instead of 27 bullets fired and 2 innocent bystanders dead.


I could go on like this for quite some time, but the simple fact is this:
Law abiding firearms owners are law abiding firearms owners. Criminals are criminals.

Instead of persecuting those who are following the rules to make it look like they are doing something, the government should grow a pair of balls, stop pussy footing around for fear of hurting somebody's feelings and focus on those who think the rules don't apply to them. Case in point.
The media should pull their head out of their arse and start publishing non-biased stories instead force feeding the public their bulls**t policy of scare mongering just to make a few extra bucks out of selling more papers.

[Panthum]

The fact that the Greens rejected mandatory sentences for firearms traffickers shows their true purpose, targeting LAFOs. I would love if someone brought that up the next time they publicly attack us, it would be interesting to see their response

[Fritz]

The fact that the Greens rejected mandatory sentences for firearms traffickers shows their true purpose, targeting LAFOs. I would love if someone brought that up the next time they publicly attack us, it would be interesting to see their response

Found that info here:
http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2015/March/Firearms_trafficking
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22media%2Fpressrel%2F3717586%22

This is a perfect example of the government not having the balls.
The greens rejected it because "“Tougher sentencing for trafficking is not the way to address gun crime in Australia,” Senator Wright said. “Mandatory minimum sentences will not make us safer.”
The actual bill was pretty useless anyway. (in my opinion) Their idea of trafficking was more than 50 firearms. This would not have solved anything.

What it really should have been was a mandatory burning at the stake for anybody caught stealing firearms.

[trekin]

Well, I've pretty much hit a brick wall.
The info I need to narrow this all down just isn't there.
Don't get me wrong, there is a tremendous amount of info out there when you start digging. The only problem is is that it is scattered all over the place. There are reports that have no sources, reports that have been tainted by Alpers' "estimations", a majority of reports that do actually cite their references, only they all point to dead links on the NSW justice website. (temporarily unavailable even though the page was last modified 5 years ago) and some other reports that contradict the rest of them. Almost all of them don't have the numbers I need to begin with.

Even court and coroners reports don't even mention that an offender was licenced or not.

Which only proves that registries not only don't work, but are not being used in the manner for which they said it would be when it was forced on us.
So, without turning this into a full time job and bombarding the government with right to information requests, the whole goal seems to be pretty much impossible at the moment.

I did manage to learn a few things on the way might share.

-> There really has been a fairly major increase in firearm ownership over the past 5 years. A little over 850,000 registered firearms in NSW currently. Almost 38,000 new licences issued over the past 5 years (215,462 March 2015)

-> Even with the increase in Firearms and Licences the crime rate has been stable with a minor decrease in some areas and some other areas have a noticeable decrease.

-> In March the government tried to introduce a new law that involved tougher penalties and mandatory sentences to anybody caught trafficking firearms. The Greens rejected it saying that mandatory sentences don't work. Maybe they are waiting until everybody forgets about it, then the next headline will be something like "Greens take a tough stance on firearms and introduce a new bill that involves mandatory sentences for firearms traffickers"

-> Almost all firearm related crime can be directly connected to gangs, drugs or organised crime. We already knew that, so does the government. But I guess it's easier to hit the law abiding firearms owners when you know where they live and it's cheaper to take their guns away from them instead of going after the ones that really matter.

->

There are currently 30 different firearms registers across the country. They lose track of 14000 firearms every year. How does that even happen??

What are the 30 registers you speak of, thought there was only one per State.

-> Of the list of major crimes on Wikipedia over the past 5 years there were 37 incidents. Out of these 37, 14 involved firearms. 2 offenders had licences, one is unknown, 4 were unlicenced, 2 involved unregistered guns and the other 5 were drug or gang related.

-> Martin Bryant was unlicenced and used unregistered firearms, including one that was handed in to police beforehand and marked for destruction. Man Monis also didn't have a licence and used an unregistered shotgun. Maybe they should have sent a few roo shooters in to end that siege, it may have ended a little differently. One bullet fired and one offender dead instead of 27 bullets fired and 2 innocent bystanders dead.


I could go on like this for quite some time, but the simple fact is this:
Law abiding firearms owners are law abiding firearms owners. Criminals are criminals.

Instead of persecuting those who are following the rules to make it look like they are doing something, the government should grow a pair of balls, stop pussy footing around for fear of hurting somebody's feelings and focus on those who think the rules don't apply to them. Case in point.
The media should pull their head out of their arse and start publishing non-biased stories instead force feeding the public their bulls**t policy of scare mongering just to make a few extra bucks out of selling more papers.

[Fritz]

What are the 30 registers you speak of, thought there was only one per State.

http://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/05%20About%20Parliament/53%20HoR/537%20About%20the%20House%20magazine/47/PDF/ATH47_law.pdf

There are currently more than
30 different firearms registers and
databases across federal, state and
territory agencies. A recent consultant’s
report on the options for a national
register revealed serious flaws in
the current registration system,
with 14,000 firearms disappearing
from registers each year.

[trekin]

What are the 30 registers you speak of, thought there was only one per State.

http://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/05%20About%20Parliament/53%20HoR/537%20About%20the%20House%20magazine/47/PDF/ATH47_law.pdf

There are currently more than
30 different firearms registers and
databases across federal, state and
territory agencies. A recent consultant’s
report on the options for a national
register revealed serious flaws in
the current registration system,
with 14,000 firearms disappearing
from registers each year.

Fair nough, although you should point out that all but seven of those registers are for Federal, State and
Territory Govt agencies and most will be sign in, sign out registers, making the finding of lost firearms easier to detect. The other seven are the State run registers of legally held firearms by LAFOs.However 30 registers that still don't prevent or help solve firearm crime only helps to prove that the civvy ones will never work.

[newsteadvic]

Have you seen the gunfacts website? Mostly US but does have quotes bit pertaining to Australia. Free PDF download, recently updated to version 6.2
http://www.gunfacts.info

[Oldbloke]

Can I suggest you create a free weebly web site and put the info on there.
Weebly.com. very easy to set up and if you want you can easily link it to your own .com.au
brett might also have some ideas along these lines

[David Brown]

Fritz

And if you can see if you can find out the rate at which licensed firearm owners commit any crime, compared to the rest of society. I believe the number is down around 30% of the rest.

We are by nature, ales likely to be criminal bunch.

[Atter]

And if you can see if you can find out the rate at which licensed firearm owners commit any crime, compared to the rest of society. I believe the number is down around 30% of the rest.

Good figure (hoping it's true )