Gun Control & RKBA

beevul: The US isn't a democracy, its a representative republic.

Well aware; a representative republic which adheres to democratic principle in a microcosm - the majority in the house & senate rules - albeit sometimes a 3:2 or 2:1 senate majority is required (which allows an unintended consequence of the original intent of the filibuster).

beevul: If government confiscates your guns, and you agree with it, they've still confiscated your guns. The definition of confiscation isn't dependent on whether the targeted populace agrees or not.

Use of the word confiscation is really inapplicable in a proper discussion of the aussie buyback. Confiscation isn't really important except in your biased mind trying to mislead by power of suggestion, since you misuse the word in applying it to the aussie buyback. You're aping rightwing websites or blogs which pejoratively misidentify the gun buyback as 'confiscation', trying to make it appear that there were sinister dirty deeds done dirt cheap by the john howard admin, when the buyback was sanctioned supported & approved by the predominance of australians. You make it sound as if govt agents were going house to house to confiscate firearms, when the vast majority of aussies with prohibited firearms 'surrendered' them peacefully & willingly (with some glitch on pre-existing prohibited firearms).

Here an 'actual' australian guest here (being treated like dirt by some) Swiss Tony refers to the aussie gun buyback of 96'97 Yeah, Howard spent millions on the gun retrieval. You know why? Because we wanted it. Australians turned in thousands of weapons because we were sickened with what happened at Port Arthur.

He refers to it as 'gun retrieval', and I think Swiss Tony is better knowledgeable on it than the likes of a rightwing agitator here on DU, trying to twist facts to fit a 2nd Amendment Mythology. Retrieval of prohibited guns. Gun retrieval is what occurred after certain firearms were deemed too dangerous in Australia & then prohibited. Due to the law there was a turn in period where compensation was made, & this was supported by the predominance of australians. Both the prohibited firearms were supported, and the buyback scheme was supported.

The buyback program started in most states on October 1, 1996, and ended on September 30, 1997. More than 640,000 prohibited firearms were surrendered nationwide as part of the buyback program. In addition, it was reported that about 60,000 nonprohibited firearms were voluntarily surrendered without compensation.
According to a telephone poll conducted in 1999 on behalf of the federal government by Gun Control Australia, there were about 3.25 million guns in Australia prior to the 1996–1997 buyback program. One study on the impact of the buyback states that “in terms of the absolute numbers of guns destroyed, Australia’s gun buyback ranks as the largest destruction of civilian firearms in any country over the period 1991–2006.” The buyback was reported to have resulted in the withdrawal of one-fifth of the stock of civilian firearms in the country and substantially reduced the number of households possessing a firearm.

Quick beevul, what is remaining if one fifth is taken away? .... bzzt ... four fifths, or 80% of aussie firearms remained after the buyback (later law removed more firearms, handguns, semi-autos)

In addition to requiring law changes to implement the above resolutions, the agreement provided for the establishment of a twelve-month national amnesty and compensation program, to be accompanied by a public education campaign, after which the jurisdictions would apply “severe penalties” for breaches of the firearms control laws. This resolution was implemented through a national firearms buyback program, which saw the federal Parliament enacting the National Firearms Program Implementation Act 1996 (Cth). The Medicare Levy Amendment Act 1996 (Cth) was also enacted in relation to providing funding for the compensation to be paid to gun owners who handed in weapons that fell within the prohibited categories. http://www.loc.gov/law/help/firearms-control/australia.php