“Australia is a safer place as a whole than America because there are far fewer guns on the street. Arguments suddenly become very dangerous when someone pulls out a gun. And the percentage of criminals with guns in America is far higher than the percentage of criminals with guns in Australia.”
While this is true, most of the violent crime in America is gang related, but not in the cities you might expect. Cities with the strictest gun control laws have the greatest number of gun related crime. The guns are generally brought in from the outside. The states in America that have the lowest rates of gun related crime are the states with the highest rates of gun ownership. Many of these states have lower rates of gun related crime per capita than Australia. (And England has almost twice the rate of violent crime that America has. See here.)
During peace times, Australians (on the whole) are less likely to be killed by someone with a gun than Americans; but this does not mean that Australians will always be less likely to be killed by someone with a gun. Australians (as a whole) are only safer than Americans, from gun related crime, while they have good government and while no one is trying to destroy them. If the number of terrorist attacks continue to rise, or if there’s a serious war, or if some crack pot gains power, Australian citizens will be in far greater danger than their American counterparts because they will have no way to defend themselves.
The only reason the Nazis did not try to invade Switzerland during WWII is that Swiss citizens were heavily armed. It wasn’t simply a matter of defeating the Swiss on the battle field. They would also have to fight the Swiss from house to house. Hitler decided not to invade Switzerland because the cost would have been too great.
In today’s world military defeats can be very swift. The last line of defence, and perhaps the greatest deterrent to those with evil intent is an armed citizenry.
As this interview shows, the gun debate is far more complex than most people realise.
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"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert A. Heinlein ( Are Americans who live in states where the citizens are more heavily armed more polite than those states where they have strict gun laws? If you know of any studies on this please let me know.)
Can Australians Defend Themselves?