U.S. can learn from Australia on gun control
BY SIMON KENT
FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2012 07:00 PM EST
This file photo taken on Sept. 8, 1996 shows Norm Legg, a project supervisor with a local security firm, holding up an armalite rifle which is similar to the one used in the Port Arthur massacre and which was handed in for scrap in Melbourne after Australia banned all automatic and semi-automatic rifles in the aftermath of the Port Arthur shooting. (AFP File Photo)
TORONTO - First came the murders. Now come the tears.
They began burying 20 young children and six teachers in Newtown, Conn. this week.
As they did a still convulsed America paused to grieve and ask, not for the first time, how?
How did one person visit so much grief, pain and suffering on an entirely innocent community?
How did one person store enough hate in their body to callously murder so many in the self-proclaimed land of the free and home of the brave?
How did everybody miss the telltale signs of a latent killer in a small, close-knit rural community?
How can anyone be sure this won’t happen again?
How, how, how?
So many questions without answers. So many people left with pain in their hearts that will never, ever wash away.
At the other end of the world there is another small community that knows the ache of Newtown.
It has also asked the same questions because it suffered a mass shooting of its own in April 1996 that claimed the lives of 35 people and wounded another 23.
The scene of that massacre was the tiny tourist centre of Port Arthur on the Australian island state of Tasmania.
Martin Bryant, a 28-year-old from New Town, a suburb of the nearby state capital city Hobart, eventually pleaded guilty to the crimes and was given 35 life sentences without possibility of parole.
What he did was every bit as monstrous as Adam Lanza’s crime.
Bryant took several military-style assault weapons and went to a peaceful tourist spot and systematically murdered anyone he came upon. His killing spree lasted almost 24-hours before his capture.
If it is at all possible for such a monstrous crime to have a positive outcome, this one did.
Australia banned semi-automatic weapons outright as a result of the Bryant murders. Then it set about buying back as many guns as could be found from the general community.
To top it off a national gun registry was founded and strict licensing laws introduced.
All this was achieved by a newly elected conservative government in coalition with a party representing farmers and rural landholders in a country with a strong history of personal gun ownership.
A piece of legislation called the National Firearms Agreement was the instrument the government of Prime Minister John Howard used and the results were stunning.
The scheme effectively banned most people from owning automatic or semi-automatic weapons and included a national gun buyback scheme that saw more than 700,000 weapons voluntarily handed in and destroyed.
Strict laws on the licensing, registration and storage of guns were also implemented that have since been strengthened and remain to this day.
The New York Times has already referred to Australia’s gun laws as a “road map” for the U.S., saying that “in the 18 years before the law, Australia suffered 13 mass shootings — but not one in the 14 years after the law took full effect.”
Former Australian deputy prime minister Tim Fischer agrees. He is not the slightest bit surprised the Australian example is being cited, saying the ends justified the means if it means less killing.
But he cautions that the U.S. politicians he has spoken to “can’t get their minds” around the banning of assault weapons, or even uniform national licensing laws because of the primacy of state’s rights.
“I am making very little progress... as they just could not get their mind around the simplicity of having a harmonized shooter’s licence scheme and weapon registration scheme,” he told ABC News last week.
“It is sad that the death toll from guns is horrific in the U.S.A. because there are so many millions of guns with so little cross-checking, character checking.
“A ban on assault weapons have been allowed to largely expire through a lack of willpower to stand up to the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the nonsense too often spoken by the NRA.”
For its part, the NRA shows no sign of willingness to negotiate. Its answer is always the same to gun crime: More guns, please.
National Rifle Association Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre confirmed as much on Friday. He said that what is needed to protect U.S. school children is “a plan of absolute protection,” including guns in schools that will provide a “national shield.”
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” the head of the lobby group, which opposes tighter controls on weapons, told a news conference.
LaPierre wants armed police officers and other security measures at every school in the United States to protect people from other people who might carry weapons.
“The NRA is going to bring all its knowledge, all its dedication and all its resources to develop a model National School Shield emergency response program for every school in America that wants it,” he said.
While the NRA is working towards that dubious goal of putting weapons into classrooms, White House spokesman Jay Carney confirmed that U.S. President Barack Obama is “actively supportive” of reinstating an assault weapons ban that would make the NRA shield plan largely redundant.
Obama has long supported reinstating the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004, but was quiet on the issue during his first term.
Now he has an immense store of political capital to invest courtesy of his recent victory in the U.S. presidential election.
Anything he can do to diminish the mountain of weapons and the long shadows they cast across the political and social landscape will be a worthy legacy for his presidency.
If he wants to seek a road map to do it, he only has to look to Australia.
