For Americans tired of NRA bullying.

[CapnAwesome]

If you take the 20 years before there were 80 massacre victims in Australia and in the 20 years since there has been 64 massacre victims. It's pretty hard to draw the conclusion that gun control prevents massacres from that data.

I think the conclusion is that gun control prevents (or reduces) gun-related massacres. I'm not sure you are counting correctly either.

If you look at the actual massacres where guns were the main weapon in the 20 year periods, you get the following:

1976 - 1996 (including Port Arthur massacre): 114 killed (all massacres in this 20 year period used guns)
1996 - 2016 (not including Port Arthur): 13 killed (only 4/10 massacres in this 20 year period used guns)

If you ask me, that data is pretty conclusive.

Not only were the number of gun massacres reduced, but the number of people killed as a result of gun massacres dropped as well. An average of 7.6 people were killed in every gun massacre between 1976 and 1996, compared to 3.25 in the latter period. More people were killed by Arson attacks (36 people in 3 attacks) in the latter period.

This is where there is a disconnect for me. I mean if someone intends to kill a bunch of people are they going to stop because they don't have guns? I mean the number of massacre victims are pretty similar, there are just more Arson attacks and less shootings. That does tell you something, maybe the guy who burned a bunch of children to death would have shot them up with guns buy choose a different method. I mean nobody denies that less guns=less shootings. It seems like it just changes people's method of committing mass murder, considering that other types of massacres went up. It's all pretty hard to tell when you restrict the conversation to mass shootings and massacres in a low violence society like Australia. That's why I think the per capita murder rate is really the most important stat when discussion gun violence or any other type of violence. I mean would you much rather live in a society with a high rate of murder, but the murders weren't committed by guns?