I am for gun ownership, it's a basic human right in my opinion to be able to defend yourself. 911 is just to tell them where to find your body - seconds count not 2 hours average response times.

In Australia now, yes, crimes involving guns have gone down but other crimes have gone up because criminals expect victims to be unarmed - defenseless. Ten years after the gun laws were introduced, guns still turn up at crimes, because the criminals didn't hand in their guns - only the law abiding citizens did. I remember when they were bringing in these controls, thinking, this is crazy, you can't legislate against insanity. If criminals can't get guns they'll use knives. Guess what happened, an increase in knife attacks. So then the govt has banned the sale of knives to under 16 y.o.s even a plain old bread and butter knife. Although there is no stated law, the effect of all these laws is that self defense in Australia is illegal! You better not have anyone break into your home and attack you and you grab a house hold object and fight back, 'cause you'll probably be in more trouble than the criminal.

Last Christmas 2005, major fighting and riots broke out on one of Sydney's northern beaches. This trouble had been brewing for several years apparently. Causcasian Australian's were being bashed, stabbed by young Lenanese men for no apprent reason. This had been escalating for years with caucasian Aussies 'tolerating' it. Then, Aussies decided they'd had enough and fought back, because the police weren't doing anything about it. The blokes who fought back were labeled racists and the shame of Australia. A terrible thing. 2,000 police had to be brought in to make this small beach area 'safe'. Cars entering the area were searched. Several cars with young Lebanese men in them also had incredible weapons...cross-bows, medieval looking axes, knives, you name it. One guy was even arrested getting on to a public bus with container full of ?gasoline and matches. I don't know why these guys were attacking caucasians and I'm not trying to stir up any hate against Lebanese but this is what happened last Christmas in Australia.
In another large country town, youths were running wild doing all kinds of crazy violent acts, terrorizing their neighbourhoods, and the police don't know what to do about it, largely because there are so many of them. The police have their hands tied and the law abiding citizens can't protect their property anymore. It's a serious problem that I'm afraid with the current laws and cultural education by the mis-informed that "guns are evil", we will continue to see more of this happen.

It's hard for decent people to comprehend a criminal mind, because they don't have one - but we all know there are some people out there who are either mentally ill, demon-possessed, religiously motivated or whatever, that do some shockingly violent and cruel things to other human beings. I am glad to live the in the USA where my husband and I are still allowed to protect ourselves. I hope Australia will improve and rationalize it's knee jerk reaction, gun laws.

You know I hate any kind of violence and I know guns promote violence but its just wrong to me to take away guns that we might need for protection. When we use that word gun control its the last word that sticks out to me. CONTROL and I think anyone who wants to take away our self protection has another motive and its called control. I think people just need to be more responsible with firearms and they can enforce that if they want, but don't take away our right to be safe .To me that is beyond awful and more than thoughtless its criminal because it helps the criminal, to kill the innocent, criminals have ways to get guns , we wouldn't know where to start. DUMB IDEA!!

No, I'm not way out in left field. Guns have nothing to do with abortion.

I would also think if you were as indigenous as me you would understand the human part of keeping animals in check.