Former President Barack Obama once said that he thought the United States should have a gun control system similar to Australia's. A lot of people agree, and they point to Australia's relatively low crime rate as evidence that we should do just that.
But is the country as low-crime as we've been led to believe? Apparently, it ain't.
In fact, in a lot of ways, it's worse than the United States, apparently. That's according to Dr. John Lott.
Written by Malcolm Roberts and John Lott, Jr., the report begins by explaining that the establishment media’s approach to coverage and the method of compiling crime stats leads many to believe Australia’s “crime rate is low compared with the countries like the United States.”
The media “reinforces the myth” of lower crime while less than 20 percent of rapes and sexual assaults are reported to Australian police. However, in the U.S., 45 percent of such personal crimes are reported to police. This difference in the level of personal crime reporting skews the figures seen by the populations of both countries and feeds into the establishment media’s low-crime narrative.
After a hard look at the real numbers, Roberts and Lott wrote: “Australia’s rape and sexual assault rate is roughly three times higher than that of the United States. Australia’s assault rate is about twice as high, and its burglary rate is about 2.5 times higher. Robbery is the only category where the two countries report similar rates.”
They went back nearly a decade, to the year 2000, to contrast those findings with the numbers of today and found similar data:
The International Crime Victimization Survey used consistent definitions and methods across countries. Even in 2000, it found Australia’s violent crime rate (including robbery, sexual incidents, assaults, and threats) was 104 per cent higher than in the United States. Robbery was 150 per cent higher, sexual assaults 167.9 per cent higher, and assaults and threats 72.3 per cent higher.
The authors also noted that guns aren't available for self-defense, and knives aren't nearly as practical for most women to use to defend themselves from such a heinous crime, and they're right. Knives are deadly weapons, of course, but it takes skill to fight with one, especially against an opponent who can just overpower you. Sure, they might get cut, but that doesn't help if you're dead.
The authors also note that even things that can be used purely for defensive purposes, like pepper spray, are forbidden, meaning that fighting back really isn't an option.
And all of these personal crimes are happening more often in the Land Downunder than they do in the Land of the Free.
Strange, ain't it?
See, anti-gunners depend on low crime statistics in other countries to justify trying to take away guns here in the United States. They typically ignore a lot of data in order to do it, including how our non-gun homicide rate is higher than that of many of these other countries. If guns were the issue, then they still need to explain the non-gun data.
But this is very interesting, because while we often use homicides as a proxy for violent crime, actual violent crime is far more varied than that, and it seems Australia is a far more dangerous place than we thought, and considering the wildlife there, that's saying something.
And yeah, with the gun control laws on the books, people can't defend themselves from these kinds of crimes, and the bad guys know it. So, they figure they're free and clear to hurt people without consequences, especially because they all think the police won't catch them--that's a universal part of the criminal personality type.
Because different places account statistics a bit differently, and while we're similar culturally in many ways, there are enough differences that no one should be shocked that report rates are different, as well. It's not difficult to see how that creates a system where we've falsely believed that the crime rate elsewhere is lower than it actually is.
More accurately, that the crime rate in an anti-gun nation is lower than it actually is, especially in comparison to pro-gun America.
Considering that Australia started out as a penal colony, them having a higher actual crime rate just feels right. Then again, I'm from Georgia, another former British penal colony, so maybe I shouldn't go there.
