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Comment by alberte | Hacker News Reader

Australian here, we had a mass shooting in Australia some years ago. As a result of this Assault rifles were banned (Edit: without a demonstrable need), licenses were required for rifles and hand guns. Any guns could be traded in to the govt for money in the cut over period. We haven't had a mass shooting since as far as I can recall. The occasional knifing or someone with a hand gun argument occurs still. Guns are a lot harder to come by here, so if you're a loony who wants to kill everyone for looking at you funny then you're out of luck.

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North Korea also has few gun deaths. But I don't see the relevance in either case.

Australia has no freedom of speech for instance, is bringing in (additional) internet censorship, personal data (like telephone records) is given out without warrants to non government departments.

This is often left out of this comparison about restricting one of the freedoms.

Americans believe in freedoms of individuals, under this belief how do some more restrictive gun laws apply, is what this article is asking.

What I have found amazing, is how rare mass shootings are in the United States. There are an overwhelming number of states where it would simply be the matter of $500 and a trip to Walmart/Craigslist for a disgruntled person or a potential terrorist to fully legally equip themselves to go on a murder-suicide spree.

> is how rare mass shootings are in the United States.

Mass killings in the US are very common.

If you include:

> More than four people shot and killed (not including the perpetrator)

> At one time

> In one place

> By one person

> In a public place

> Not including gang violence, armed robbery, or domestic violence

You get over 70 incidents in 30 years. That's more than 2 a year. Compare that to the whole of Europe, where you have maybe one per decade.

If you change the definition to include at least 4 people shot and injured, but not killed, you get over 250 per year in the US.

The US is extraordinarily violent among first world countries, even though violent crime has dropped.

> Compare that to the whole of Europe, where you have maybe one per decade.

Really? There are a couple Wikipedia entries you should read.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting#Europe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rampage_killers_(Europ...

There have been two mass murderers in Switzerland alone in the last 15 years, and it's basically the size of Dallas/Fortworth. Not to mention, y'know, recent events in Paris.

I believe you're ignoring the mass shootings in WWII.

I would say they are relevent, as one of the arguments for the 2nd amendment is to keep government from killing the citizenry.

The comparison to Australia is an interesting one. Another interesting comparison is to Mexico, where federal law bans gun ownership for average citizens.

http://tijuana.usconsulate.gov/tijuana/warning.html

It doesn't seem like they've been able to keep a lid on them in that country though.

Personally, I'm not against new, strict gun control laws. As far as I'm concerned, they could require a twelve year waiting period to buy a water pistol. I don't care.

But, what surprises me is that people believe, after witnessing the US's long term attempt to control drugs, that it would actually be able to control guns.

It just does not seem plausible to me.

What am I missing here? How could stricter gun control laws be successfully enforced in the US? Wouldn't people defy the laws and obtain guns just like they do illegal drugs?

I'm Australian too, and it seems to work pretty well. One thing I hear a lot is that 'then only the bad guys will have guns', but I think our laws and enforcement must drive the black-market prices way up, because they do find illegal guns every now and then when they have a big drug bust and confiscate millions of dollars of drugs and cash, but your regular criminal on the street pretty much never has a gun. The drug gangs mostly only shoot each other, and pretty rarely too, so for the average Australian, the idea of ever witnessing gun violence (or being a victim to it) just feels really far fetched.

I wonder how much of it is cultural though - when the big gun buyback happened after Port Arthur, it was mostly taking guns from farmers - not people who think they could rise up against the Government or that they should be able to personally kill people in self-defense...

It does kinda help to be, you know, an island.

Since when is it a contentious issue to kill in legitimate self-defense, with a firearm or not?

It's just not something you really ever hear about anyone doing here, and even when it is required, it's pretty far down the list of things to do. Pretty much the only time you hear about someone killing someone in self defense is a cop killing a knife-weilding person every now and then...

Whereas in the US every now and then you hear about people firing at what they think is an intruder, but it turns out to be a family member and stuff like that. It's just really strange to me that shooting would be the first thing you would do, but from the news we hear, it seems that's what a non-insignificant number of people in the US do.

"We haven't had a mass shooting since as far as I can recall"

Well, no, but there weren't many before Hobart, either. But do take a look at your other crimes' rates since the confiscations, especially home invasion.

Also worth pointing out is Australians still have access to firearms, to many peoples misconception.

Hunting type weapons (bolt actions and shotguns) only require a simple firearm safety test plus the requirement firearms must be kept in a safe. Handguns are available but you must be a regular shooter (6 times a year I believe), plus member of a club and you cant take a handgun home for the first year of your licence/club membership. Semi-autos are available if you have a professional need for them such as a farmer who has problems with feral animals, or a farmer hire you as someone that supports their pest eradication.

None of this difficult if you want a gun, but it seems to do the trick in keeping firearms out of the hands of crazies thus far.

> but it seems to do the trick in keeping firearms out of the hands of crazies thus far.

Yes you wouldn't think this change would be enough - because if you want to get a gun you can but for some reason it has.

It's almost as if you can't infer valid statistical models from the occurrence or absence of extremely rare events.

yes, unfortunately that is one interpretation of events, even so I feel more comfortable knowing that people like Martin Bryant can't get guns. I guess we'll just have to wait for more data points

It's never going to work absolutely, though the 4 main factors I see are fairly significant;

1 & 2: Licencing and checks stops people with a violent history purchasing/owning guns legally. If that personality decides they need a firearm to hurt people there is a month+ between their desire to do harm and actually owning a firearm.

3: Compulsory safes (and the police check each owner has an appropriate one) reduce the likelihood of a person accessing anothers firearm.

4: More dangerous firearms like handguns and semi-auto are harder to get yet again thus less prevalent stopping what might be a small shooting from becoming significantly larger. A significant shooting becomes much harder with a double barrel shotgun than an AR-15.

Another benefit I imagine is restrictions would stop police feeling there is a potential firearm around every corner and may help calm down ongoing US cop shootings/mentality too.

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