A man and woman dressed in tactical gear — what police called "prepared" — shot and killed 14 people on Wednesday at a Southern California center for the mentally disabled.
This massacre comes just five days after three people died at a shooting that targeted a Planned Parenthood. And it comes two months after 10 people died in a shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.
So far, 2015 has seen more mass shootings — 352 — than days in the year. Many people, frustrated with the continued violence, want more than "thoughts and prayers."
In 1996, Australia took action. Just 12 days after the worst mass shooting in the country's history, the government passed a law that would become one of the largest gun reforms in recent history. Afterward, gun deaths plummeted.
The changes remain the gold standard for advocates of gun control today.
A sure and swift reaction
In 1996, a man named Martin Bryant became the worst killer in Australia's history. After walking into a cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania, he killed 35 people and wounded 23 others with a semiautomatic rifle and another semiautomatic assault weapon.
Bryant's actions shook Australia to its core just six weeks after then-Prime Minister John Howard took office.
As a federation, Australia gives its national government limited powers. So Howard stared down the challenge of convincing the country's various states to support nationwide reform while the national government banned the import of specific weapons.
For a while, some states seemed unwilling to pass the reform. Howard, however, made clear that his government would counter with a referendum to alter Australia's constitution and give itself the power to regulate guns.
Howard knew these efforts would be expensive, but he said he knew they would also be worth it.
REUTERS/Daniel MunozFormer Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
"The fundamental problem," he wrote in a New York Times op-ed 17 years after the Port Arthur shooting, "was the ready availability of high-powered weapons, which enabled people to convert their murderous impulses into mass killing. Certainly, shortcomings in treating mental illness and the harmful influence of violent video games and movies may have played a role. But nothing trumps easy access to a gun. It is easier to kill 10 people with a gun than with a knife."
These reforms passed, creating the National Firearms Agreement. Aside from banning certain semiautomatic and self-loading rifles and shotguns, the legislation required all firearm-license applicants to show "genuine reason" for owning a gun, which couldn't include self-defense.
Aside from the NFA, Australia still had to remove the guns then on its streets, so it instituted a mandatory, federally financed gun-buyback program. The one-time national tax to raise the funds, however, required even more legislation.
But in the end, Australia's government would purchase nearly 700,000 guns. Percentagewise, that's the equivalent of 40 million in the US.
The effects
Firearm suicides and homicides dropped after Australia's buyback and enactment of the NFA.
As The Washington Post's Wonkblog has pointed out, researchers from two different Australian universities found that in the decade after the NFA was introduced, the firearm homicide rate fell by 59% and the firearm suicide rate fell by 65% — without increases in other types of deaths.
Here's a bigger picture:
continue at business insider
