In the weeks following the Orlando massacre in which 49 people were killed, more than 500 Americans have been shot. At least 200 of them are now dead.
This year alone, 150 Americans have been killed in mass shootings in the US and these only make up a tiny portion of the county’s gun-related death toll.
Since the Pulse night club attack, 10 people have been killed in mass shootings — that’s 10 people dead in less than two weeks simply because some idiot/bigot/psychopath was allowed to buy a gun.
Do you know how many Australians have died in mass shootings in the past two decades?
Exactly zero.
In 1996, John Howard reformed our gun laws following the Port Arthur massacre and it’s something we thank him for every time the news comes on to tell us another group of US school kids or, say, a group of LGBTI+ people has been murdered while going about their business.
Admittedly, curbing gun violence in America is a much larger challenge than it was here. For starters, our gun lobby isn’t nearly as powerful or well-financed. We also have no Bill of Rights to contend with when creating legislation nor do we have a constitutional right to bear arms.
John Howard goes on American TV and perfectly schools them on their gun problem:
The thing is when Howard introduced the ban and subsequent buy-back of rapid-fire long guns things improved. In 2003, when a handgun buy-back program happened, they improved some more. A new study has found they are still improving.
A group of researchers from University of Sydney and Macquarie University analysed the data on intentional suicide and homicide rates in Australia before and after 1996. The study was published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a globally respected journal in the US which reports on groundbreaking research from around the world.