Australia’s gun laws: leading by imperfect example

On the surface, Australia’s gun laws may seem like exemplary policy-work, but a closer look at its history and related research suggests otherwise and may even be cause for concern, Samara McPhedran writes.

Just days after the Christchurch tragedy, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced changes to that country’s gun laws. That sparked calls for other nations around the world to revise their gun policies, with some commentators promoting the Australian model of firearms management as the best way forward.

Australia likes to suggest that following its example will prevent history from repeating itself. It’s difficult, however, to learn from history when history is continually being revised. Perhaps more so than in any other area of public policy, the goalposts in Australia’s gun control narrative have shifted dramatically over time.

More on this: Podcast: Countering violent extremism

So, what has changed?

In 1996, 12 days after the Port Arthur massacre, all jurisdictions agreed to ban all semi-automatic firearms and pump-action shotguns, and implemented a half-billion dollar taxpayer-funded program to compensate those who voluntarily handed in their guns. The other ‘big ticket’ change was the mandatory registration of all rifles and shotguns. Gun laws remain one of the then-PM John Howard’s defining policies.

Despite being the catalyst for change, very little was said about the likely impacts of the new laws on mass shootings – with only brief and occasional mention made that the changes might prevent or reduce those events. Instead, state and federal Hansard of the day reveal great expectations of declines in firearm homicides and firearm suicides. The purpose of the reforms was routinely described as improving overall community safety by reducing those types of deaths.

For many years afterwards, firearm homicide and firearm suicide rates remained the widely used yardstick for measuring our gun law success.

Over time, though, a body of empirical research has cast ever-growing doubt on whether Australia’s law reform actually impacted those types of deaths. Although the conclusions that different authors draw do not always line up with each other – and, in some cases, do not even accurately represent their own data – the statistical findings are startlingly consistent. This is especially true for firearm homicide, where no study has found impacts on the pre-existing downward trend.

More on this: NZ tragedy response – a gun control masterclass

Although most studies observe more rapid declines in firearm suicide after the laws changed, it is difficult to draw causal inferences because, from the mid-1990s, both firearm and non-firearm suicides began falling. In fact, it appears the magnitude of decline was greater for non-firearm suicide then for firearm suicide. This strongly suggests other factors may have been at play.

As the evidence has accumulated, dialogue around guns in Australia has suddenly shifted.

We are now told that our gun laws were always, and were only ever, about preventing mass shootings. Suicide and ‘regular’ homicide have slipped quietly off the radar.

One of the ugliest aspects of Australia’s revisionism is that, in order to maintain the ‘no mass shootings’ narrative, the definition of a mass shooting has also been quietly altered. Most research defines a mass shooting as four or more people killed in one incident – not including the perpetrator. Using that definition, Australia has continued to experience mass shootings since 1996. Faced with such events, activists have simply revised their definitions upwards.

But if we apply the standard mass shooting definition in the same way we did up until it became inconvenient, then we see that Australia has had 15 mass shootings over the past 55 years. The most recent was in 2018. Most – 11 out of 15 – involved domestic situations; most, including Australia’s four public mass shootings, occurred between 1987 and 1996.

More on this: Can Japan eliminate civilian firearms?

Public mass shootings did not occur in Australia before 1987 or after 1996. It is easy to say that the 1996 laws explain the absence of public shootings post-1996. However, we have no explanation for why there were none of those incidents prior to 1987, despite laws that were extremely lax by today’s standards and the wide availability of semi-automatic firearms.

If we do not know what may have started these incidents, then we cannot know what may have stopped them – yet this crucial, missing part of the puzzle is never acknowledged.

Ultimately, the ever-moving goalposts of Australian gun policy are unhelpful for informing public debate. While constant revisionism may allow us to maintain a comforting narrative, the distinctly deliberate shifts over time reveal a fundamental unwillingness to look facts in the face.

This leaves us with a deeply confronting question. Which do we value more: grandstanding about how right we are on gun policy, or allowing other countries to truly learn from us?