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Comment by GuinansEyebrows | Hacker News Reader

this is a really weird comparison to make given that the US has basically made no material progress on policy that could prevent mass shootings.

they're both really really bad things. they both deserve as much attention as we can afford (which is more than they get).

not to just jump down your throat -- i agree with you about more needing to be done to prevent suicides though. i think it's a good thing that hotlines are available but it's clear that putting the onus on people who are considering suicide to reach out for help is not enough. we gotta get better at reaching out and checking on our friends, loved ones, coworkers etc and help them carry the load more than we're culturally accustomed to.

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> the US has basically made no material progress on policy that could prevent mass shootings

Mass shootings vary significantly state to state, in part —I think—due to different gun and mental health laws [1].

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/mass-shooting-rat...

in your opinion, what policy should be made because whatever policy you make won't do much as long as guns exist?

are you asking me, a numbskull with an associate's degree, to propose public policy*? i think we're allowed to want qualified people to do better in the positions we've elected them to :)

* if so, my policy is that all guns be vaporized overnight. also, my policy would include the end of lobbying entirely, including but not limited to the small arms industry and the NRA along with police guilds and other organizations supporting the small arms race in this country

Policy still matters even if guns exist. After all, murder is still illegal even though murderers exist. Building a bomb is still illegal even though bombs exist.

The tricky part with the US is the already vast supply of firearms circulating. Can't do much about that.

But, I would think, stopping or reducing the sale of guns right now would still have an effect. We already somewhat regularly try to reduce the sale of guns via policy, mostly to people we think are potentially dangerous.

But, I don't know exactly how much that has helped, or will help. What I do know is there is definitely variance in gun violence. Both across nations, but also across states in the US. So, something is behind it.

Australian policy on guns (princially unifying existing gun regulation across all of Australia including Queensland, Tasmania, and the Territories) had a significant impact on mass shooting, individual shooting, gun suicides, etc throughout the 30 years following the Port Arthur massacre.

During the period legitimate gun ownership (people with guns) has sharply declined in larger urban areas, remained about the same in "working with guns" population demographics, and total numbers of guns in Australia have increased.

No large scale mass shootings since, no "mass shootings" (four or more dead / injured (?? - I can't recall the low bar threshold)) at all for nearly 30 years, three or four such events total overall rather than the practically one a day numbers in the USofA.

No policy or constitution is perfect, of course, Australia is currently in a period of revising some of that policy.

18 casualties at Croydon park (2025), 57 at Bondi Beech (2025), and a rough survey[] looks like the period proximal before Port Arthur doesn't look much different than after.

The largest one before Port Arthur was Milperra, armed motorcycle gangs, which Australia is speedrunning into resurrecting through their boneheaded cigarette taxes that haved turned half of cigarette vendors into nodes of the black market.

Much fewer than USA, but the Port Arthur changes don't seem to have had much effect.

[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_Aust...

As noted, no poilcy is perfect or works forever .. hence the need to adapt as time passes.

Yes, we had decades without mass shootings and suppressed casual crime gun usage to near zero.

> which Australia is speedrunning into resurrecting through their boneheaded cigarette taxes that haved turned half of cigarette vendors into nodes of the black market.

Yeah, the taxes were smart and worked, continuosly increasing them to chase diminishing returns was not smart and once a threshold was crossed it spawned an entire new criminal network that had old school motorcycle gangs shaking their heads for crossing various prior "lines" ( family retribution, etc ).

> but the Port Arthur changes don't seem to have had much effect.

Aside from substantially less gun crime, deaths, injuries per capita than the US.

The USA is an invalid control group for comparing the before/after of Port Arthur era gun law changes of the sorts of events you noted in Australia.

Australia doesn't have the Second Amendment.

In the US, any gun legislation that could possibly be effective at eliminating gun violence would also by definition be unconstitutional, since there is no way to prevent gun violence to any significant degree without infringing on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

And a Constitutional amendment to repeal or change the 2A is existentially impossible as it would require the cooperation of Southern states and would threaten the billion dollar gun lobby.

Nor does the UK, nor most of the 190+ countries about the globe.

This is tangential to whether gun policy can work or not.

> In the US, any gun legislation that could possibly be effective at eliminating gun violence would also by definition be unconstitutional,

And yet many US states already have gun legislation ... and arguably more regulations and fiddly shit than Australia does.

What the US lacks is the ability to have clean, simple, uniform gun laws across all states AND uniform _enforcement_ of such laws.

>What the US lacks is the ability to have clean, simple, uniform gun laws across all states AND uniform _enforcement_ of such laws.

Yes. that is what would be unconstitutional. States can have their own gun laws but the Federal government is restrained by the Second Amendment. Mostly it has to abuse the Commerce Clause to justify its ability to regulate guns as interstate commerce.

So, it's a failure of the US ability to implement policy, not a failure of enacted policy to be able to make a difference.

Luckily, it's an Ammedment that is subject to interpretation, change, and/or removal.

Recall that US history has examples of Ammendments being both added and removed, that recently the Federalists saw fruit of a 30 year long campaign to stack the judicial pipeline, and the US landed on the moon.

The country is capable of difficult things, it's a matter of finding the will and making the grind.

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