Ok lets clear up a few things here. 1/ I am NOT anti guns,
You do seem to write as though you are.
2/ your statistics are probably correct but what about all the underground guns they are the ones doing the damage.,
You means the ones criminals use? They don't go away by removing guns from the law abiding. Why would you wish to give the advantage to the criminals?
who needs fully automatic assault rifles apart from the armed forces? I was informed that in some southern states you can purchase these guns without any permit at all and these are the "weapons of mass destruction" that i refer to.
You have been misinformed. Full auto guns came under strict Federal control in 1934. The law is still in full effect. You need a class 3 Federal Fireams License (application, fees, fingerprinting, background check, etc.), to own one, or any parts that may be used to assemble one. And, the license requires pretty strict accountability for the "owned" whereabouts of said firearm/full-auto parts, and strict requirements for transfer only to other Class 3 FFL holders. Even then, some states do not allow civilian full auto ownership (CA is one of those). The anti-gun lobby, Hollywood, and the broadcast media have effectively taught the uneducated, that a gun that looks similar to true assault rifles used my the military is the same thing, even though they are only capable of semi-auto fire, a single round fired for each pull of the trigger, similar to the capabilities of a revolver. An AR-15 may look like an M-16 assault rifle. But, the AR-15 is NOT capable of full auto fire. An AKM may LOOK like an AK-47assault rifle, but it fires only one round at a time. An SAR-48 may look like an FN-FAL assault rifle, but it still fires one round per trigger pull. They can't even be converted to fire full auto, as the parts needed that have this capability are under class 3 FFL tracking and control.
As i said previously, we don't have massacres here, well there was one that caused them to be banned in the first place but this idiot was only carrying a knife until he stumbled on someones "legal" stash of guns and went nuts, that was 13 years ago, none before and none since. As i stated this is just my opinion and i am not trying to start an "anti gun" story out of this, i just think they are to readily available making it easier for nut jobs to get their hands on them and create mayhem.
As I said before, as your population increases, you'll get more (provided you have any freedom left). It's a matter of percentages. If you have 1000 people and 0.01% goes homicidal, 999 people have to deal with 1 "nut job".
We have over 300,000,000 people here. AU has 21-22 million, and I'm guessing that you have a stronger sense of community, as we once did when our population was smaller (in 1850). If we have 0.001% go whack, we have to deal with 3,000 "nut jobs". If you have 0.001% go whack in AU, you have 220 to deal with distributed about your country. Besides, what kind of news do you think your country imports from America? Who controls your media in AU? Any of them have a desire to paint the US in a good light?
Our media lies to viewers in the US regularly. When California was pushing through their "assault weapons" ban, (already a lie) the talking TV heads touted the devastating power of an AK-47. In the background they showed (split screen) an AKM (looks like an AK-47) firing, and on the other side of the split, a watermelon exploding from the impact. What they never revealed to the entertained viewers was that the single tiny hole the AK put in the watermelon wasn't visually sensational enough. So, the officer supervising the staged event pulled out his 9mm sidearm, loaded with standard issue hollow points (intended for use on the public) and shot the watermelon, causing it to explode for the camera. The public doesn't need to know, they just need to be trained. It is extremely, extremely rare to see any new story that paints guns in a good light, even when employed righteously by police, and certainly not by ordinary citizens. A righteous use of firearm in self defense will have the victim portrayed as a vicious killer just asking for trouble by the mere possession of a gun. (I wish I were exaggerating) And, these same new stories are picked up abroad.
Anyway, you have "nut jobs" there in AU, too. They simply find other ways to create mayhem, like lighting fires to torch multiple communities with the people trapped within. You don't consider that a massacre? We have arsonists here, too, and probably more of them. Perhaps those stories weren't newsworthy enough to reach AU television?
Don't underestimate the sense of community I mentioned earlier. We are so over populated that it's all depersonalized. Outcasts or social misfits, have no way back in for widespread social acceptance, and become more angry and disassociated. Their "community" then becomes local gangs, mostly without any "elders" for morale guidance. The government keeps telling its citizens and school children it is not our job to deal with these outcasts or "abnormals", and persecute if not prosecute those willing to step forward with corrective guidance or actions to intercede anti-social behavior. I believe this is why there is a movement to criminalize gun owners by edict. It is a further means to neutralize and incapacitate the general populace. It's going to get worse, I expect. Any government's ultimate end goal is to subjugate its citizens.
Regardless, if you are part of a community, you get help from them, and you give help and guidance from within, sharing a moral code. Our government AND population is now so large that more and more individuals slip through the cracks and get no guidance or help learning basic morality from either government, family unit, or community. I believe this is the problem, not tool availability.
There are plenty of tools out there for social misfits to run amok, and guns are not the worst of them. I recall we had a woman with a Buick station wagon plow through a school yard full of children, a while back. There are certainly other incidents. Fortunately, the use of Molotov cocktails on/in restaurants, school buses, or office buildings has not yet been sensationalized.
Be well,
edit: 3:00 AM bleary math error.
