I won't dispute that gun violence has went down in Australia because of their strict laws but I also won't dispute that violent crime has risen because law abiding citizens aren't armed like they once were. So, what have strict gun laws accomplished if you have reduced gun ownership yet violent crime has risen?

@ArtemisDivine

1: The article from the Wintery Knight article that you shared has a graph at the very top. I attached it below.

1a: I don't think that graph has anything to do with any data from Australia. As you can see from the logo, it is from the AEI - which is not a governing body.

1b: Even with the caption, "Centers for Disease Control, Congressional Research Service", I cannot find the true source of that graph. The only other occurences of it that I could find in Google's image search are posts that challenge the success of Australia's gun buy-back policy. I don't think its a "neutral" graph. Also, in Australia, we spell "Center" as "Centre".

2: Wintery Knight/The Federalist states "...The piece, along with many gun control advocates, cites a Harvard University study whose conclusion begins with this line: 'It does not appear that the Australian experience with gun buybacks is fully replicable in the United States.' Not a great start for Vox’s angle, but I digress...."

But that exact sentiment is stated in the Vox article [[vox.com]] that it is referring to: "...And it [the gun buy-back] worked. That does not mean that something even remotely similar would work in the US — they are, needless to say, different countries — but it is worth at least looking at their experience...."

Wintery Knight/The Federalist seems to either ( a ) missed that the Vox article agreed that the gun buy-back wouldn't work in the U.S. or ( b ) was purposefully misrepresenting the Vox article.

3: I'll finish up here. I see no point in continuing with the article. Consider that the 2 points above address the very top of the Wintery Knight article. I could waste another hour fact-checking the rest just to find more questions about it.

4: If you do have data about this topic from an actual government department, I would very much like to see it, though.

@ArtemisDivine One more point that I'd like to make.

You said: "...but I also won't dispute that violent crime has risen because law abiding citizens aren't armed like they once were..."

Well, I don't remember anyone carrying guns, out in the open or hidden, back then. We simply didn't do it. I don't doubt that some would have carried guns. But I doubt it's as many as you think.

I already had a job before 1996. And if I take the office I worked at as a random sample of people, I can imagine that, at most, maybe 3 people out of 200 staff may have had a gun. I was a clerk in the HR department and I know all of those 200 people by name. Even 3 is very high number - for me. We simply don't have the same culture as Americans.

Scientific American

[scientificamerican.com]

[scientificamerican.com]