Right. And Australia has been even more peaceful since the gun buyback, with gun homicides dropping by about 35%. So yeah, in the years since then the rate has been remarkably constant. The buyback started in 1997. Your figures cover 2003 through 2014, oddly enough.
Granted, the US has had a decline in homicides over the same period in time, despite a rise in the number of firearms. But when you look beyond the superficial facts, a different pattern emerges. Since the peak in 1992, the number of gun owners has declined by more than 20%. So fewer owners = fewer deaths, oddly enough. This is a strong argument in and of itself. Apparently gun owners are a danger to everyone, especially themselves and their loved ones. A lot of people buy a gun because they believe it will help protect. Reality is that possessing a gun makes you more than 3 times more likely to die by a gun. Now true, a fair amount of that increase is the fact that having a gun in your house means you are more likely to commit suicide than otherwise. But that doesn't account for all of it. It is very likely that having a gun makes you more susceptible to the Zimmerman effect, i.e. you are more likely to put yourself in danger when you are armed than when you are not.
Sadly for your point, there have been no mass shootings in Australia since the gun buyback program. Granted they were at a low level before, but zero is even lower than that. The same cannot be said for the US, where mass shootings have been climbing every year for years. As time goes on, the weapon of choice has been a semi-automatic rifle like an AR15. A semi-automatic weapon of some type is almost universal, when it isn't a bomb. Still, weapons like the AR15 have been seeing record sales. And mass killings with them have also been growing at a similar pace. A more direct cause and effect is hard to find. |
