Story highlights
- In Australia, one massacre turned the tide in favor of gun control
- Just 12 days after the shootings nationwide gun law reform announced
- Alpers: Risk of dying by gunshot in Australia fell by more than 50% -- and stayed there
Could the leader of a democracy reverse his nation's slide toward the ever more permissive use of firearms and mandate stringent new gun control laws in less than a fortnight? Well, yes. One of America's loyal allies did just that -- and with massive voter support.
In a popular tourist spot at Port Arthur, Tasmania, in April 1996, a lone gunman killed 20 innocents with his first 29 bullets, all in the space of 90 seconds. This "pathetic social misfit," to quote the judge in the case, was empowered to achieve his final toll of 35 people dead and 18 seriously wounded by firing semi-automatic rifles originally advertised by the gun trade as "assault weapons." Now we discover that a similar military-style rifle enabled the Connecticut killer to add his name to the global list of gun horrors.
In his initial press briefing on the Connecticut mass shooting in 2012, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said "today is not the day" to talk about gun control. In 1996, Australians reacted with the opposite mass-majority voice, insisting: "Now IS the time."
Australia's newly-elected prime minister at the time was John Howard. The country's most conservative leader in decades, openly proud of his pal status with George W. Bush, Prime Minister Howard led the then U.S. president to refer to his nation as America's "sheriff" in South East Asia.
Philip Alpers
Just like President Obama, Howard was seen to weep and to offer the nation's prayers in the wake of another gun massacre. But only 12 days after the shootings, in Howard's first major act of leadership and by far the most popular in his first year as prime minister, his government announced nationwide gun law reform.
Attitudes to firearms and the regulations governing them had changed almost overnight. After a decade of gun massacres which saw 100 people shot dead and 38 wounded, Australians had overwhelmingly had enough of anyone with a grudge gaining easy, mostly legal access to weapons designed expressly to kill a lot of people in a very short time.
Dan Gross and Steve Dulan on gun control 03:38
New legislation agreed to by all states and territories specifically addressed mass shootings: Rapid-fire rifles and shotguns were banned, gun owner licensing was tightened and remaining firearms were registered to uniform national standards.
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Newtown school shooting – Children in Newtown, Connecticut, return to school on December 18, 2012, four days after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
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Newtown school shooting – Connecticut State Police officers search outside St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church in Newtown, Connecticut, on Tuesday, December 16, after a threat prompted authorities to evacuate the building. Investigators found nothing to substantiate the reported threat, a police official said, declining to provide additional details. The church held Sunday services following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
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Newtown school shooting – Connecticut State Police officers walk out of St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church after the Newtown church received a threat December 16.
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Newtown school shooting – Firefighters attach black bunting to a fire truck as a memorial at the fire station down the street from the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Saturday, December 15.
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Newtown school shooting – Connecticut Chief Medical Examiner H. Wayne Carver II talks to the media about the elementary school shooting during a press conference at Treadwell Memorial Park on December 15.
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Newtown school shooting – Zulma Sein is hugged by a family member outside of the entrance to the Sandy Hook School on Saturday.
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Newtown school shooting – Police officers keep guard at the entrance to the street leading to the Sandy Hook Elementary School on Saturday, December 15.
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Newtown school shooting – Connecticut State Police Lt. Paul Vance addresses the press on December 15.
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Newtown school shooting – Police officers stand at the entrance to the street leading to the Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 15.
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Newtown school shooting – Corinne McLaughlin, a student at the University of Hartford, bows her head during a candlelight vigil at Hartford, Connecticut's Bushnell Park on Friday, December 14, honoring the students and teachers who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School in nearby Newtown earlier in the day.
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Newtown school shooting – Distraught people leave the fire station after hearing news of their loved ones from officials on Friday.
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Newtown school shooting – Emergency workers stand in front of the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
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Newtown school shooting – A child and her mother leave a staging area outside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – Members of the media converge on December 14 in front of an apartment at 1313 Grand Street in Hoboken, New Jersey. The apartment is believed to be connected to the Connecticut elementary school shooting.
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Newtown school shooting – Faisal Ali, right, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, joins other people outside the White House on December 14 to participate in a candlelight vigil to remember the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
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Newtown school shooting – Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance, center, briefs the media on the elementary school shootings during a press conference at Treadwell Memorial Park on December 14 in Newtown.
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Newtown school shooting – People weep and embrace near Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – A woman leans on a man as she weeps near Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – President Barack Obama wipes a tear as he speaks about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School during a press briefing at the White House on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – A woman weeps near the site of a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – A woman weeps near Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – People comfort each other near Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – A man takes in the scene near Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – A young girl is given a blanket after being evacuated from Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – State police personnel lead children from the school.
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Newtown school shooting – Children wait outside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, after the shooting.
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Newtown school shooting – A boy weeps at Reed Intermediate School after getting news of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – FBI SWAT team members walk along Dickinson Drive near Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – An aerial view of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – Connecticut State Troopers arrive on the scene outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – A Connecticut State Police officer runs with a shotgun at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – Police patrol the streets around Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – People try to deal with the shock of the attack outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – Connecticut State Police secure the scene of the shooting on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – People embrace outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – A man escorts his son away from Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – People take in the news outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – People line up to enter Newtown Methodist Church near the the scene of the shooting on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – A woman speaks with a Connecticut state trooper outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – The streets around Sandy Hook Elementary are packed with first responders and other vehicles.
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Newtown school shooting – A view of the scene at Sandy Hook Elementary School after the shooting.
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Newtown school shooting – A young boy is comforted outside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14.
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Newtown school shooting – People embrace each other on December 14.
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In two nationwide, federally funded gun buybacks, plus large-scale voluntary surrenders and state gun amnesties both before and after Port Arthur, Australia collected and destroyed more than a million firearms, perhaps one-third of the national stock. No other nation had attempted anything on this scale.
It wasn't without cost to John Howard. Self-interest groups among his conservative base raised hell, and at one rural meeting in a country town, he became the first Australian prime minister to be photographed wearing a bullet-proof jacket.
State gov: There are no answers 09:28
But with statements like: "We do not want the American disease imported into Australia... Guns have become a blight on American society," Howard knew he was speaking for most Australians. Polling at the time measured public approval of his government's new gun laws at 90 to 95 per cent.
In the years after the Port Arthur massacre, the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia fell by more than 50% -- and stayed there. In the 16 years since the announcement of legislation specifically designed to reduce gun massacres, Australia has seen no mass shootings. Gun deaths which attract smaller headlines are 80 times more common, yet the national rate of gun homicide remains 30 times lower than that of the United States.
To claim cause and effect would be to stretch all this too far. Mass shootings are such rare events as to defy prediction, gun death rates were already falling, and John Howard's gun laws no more prevent every shooting than our traffic laws eliminate the road toll. The best we can say is that the results are encouraging, and suggest a way forward.
Beliefs and fears aside, death and injury by gunshot could be as amenable to public health intervention as road toll, drunken driving, tobacco-related disease and the spread of HIV/AIDS.
The obstructions to gun control are nothing new to public health. An industry and its self-interest groups focused on denial, the propagation of fear, and quasi-religious objections -- we've seen it all before. Barack Obama, at the center of a maelstrom of clashing convictions few foreigners can comprehend, deserves our sympathy.
But the future is there to see. With gun violence, as with HIV/AIDS, waste-of-time notions like evil, sin, blame and retribution could in time be sluiced away to allow proven public health procedures.
Given the opportunity and the effort, gun injury prevention might save lives as effectively as restricting access to explosives, and mandating child-safe lids on poison bottles.
