CasualBystander
Celestial
Also while CB quoted in another post there being 120,000 handguns in Australia, I don't know where they all are. It is a separate category of license, you need to be in either law enforcement or a shooting club. It is absolutely not a mainstream habit for Australian citizens to have a handgun. I believe you can own a cap and ball, historic handgun without a license but I would have to check on that. But break into 100 houses here in OZ and I am betting your not going to find a handgun in one of them. And, if you did, as per our strict gun laws they will be in a locked gun safe etc etc. I have grown up with guns my whole life and only seen a handful of handguns in that time, and that was before our laws changed and I had a mate who was a collector. I don't know anyone with a handgun So again the argument rings true (to me) a kid is not going to come home in an Australian home in a fit of rage and grab dads 38, because we just don''t own them or have them lying around.
The numbers say that gun owning households have an average of 5.6 which is a little less than the roughly 7 in the US.
So the fact that Oztralian guns are so much more likely to be used in crime, in particular homicide, is hard to explain.