Townsville - Guns

The recent mass killing in Las Vegas is getting a lot of coverage here in Australia, and Australians we meet ask us about it. The Australian foreign minister even offered to help the U.S. government reform its gun laws based on their experience. All this prompted me to revisit to our blog from our first trip here in 2008/09 (blakeanddebdownunder.blogspot.com) when I wrote about crime and guns down under. Here is what I wrote in December 2008:

“Australia has historically had relatively low levels of violent crime, but a few high profile mass killings in the 1980s and 1990s prompted stricter gun control legislation nationwide. Prime Minister John Howard, normally a staunch supporter of the USA, was quoted as stating, “We do not want the American disease imported into Australia,” and "I did not want Australia to go down the American path. There are some things about America I admire and there are some things I don't. And one of the things I don't admire about America is their... slavish love of guns."

“The government banned many types of semi-automatic weapons and instituted a gun buyback program. Now a prospective gun owner has to be at least 18, have a Firearms License, have secured storage for the firearm, have a “Permit to Acquire” (after a 28 day waiting period), and have the gun registered to the owner by serial number. Not surprisingly there is much controversy over whether the recent gun laws were effective or just piggybacking on continuing downtrends in gun deaths. But in recent years the number of guns stolen in Australia has fallen dramatically (due to the push for secured storage), firearm related deaths have declined significantly, and there have been no further mass killings.

“As a point of comparison, Australia’s rate of murder by firearm is about one tenth that of the United States. It has less than one sixth as many prisoners per capita (a category in which the U.S. leads the world). We feel quite safe here.”

Not much has changed since I wrote that nearly nine years ago. Australia has still not had any mass shootings since their 1996 gun reforms. And the US continues to have them, and continues to do nothing to stop them.