I recieved a e-mail today that I thought was interesting. This came from a Austrailia police officer Ed Chenel.

It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Austrailia were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be distroyed by our own gevernment, a program costing Austraiia taxpayers more than 500 million dollars.

The first year results are now in: Australia-wide, homicides are up 3.2 percent, Australia-wide assaults are up 8.6 percent, Australia-wide armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes 44 perent). In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent. (Note that while the law abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not! and criminals still possess their guns!)

While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed.

Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in "successfully ridding Australian society of guns". You won't see this on the American evening news or hear your governor or members of the state Assembly disseminating this information.

The Australian experience proves it. Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and property and , yes, gun control laws affect only the law abiding citizens. Take note Americans, before it's to late.

great post...very interesting definetly something we need to watch out for..I am not democratic or republican cause I think there is to much messed up with our gov. to be on either side so I am jsut dusten but the point is we need to make sure that who we are voting for supports our right to hunt, fish, and bear arms..

Don't take this the wrong way cause I am opposed to gun control for law abiding citizens, but these numbers look pretty skewed to me, I would like to see some corroborating references if you are going to post these types of E-mails. I could just as easily make up a bunch of numbers, call them factual statistics and post them, but that does not make them true.

Here's a more objective report on these statistics. Either way, the citizens do not appear to be in a better situation than they were before.

Snopes Urban Legend Report

navdoc, first of all welcome aboard, and I too want to say not to take this the wrong way. I don't know why you picked my topic for your first post, but that's OK, you got to start somewhere, right.

You want corroborating references, I'm sorry I didn't get the e-mail from the police officer in Australia, just his name. If I get another e-mail, I'll be sure to get that. I sure you I did not make up the numbers, did HE, I don't know. All this is INFORMATION ONLY, you can believe it or not, that's up to you. We have a gentleman from Australia on this forum, maybe he can put some factual thoughts to the topic.

O' by the way they are looking for factual evidence on another topic regarding BLACK PANTHERS. It seems there is not real factual evidence found regarding that topic, but it don't keep them from talking about it. Again glad to have you aboard.

No offense taken, just like to see factual data listed, It is annoying when the Liberals spew out a bunch of non-supported statistics concerning crime and criminal acts that are related to guns and gun control, so I figure that those of us who lean to the right should get our act together and only report/comment on data that is supported by actual hard data. As far as Black Panthers ain't that a group of militant African Americans?

About not taking sides: Decisions will be made whether you like it or not. It's in our best interest to choose a side and support it, otherwise we will lose the rights we have. I agree that both sides have their problems, but issues that affect us are being decided every session, and sitting on the sidelines hoping for the best isn't good enough. We have to be more active than they are, and more right than they are.