Report: Personal Crimes in Gun-Controlled Australia Triple that of Gun-Friendly USA

Personal crimes such as rape and sexual assault are three times higher in gun-controlled Australia than in the USA, a report in the Spectator/Australia on Wednesday details.

Written by Malcolm Roberts and John Lott, Jr., the report begins by explaining that the establishment media’s approach to coverage and the method of compiling crime stats leads many to believe Australia’s “crime rate is low compared with the countries like the United States.”

The media “reinforces the myth” of lower crime while less than 20 percent of rapes and sexual assaults are reported to Australian police. However, in the U.S.,  45 percent of such personal crimes are reported to police. This difference in the level of personal crime reporting skews the figures seen by the populations of both countries and feeds into the establishment media’s low-crime narrative.

After a hard look at the real numbers, Roberts and Lott wrote: “Australia’s rape and sexual assault rate is roughly three times higher than that of the United States. Australia’s assault rate is about twice as high, and its burglary rate is about 2.5 times higher. Robbery is the only category where the two countries report similar rates.”

They went back nearly a decade, to the year 2000, to contrast those findings with the numbers of today and found similar data:

The International Crime Victimization Survey used consistent definitions and methods across countries. Even in 2000, it found Australia’s violent crime rate (including robbery, sexual incidents, assaults, and threats) was 104 per cent higher than in the United States. Robbery was 150 per cent higher, sexual assaults 167.9 per cent higher, and assaults and threats 72.3 per cent higher.

Commenting on the higher level of personal crimes in Australia, Roberts and Lott remind readers: “In practice, Australians cannot use guns for self-defense.” But citizens of the U.S. can use guns for self-defense and do so at least “five times more frequently to stop crimes than criminals use guns to commit them.”

But Australia goes beyond virtually banning guns for self-defense. “Australian law [also] prohibits people from carrying pepper spray or mace for protection…[and] bars individuals from carrying knives for self-defense.”

Roberts and Lott posit the caveat that a knife is less likely than a gun to help to a woman, as she would have to let attacker get so close, in order to use the knife, that he would likely be able to overpower her.

Roberts and Lott conclude: “Australians cannot address crime effectively if they underestimate its scale or ignore how measurement differences distort comparisons. Policymakers should focus on raising the risks to criminals – through higher arrest and conviction rates – and on giving law-abiding citizens more ability to protect themselves.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. He is a lever action man in an AR-15 world. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.