Comment by Gustomaximus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Gustomaximus | Hacker News Reader

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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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