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| Sydney Morning Herald |
Ten years of suicide data in the wake of John Howard's decision to ban and buy back half a million semi-automatic rifles and shotguns has produced a stunning conclusion.
A paper forthcoming in the American Law and Economics Review finds the buyback cut firearm suicides 74 per cent, saving 200 lives per year.
A former Australian Treasury economist Christine Neill, now with Canada's Wilfrid Laurier University says she found the result so surprising she tried to redo her calculations in the hope the effect would be smaller.
"I fully expected to find no effect at all," she told The Age from Waterloo, Ontario. "That we found such a big effect and that it meshed with a range of other data was just shocking, completely unexpected."
John Howard's agreement with the states to ban and buy back more than 600,000 weapons in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre cut Australia's stock of firearms 20 per cent and roughly halved the number of households with access to guns...
Two of the independent rural MPs now holding the balance of power in the national parliament opposed the plan. Queensland MP Bob Katter said Australia had got "to the ludicrous point of completely disarming the nation" and claimed "everywhere they ban guns the death rates from guns go up". Tony Windsor, then in the NSW parliament, attempted to introduce an amendment that would have registered gun owners rather than firearms.
Dr Neill says while it seems surprising that a 20 per cent cut in the number of firearms would have the number of suicides from firearms 74 per cent, none of her academic colleagues have found fault with her finding.
Her co-author is ANU academic Dr Andrew Leigh, elected his month as a Labor member of parliament representing the ACT.
They used what is known as a difference-in-differences approach, exploiting the fact that some states withdrew guns faster than others and examining whether their firearm suicide rates fell faster.
A previous study had found no nationwide effect, noting that firearm suicides began falling before the buyback.
However Dr Neill and Dr Leigh found that states such as Tasmania which withdrew guns quickly had a much bigger decline in firearm suicides than states such as NSW which withdrew more slowly.
Whereas the earlier study had found an uptick in suicides by other methods, suggesting substitution, Dr Neill's study found no evidence of substitution within any state.
"It is simply not the case that there was an increase in non-firearm suicide deaths in states that brought back more firearms," she told The Age. "I am confident these lives were saved."
Most of Australia's 2100 suicides per year do not involve firearms, making the 200 lives saved as a result of the firearm ban small in relation to total suicides.
But Dr Neill says applying an accepted financial value to each of these human lives results in an economic boost per year of $500 million - an outcome she says represents $800 per weapon destroyed.
"This is clearly one of John Howard's greatest legacies," she told The Age. "Perhaps even one of his greatest economic legacies.
"It also succeeded in its stated goal. Before the buyback Australia used to have a multiple shooting every year or two. In the 13 years since there have been none. I have calculated the probability of that happening by chance - it's extraordinarily low."
Published in today's SMH and Age
Substitution?
"Note that the bump-up in non-firearm suicides seen in the
time series data (Figure 1a) in the 1996–1998 period is not easily
attributable to method substitution or other factors associated with
firearm withdrawals or other changes in firearm legislation that varied at
the state level, since in that case we would expect to see states that had
larger falls in firearm suicide also experience increases in non-firearm
suicide. There is no empirical support for that in the data. The very late
increase in non-firearm suicides in states with higher buyback rates is
somewhat of a mystery. The magnitude of the later increase is two to
five times the magnitude of the relative reduction in firearm suicides in
the same period. Taken at face value as an indicator of method
substitution, it would suggest that individuals only began substituting to
other methods 6 years after the gun buyback and that the rate of
substitution was greater than 100%. It seems unlikely that this is
consistent with any reasonable model of method substitution. It is
possible that this reflects a change in the collection of suicide data post
2002—that possibility is explored in Section 4.1.5."
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5 comments:
Firstly. the weapon being used in the graphic appears to me a MPK5. AN weapon used by special forces and some tactical police units. it is not nor was it EVER permitted to sold to the general public in Australia. secondly the entire article smacks of misleading information and guesswork.
by the definitions bandied about then I could say that because my grandson didn't drive his car during teh past 6 months he has therefore reduced the roadtoll by n . the fact that he is only 3 years old doesn't need to be mentioned. does it? The actually number of deaths due to firearms may have dropped but the number of deaths using another weapon (i.e. knife) has in fact INCREASED. The whole story appears to be aimed at two of the 3 independents because they, wisely opposed Howards gun ban and buy-back because it turned honest farmers and sports shooters into criminals at the stroke of a pen. what it did do however was remove firearms from the homes of honest people, however, those of less reputable employ did not hand in their weapons so no the general populace is at their mercy, as the right or ability to defend has been removed. plus the number of honest businesses that were forced into bankruptcy, thanks to the despot we called prime minister Howard for 11 years.
Dear Shane,
You probably know more about these weapons than the artist.
While the total number of non-firearm suicides did increase at the same time as firearm suicides fell (it has since fallen back) the point the paper makes is that the states in which non-firearm suicides increased the most WERE NOT THE SAME STATES as those in which firearm suicides decreased the most.
In other words the kind of substitution you are talking about did not happen (unless people moved across state boarders to commit suicide at the same time as changing the method - and if you argue that, you'll argue anything)
I'll post the extract of the paper that deals with this above.
The usual reasons prevent me from posting the whole thing.
The article in the SMH said $500K per weapon, and the original article does too. Which is terrible maths, unless they are measuring it over 100 years. Anyone know why this mistake was made?
Yep. A misprint in the academic publication.
The SMH is running a correction tomorrow.
At the last two Federal elections, our local Lib ran a fear campaign - "if Labor are elected/re-elected, they will take all your guns away". The firearm owners lap it up, and won't believe you if you tell them that the present restrictions were engineered by Howard, a Liberal PM. They actually believe that it is Liberal policy to have NO restrictions on ownership of firearms. The Libs dishonesty on this and other issues is breathtaking.
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