As Americans continue to debate the effectiveness of gun control laws in the aftermath of the recent mass shootings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association could provide the answer once and for all.
In the new study, University of Sydney Emeritus Professor Simon Chapman and colleagues Philip Alpers and Professor Mike Jones from Macquarie University report statistical evidence that Australia has seen an accelerated decline in intentional firearm deaths and an absence of fatal mass shootings since passing gun control laws 20 years ago.
In 1996, following an April incident in which a man used two semiautomatic rifles to kill 35 people and wound 19 others in Port Arthur, Tasmania, the Australian government first passed into law a gun buyback program and new regulations banning rapid-fire long guns. Programs such as these were in place in all six states and two territories by August 1998.
During the 18 years prior to the passing of the laws, there were 13 fatal mass shootings reported throughout Australia, Chapman said in a statement. Since the institution of the buyback program and the new regulations, however, there have been none, he and his colleagues discovered.
Leaving guns by the roadside has been a good choice for Australia.
Findings suggest similar regulations could work elsewhere
Those laws even prohibited weapons that were already in private ownership, and by January 1, 1997, the federal and state governments launched a program to buy back the firearms at market price. Since October 1997, possession of any prohibited weapons has been punishable by large fines and prison time, and a similar program for handguns was enacted in 2003.
Based statistics reported by the study authors, more than one million privately-owned weapons have been surrendered or seized, and subsequently melted down, and the number of Australian households reporting gun ownership decreased by 75% between 1998 and 2005. As it turns out, those trends have resulted in a significant drop in mass shootings involving fatalities.
Between 1979 and 1996, there were 13 fatal mass shootings – defined as an event in which five or more victims, not including the perpetrator(s), were shot to death, throughout Australia – with a total of 104 men and women killed and at least 52 others wounded. Since 1996, when the first gun control and buyback laws were passed, there have been no mass shootings nationwide.
Furthermore, between 1979 and 1996, the number of total firearm-related deaths in Australia had been declining at an average rate of 3% per year. In the past 20 years, the average decline in gun-related fatalities has decreased at a rate of 5% annually. The number of suicides that involved the use of guns has also decreased significantly and firearm-related homicides have also experienced a slight downward trend, according to Chapman and his colleagues.
“Australia’s experience shows that banning rapid-fire firearms was associated with reductions in mass shootings and total firearm deaths. In today’s context, these findings offer an example which, with public support and political courage, might reduce gun deaths in other countries,” said Chapman. “The acceleration of the decline in gun-related deaths means lives saved,” Jones added. “We can argue over how many but the data says lives have been saved.”
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