Well for starters Australia doesn't have the gigantic racialized underclass America does. Our treatment of our black population and its social fallout is the single biggest contributor to gun violence in America. From the Bradys:
You've also got a much more even economic distribution (scroll down), and higher overall median incomes anyway: America (http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/DistributionofIncome.html#lfHendersonCEE2-042_table_018) Australia (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/1020492cfcd63696ca2568a1002477b5/5f4bb49c975c64c9ca256d6b00827adb!OpenDocument)
What I don't have available to me online, though I might do some scans later, is demonstration of how sharply those incomes break along racial lines over here too. Basically we have vast ghettoes of institutionally disenfranchised people wallowing in crippling poverty, where in the absence of real police protection gangs and drug cartels are the dominant local powers; while by comparison Australia is one big whites-only (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Australia#Ancestry_of_Australian_population) middle-class gated community, with basically the same murder rate as our big white middle-class gated communities. And yet you've still got more overall violent crime (http://www.examiner.com/x-2879-Austin-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m4d8-Australia-experiencing-more-violent-crime-despite-gun-ban). It's a lot more complex an issue than just more guns = everyone dies aaaaa
The prevalence of guns certainly doesn't help, but the drug war, redlining, and the legacy of Jim Crow have infinitely more to do with why America is as screwed-up as it is.
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Date: 3/4/10 10:35 (UTC)http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence/factsethnicity
You've also got a much more even economic distribution (scroll down), and higher overall median incomes anyway:
America (http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/DistributionofIncome.html#lfHendersonCEE2-042_table_018)
Australia (http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/1020492cfcd63696ca2568a1002477b5/5f4bb49c975c64c9ca256d6b00827adb!OpenDocument)
What I don't have available to me online, though I might do some scans later, is demonstration of how sharply those incomes break along racial lines over here too. Basically we have vast ghettoes of institutionally disenfranchised people wallowing in crippling poverty, where in the absence of real police protection gangs and drug cartels are the dominant local powers; while by comparison Australia is one big whites-only (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Australia#Ancestry_of_Australian_population) middle-class gated community, with basically the same murder rate as our big white middle-class gated communities. And yet you've still got more overall violent crime (http://www.examiner.com/x-2879-Austin-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m4d8-Australia-experiencing-more-violent-crime-despite-gun-ban). It's a lot more complex an issue than just more guns = everyone dies aaaaa
The prevalence of guns certainly doesn't help, but the drug war, redlining, and the legacy of Jim Crow have infinitely more to do with why America is as screwed-up as it is.