A Report actually from Australia, rather than about it.

http://www.aic.gov.au/stats/facts99/sec3.html

Australian Crime Statistics Report 1999 section 3

Publisher: Australian Institute of Criminology Data Source: Australian Bureau
of Statistics (ie the equivt of the US Census
Bureau - about as objective as you can get)

Summary: As can be seen from the long-term graphs, anyone who says the
new gun control laws have made any significant difference to crime rates is
talking through their hat, or deliberately distorting, misquoting, being
selective with,
or downright falsifying numbers to support a pre-judged political
position, or unwittingly quoting from someone who did. The National Rifle
Association's credibility here is now comparable with that of the National
Inquirer as the result of their recent Charlton Heston ads. We expected better
of them.

Since the laws were introduced in 96 but only implemented in 98 the lack of
any impact is not surprising. Time will tell, but the few figs for 99 in the
above show it's "more of the same".

These figs are accurate and precise enough to show the annual "March Madness"
effect where the number of asssaults goes up in the stinking hot months of
February and March.

Anyone interested in discussing this further PLEASE take it off the list. I
will not reply to anything further on the list about this, but will be glad
to give data, discuss analysis of data etc via e-mail personally.

Really OT, and parenthetically: Of course people in the US might be interested
in the absolute numbers, showing that we have about 1.4 homicides from all
causes per million people per month ( 1.6 per 100,000 annually). The US has
had a massive drop in this rate recently,
to only 4-5 times as much. See
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/hmrt.htm#longterm