
How Australia's Gun Control Experiment Worked (2018) [video] - kulesh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWZcOWAIcPw
======
mmerlin
Despite several terrible decisions Prime Minister John Howard made that still
hurt, especially contracting away all our natural resources for basically zero
profit (unlike Norway and Qatar who are smart) so now Aussies pay double++ for
our own natural gas than our export recipients like Japan and India (even
after liquefaction and shipping)... the gun buyback program was the very best
thing Howard achieved to make Australia fairly safe comparatively on a global
scale.

We had a population of approximately 18 Million at the time, and 640,000 guns
removed from general circulation.

Good onya Johnnie.

------
karmakaze
...for 22 years until eventually undone by gun lobbyists.

One big help is that the country is an island with metal detectors guarding
their airways.

~~~
tomhoward
> for 22 years until eventually undone by gun lobbyists

There have been no significant changes to Australia's gun laws that were
implemented in 1996.

~~~
karmakaze
From the post itself at 3:12

"...following years of lobbying by pro-gun groups, Australia's strict gun
rules have been eroded and gun numbers are almost back to the same level [as
1996]"

~~~
tomhoward
To quote that report on which the second article is based:

“While the most important provisions of the NFA remain substantially intact,
no jurisdiction fully complies” [1]

But those claims in that article, and the description of them in the video,
seem overblown.

I understand the authors are trying to sound an alarm in order to prevent any
significant retreat from the positive changes that happened in 1996.

But that's all it is.

There is no claim that Australia's gun ownership or gun violence problems are
back to pre-1996 levels and there is no evidence to back such a claim.

If you look at the various statistics on this page [2], the key figures remain
substantially lower than their 1996 levels, including _Rate of Civilian
Firearm Possession per 100 Population_ and _Number of Licensed Firearm Owners_
, and they have not materially increased in the past 10 years.

We just don't have a gun culture or gun violence problem in Australia. The
total number may have risen, but apart from very narrow exceptions, none of
them are semiautomatic or automatic, and I gather almost all are for use in
farming and pest control on private land (pests including foxes and rabbits
are significant problems for farmers in Australia).

Most notably, the rates of gun-related homicides and other fatalities in
Australia remain extremely low by world standards [3].

[1] [https://sydney.edu.au/news-
opinion/news/2017/10/05/australia...](https://sydney.edu.au/news-
opinion/news/2017/10/05/australia-slipping-backwards-on-national-firearms-
agreement.html)

[2]
[https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_c...](https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_civilian_firearm_possession)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-
related_death_rate)

