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HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED WHEN AUSTRALIA BANNED SEMI-AUTOMATIC AND AUTOMATIC WEAPONS
A lesson for American lawmakers
America has a gun problem. We have the highest gun ownership per capita than any other country in the world. Even the brother of the Las Vegas man who killed at least 58 people and left hundreds of others injured last minute was perplexed as to why and how his relative had so many automatic weapons. The shooter, Stephan Paddock, had ten guns with him, a few of which were fully automatic.

Australia made the decision in 1996 to ban semi-automatic and automatic weapons, and in the following years the homicide and suicide rates for the country declined sharply.

The reason for the ban was a mass shooting, a tragedy that we’re all too familiar with here in America.

In the spring of 1996, Martin Bryant went on a rampage in Port Arthur on the Australian island of Tasmania, killing 35 people and injuring 28 others. John Howard, the newly elected Prime Minister at the time, knew something had to be done and what he realized is something that lawmakers here in the Untied States are still unable to grasp: guns kill people, and fully automatic weapons kill even more people.

The National Firearms Agreement was passed just one month after the shooting. This put into place a ban on all semi-automatic weapons, automatic weapons and shotguns. It also put into place an incredibly tight regulations as to who and how people purchased guns and required a registration system for all legal guns.

“I knew that I had to use the authority of my office to curb the possession and use of the type of weapons that killed 35 innocent people,” Howard wrote in the New York Times. “I also knew it wouldn’t be easy,” he also said.

It turns out though, it was pretty easy.

The country had to figure out what to do with all the newly banned guns, so it offered their citizens a mandatory buyback program and also granted amnesty to people who had illegally obtained guns if they turned them in.

In the span of less than a year, they were able to seize an astonishing 650,000 guns, all of which were destroyed. In the seven years after the ban, suicides by gun dropped an astonishing 57 percent and homicides by guns dropped 47 percent.

Will America learn from Australia? Likely not. But if history is any indicator as to what could happen when tighter gun regulations are put into place, hopefully politicians here will start to take note.