“That’s been our experience here [in Australia]”.
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In addition, quicker and better treatment of gunshot victims by medical personnel may be saving more people’s lives – and thus lowering the death rates.
After a shooting at Umpqua Community College in OR in October, President Barack Obama said, “We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that nearly eliminate mass shootings”.
The researchers found that there had been 13 fatal mass shootings in the 18 years prior to the new laws being rolled out, killing 104 people.
The country has also experienced a large decline in overall gun-related deaths since the stricter laws took place, although the study’s authors say it’s not possible to determine whether this change is a direct result of the reforms. Gun-related suicides have followed a similar trend.
“Opponents of public health measures to reduce the availability of firearms often claim that ‘killers just find another way.’ Our findings show the opposite: there is no evidence of murderers moving to other methods, and the same is true of suicide”, said co-author Philip Alpers.
Researchers say Australia’s example could help countries with gun problems, notably the United States, where recent gun related violence in Orlando, Florida killed 49 people.
To further encourage gun owners to give up their existing weapons, the government bought back all the outlawed guns at market price, no questions asked. Since then, Australians have voluntarily relinquished thousands of nonprohibited guns, and thousands of additional prohibited firearms have been seized by the government and melted down. It’s estimated that between 1988 and 2005, the proportion of Australian households with guns plummeted by 75 percent. In addition, the number of guns in the US, more than one for every citizen, could make a similar legislation much harder to enact.
While past studies have failed to draw any definite conclusions, this latest research demonstrates for the first time that the gun control laws did reduce deaths.
The project also found that although the number of homicide and suicide deaths caused by firearms in Australia had been falling before the reforms, the rate of the fall accelerated for both after the laws were enacted. The measures were introduced following the Port Arthur massacre on the island state of Tasmania in 1996.
Over the same comparison period, there was a significant acceleration in the downward trend for firearm suicides and a non-significant acceleration in the downward trend in firearm homicides.
The NFA, as it is widely known in Australia, was passed in response to a massacre in which a man killed 35 people, and wounded 19 others, using two semiautomatic rifles.
One thing wasn’t quite so black and white though.
There was also a rapid decline in firearms-related deaths from 1997 and 2013 compared with before 1997.
Gun violence in the USA has been labeled a public health crisis, and medical organizations including the American Medical Association are lobbying Congress for new laws to restrict gun sales.
Macquarie University’s Professor Mike Jones says: “To me there are two key findings from this study”.
The researchers used government statistics and news reports to search for a connection between the gun control legislation and reduced gun deaths. “The other is that the acceleration of the decline in gun-related deaths means lives saved”.
There have been a number of gun deaths in New Zealand lately, and the Law and Order Select Committee is now looking into how criminals manage to get weapons and how widespread the problem is.
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The researchers did notice a statistically significant effect on firearm suicides after the gun law was put in place. “In today’s context, these findings offer an example which, with public support and political courage, might reduce gun deaths in other countries”, Chapman said.
