Gun Confiscation in Australia

A mentally troubled twenty-eight-year-old man walked into a café in Port Arthur, Tasmania, opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon, killed thirty-five people and wounded another twenty-eight. The new prime minister, John Howard, knew that he had to act quickly. He came up with a clear conclusion, wrote Zack Beaucamp, “Australia had too many guns, and they were too easy to get.” In early 2013 just weeks after the Sandy Hook Massacre, Howard wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times, explaining how Australia was able to handle its crisis. He acknowledged the weak position of the national government: it had no authority over gun ownership, sale, or use; its only power concerned the importation of firearms. There was no right to bear arms in Australia nor was Australia’s gun lobby as strong as the NRA is in the United States, but gun control was up to the federation of states.

Given our decentralized system of government, I could reduce the number of dangerous firearms only by persuading the states to enact uniform laws totally prohibiting the ownership, possession, and sale of all automatic and semiautomatic weapons while the national government banned the importation of such weapons.

One month after the shooting, Howard had persuaded his own national parliamentary followers and state lawmakers to adopt a sweeping, nationwide reform of its gun laws, called the National Firearms Agreement (NFA). One of the most important parts of the NFA was the total ban on certain kinds of guns, particularly automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. Coupled with the ban was a year-long buyback of over 650,000 guns; those guns were then destroyed. City dwellers mostly approved of the gun ban and the buy back; rural citizens were the most upset. But it worked.

The Australian Institute of Criminology found that after the 1996 massacre and the buy back, gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply. The American Law and Economics Review found that firearm suicides were cut by 74 percent following the buyback. In his 2013 opinion piece, Howard concluded that “In the eighteen years before the 1996 reforms, Australia suffered thirteen gun massacres—each with more than four victims—causing a total of 102 deaths. There has not been a single massacre of that category since 1996.”

The title of the Howard’s essay in the New York Times was provocative: “I Went After Guns. Obama Can, Too.” Obama tried; he issued executive orders; he used the bully pulpit of the White House; he sent tough gun proposals to Congress. But little, if anything, changed. No substantial, sweeping legislation was passed Congress; the only changes have come at the state level. The year after Sandy Hook, some 1,500 gun violence bills were introduced in state legislatures, with 150 of them becoming law. Several states mandated stronger background checks, while several Republican-dominated states loosened gun restrictions, making it easier have armed volunteers guarding schools. In 2019, twenty-one states had expanded background check requirements and seventeen states passed red flag laws, allowing law enforcement to take guns away from individuals with mental problems or who might pose a threat to others. Twenty-eight states enacted laws requiring persons convicted of domestic violence to have their guns taken away. Yet, the murders continue. By August 2023, there had been 421 mass murders recorded in the United States, a record pace, along with at least 25,198 persons (118 each day) killed in non-mass murder situation. More than half of those 25,198 used a gun to commit suicide. Of those who died, 879 were teenagers and 170 were children. These figures also include 488 persons killed in police officer-involved shootings, and thirty-four officers killed in the line of duty.

Sources: Chico Harlan and Ladka Bauerova, “What If Gun Owners Had to Pass a Test? Czech Republic Offers an Answer,” Washington Post, November 25, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/gun-rights-test-czech-republic/. “Conditions for Obtaining a Firearms License,” Trigger Service, https://www.triggerservice.cz/en/firearms-license/podminky-k-ziskani-zbrojniho-prukazu/. “Czech Republic: Gun Facts, figures, and the Law,” University of Sydney, Gunpolicy.org, https://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/czech-republic; “Firearm Mortality by State 2021,” National Center for Health Statistics, CDC, https:///www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm. Zack Beaucamp, “Australia Confiscated 650,000 Guns. Murders and Suicides Plummeted,” Vox, May 25, 2022, https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback. John Howard, “I Went After Guns. Obama Can, Too,” New York Times, January 16, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/17/opinion/australia-banned-assault-weapons-america-can-too.html. Reid Wilson, “Seven Years After Sandy Hook, the Politics of Guns Has Changed,” The Hill, December 14, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/474479-seven-years-after-sandy-hook-the-politics-of-guns-has-changed/; Kiara Alfonseca, “More than 25,000 People Killed in Gun Violence So Far in 2023,” ABC News, August 3, 2023, https://abcnews.go.com/US/116-people-died-gun-violence-day-us-year/story?id=97382759, citing data from the Gun Violence Archive. The Gun Violence Archive defines “mass shooting” as “four or more victims shot or killed.”