Another gun massacre in America

Australians of course know how terrible it is when some nut bag picks up a gun and starts firing at people. We had Port Arthur in 1996, where 35 people where killed in cold blood. Unlike some countries however, there was a huge groundswell of voter support after this massacre for much stronger gun laws. The Howard gov then proceeded with legislation, and a gun buy back scheme and gun amnesty if they were unregistered. These guns were all destroyed.

Fifteen years ago today, the largest gun massacre by a civilian - anywhere in the world - occurred in Tasmania. The weapons used by the Port Arthur murderer were designed for killing large numbers of people, and they delivered: 35 people lay dead and 18 wounded.

As a result of the tragedy, those weapons were banned from civilian ownership and more than 640,000 were bought back and destroyed. The rules applying to firearms in general were tightened, making it harder to qualify to own a gun, and especially to own more than one.

Universal registration meant the police would have records of gun ownership. Most importantly, the new rules applied to all states and territories, providing a uniform standard of safety across the country. (Under the previous regulatory patchwork, assault weapons banned in some jurisdictions were freely available in others.)

The new laws were a victory for hundreds of public health and legal organisations, domestic violence agencies, youth groups, churches and trade unions which had campaigned for the reforms. The overwhelming majority of citizens, according to opinion polls, wanted much stronger gun laws.
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Fifteen years later, Howard has been vindicated. In an article published today, researchers at Harvard University review the evidence on the impact of the reforms, concluding, ''The National Firearms Agreement seems to have been incredibly successful in terms of lives saved.''

To be specific, we've had no gun massacres since 1996, compared with 13 such tragedies during the previous 18 years. (A massacre is defined as the killing of four or more people.) Total gun deaths have been reduced: gun homicides and gun suicides had been falling gradually before Port Arthur, but the reforms in 1996 caused that decline to accelerate dramatically. In the early 1990s, about 600 Australians were dying each year by gunfire; that figure is now fewer than 250.

A comprehensive evaluation last year by the ANU researchers Christine Neill and Andrew Leigh revealed that the reforms had reduced overall homicide and suicide rates too. In other words, gun deaths have not been substituted by other methods of homicide or suicide.

This makes sense because you can't kill someone (or yourself) as easily with a knife as with a gun. The ANU researchers estimated that 200 deaths a year have been prevented, with an annual economic saving of $500 million. That's a $7.5 billion return on the one-off $500 million cost of the reforms to taxpayers.

As the Harvard researchers remark, ''from the perspective of 1996, it would have been difficult to imagine more compelling future evidence of a beneficial effect of the law.''
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The first thing that went through my mind yesterday when I turned on the PC was "Oh, another gun rampage over there". It is of course a terrible thing, and my heart goes out to those affected by the killings, not just the immediate relatives but in the wider community as well who may not even know anyone killed. It's the sense of violation and loss of innocence.

At the same time I, and I suspect many many people in countries other than America, are completely bewildered that despite these continuing massacres in America, the American people don't in turn want something done about the gun laws in their country. In fact to the point that people over there even say, pretty much, that you've just got to live with it.

Before the dead had even been carried from the cinema in Colorado on Friday afternoon a CBS broadcaster said in a solemn radio editorial:

''We'll eventually find out who James Holmes is, but he's not a terrorist, we're told, and thousands of other showings were peaceful, so really we have to start seeing these things as natural disasters, like an earthquake or a tornado.''

That this view was swept away in the deluge of sad commentary on Friday was surprising to me, an outsider.
By this standard James Holmes was not a young man armed more heavily than the soldiers the US fields in Afghanistan, but an event, an act of god, to be weathered rather than countered.

This, even though he was carrying two semi-automatic pistols, a shotgun and an assault rifle with a clip that let him fire 100 rounds without reloading, and though he was wearing body armour from head to toe, and a gas mask, and though he carried a tear gas grenade to disorient his victims, and though he bought all this equipment - plus 6000 rounds of ammunition - legally from discount stores and websites.

After mass killings in schools, universities, offices, restaurants and even a military base there is no real debate, let alone political action, to restrict the free sale of any guns - even military weapons - in America.

It is difficult to understand how a country that so truly values its citizens' rights to life - and uniquely to their pursuit of happiness - can tolerate such a situation.
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The NRA boasts only 4 million fee-paying members. But its reach is far further. Its members and surrogates have convinced a wider constituency that the right to keep and bear arms is not a singular right, but is freedom from tyranny itself.

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Here, I know only one person who actually owns a gun. It's not in his house. He's a member of a gun club and it's locked up there, by law. I don't know anyone else who owns one. The closest I ever get to a gun is when I see cops with them in their holster. If a cop actually shoots it's big news.

Given how painful it is for a community to lose people senselessly, I find the lack of will to do anything about guns in that same community strange, even bizarre. We had a very different experience here after Port Aurthur, and people are alive today because of the changes in the gun laws back in 1996.