Ed Chenel, a police officer in Australia, reports that down under it’s been 12 months since Australians were forced by a new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by their own government – a program costing Australian taxpayers more than 500 million dollars.

The first year results are now in. Australia-wide homicides are up. Australia-wide assaults are up. Australia-wide ARMED robberies are up 44%. In the state of Victoria alone homicides WITH FIREARMS are now up 300%. Obviously criminals don’t turn in or register their guns. While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robberies with firearms this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months since the criminals can be increasingly confidant that their victims are unarmed. There’s only been an alarming increase in break-ins and assaults on the elderly.

You know gun control isn’t crime control – I venture to say most MP’s know our measures have made us less safe – but we’ve got to convince the condo-dwellers in the concrete jungles of the big cities who make up the majority of Canadians read that “voters” that gun control increases crime and threatens their lives.