{"id":215,"date":"2019-12-09T21:13:28","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T21:13:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/?p=215"},"modified":"2019-12-09T21:20:57","modified_gmt":"2019-12-09T21:20:57","slug":"buying-back-our-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/post-1-spring-2019\/buying-back-our-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Buying Back Our Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A. Whalen <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A 1996 mass shooting in Australia resulted in the loss of 35 civilian lives. Immediately after this tragedy, the government introduced a nationwide buyback policy, making certain guns illegal and offering monetary compensation for the civilians to give said guns to the government for destruction. A 2010 study conducted by Leigh et al. looked at the impacts of the buyback policy on rates of violence in Australia. As the data demonstrate, the buyback policy significantly decreased the rates of both firearm and non- firearm homicide. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"749\" height=\"499\" src=\"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Screen-Shot-2019-12-09-at-4.07.08-PM-1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-217\" srcset=\"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Screen-Shot-2019-12-09-at-4.07.08-PM-1.png 749w, https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Screen-Shot-2019-12-09-at-4.07.08-PM-1-300x200.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 749px) 100vw, 749px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">*Leigh et al., American Law and Economics Review, 2010. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After implementation of the buyback policy, the country saw about 20% decrease in\nfirearm stock, as well as a nearly 50% decrease in gun-owning households. These numbers\nreflect a 59% decrease in firearm homicide rate, from 0.37 homicides per 100,000 people in 1995\n(discounting outlier in 1996 from the mass shooting) to 0.15 homicides per 100,000 people in\n2006. Year to year, the numbers before 1996 fluctuate a large amount with no clear trend, and\none could argue the difference between 0.37 and 0.15 is insignificant. The dip in non-firearm\nhomicide is difficult to tie to the buyback policy, due to the slight increase immediately after.\nDespite the post-1996 annual variance in non-firearm homicide, firearm homicide rate is less\nthan half the rate prior to 1996. A drop of 0.22 homicides per 100,000 people saved about 55\nAustralian lives each year.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Leigh\u2019s study helps to demonstrate the significant impact of Australia\u2019s 1996 buyback policy. By removing nearly 650,000 guns from civilian hands and providing them with compensation, Australia reduced civilian deaths significantly. In addition to fewer homicides, the country saw a 65% decrease in firearm suicide rates, from 2.2 suicides per 100,000 citizens to 0.8 suicides. These results demonstrate the significant impact that a governmental effort at gun control has on citizen safety. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A. Whalen A 1996 mass shooting in Australia resulted in the loss of 35 civilian lives. Immediately after this tragedy, the government introduced a nationwide buyback policy, making certain guns [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-guns","category-post-1-spring-2019","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":223,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions\/223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalprojects.davidson.edu\/writingscience\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}