What did other countries do after the massacres with guns?

Around the world, large -scale hunting often meets a common response:

imposed by officers new restrictions in possession of weapons.

Mass shooting is becoming rare.

Murders and suicides are likely to go down.

After a British gunman killed 16 people in 1987, the country semi-automatic weapons are prohibited like the ones I used.

He did the same thing with most handguns after the school shooting in 1996.

It already has one of the lowest gun -related death rates in the developed world.

Sa Australiaa massacre in 1996 prompted mandatory gun purchases that saw, by some estimates, as many as 1 million guns dissolved in slag.

The rate of mass shootings has fallen from one every 18 months to, so far, only one of the 26 years that have passed Since.

Canada he also tightened gun laws after the mass shooting in 1989.

the same was done Germany in 2002, New Zealand in 2019 and Norway last year.

Only USA, that the rate and severity of mass hunting is unmatched outside conflict zones, continues to refuse to respond to those events with stricter gun laws.

Although such restrictions have always caused some controversy, most are widely accepted by voters in other countries.

Even in Australia, where conservative politics and rural traditions have long favored gun ownership, buybacks have been widely accepted by citizens.

Some even handed over weapons they were legally allowed to keep, in a show support for the strictest gun laws in your country.

Each mass shooting is, in a sense, a fringe event, driven by unique factors such as the ideology or personal situation of the shooter.

the danger is impossible to erase completely.

The record is clear, however, as confirmed by numerous studies that have looked at the effects of policies such as in Britain and Australia:

when countries restrict gun control laws, it leads to fewer guns in the hands of private citizens, leading to less gun violence, and less hunting.

Great Britain: radical bans

Britain now has one of the strictest gun control regimes in the developed world, even though many police are unarmed. But it is not always like this.

the history ofe sport hunting A long cultural tradition of gun ownership has taken root in the country, especially in rural areas.

It began to change in 1987, with the so -called Hungerford massacre, named after the small English town where it took place.

A 27-year-old local man used two semi-automatic rifles and a handgun, which he legally owned, to kill 16 people.

His motive remains unclear.

The British Conservative government quickly banned rifles like the ones he used and ordered shotgun owners to register their weapons with the police.

The 1996 school shooting in a small Scottish town, where a local man killed 15 students and a teacher, brought about a more radical change.

A government investigation recommends restricting access to guns.

The Conservative government went even further, banning all but smaller caliber guns, which the subsequent Labor government banned the following year.

The reforms also require licensed gun owners to go through a rigorous licensing process, which includes interviews and home visits by local police, who can refuse approval if they believe the expected owner poses a potential risk to public safety.

Mass shootings have not completely disappeared in Britain:

one attacker killed 12 in 2010 and another killed five in 2021.

But all forms of gun -related violence have been greatly reduced.

Now, there are five guns for every 100 people in Great Britain (except Northern Ireland, where this number is higher), one of the lowest rates in the developed world.

The firearm homicide rate is approximately 0.7 per million, also one of the lowest.

Australia: Nationwide Buybacks

U.S. gun control activists often cite Australia’s massive buying.

While no country can compete with the U.S. gun ownership level, which is more than double that of Yemen’s second-ranked, Australia has similar cultural and political affinities regarding gun ownership.

Despite this, after a mass shooting in 1996 in which a gunman killed 35 people in the city of Port Arthur, authorities successfully imposed new restrictions.

The nationwide buyback has cut into circulation 1 in 5 and 1 in 3 private guns.

It is mainly focused on weapons such as semi automatic rifle and many guns which, according to the new law, is no longer allowed.

The country has also restored gun ownership from being a natural right, as it is in only a few countries like the United States, to become a privilege that citizens have to earn.

Prospective gun owners in Australia are now faced with a national registration, 28-day waiting period and a licensing process that requires showing a valid reason to own a gun.

Since then, mass shootings have disappeared in Australia. The former almost annual event only happened once if

Since the reforms, with an attack in 2018 that left seven dead.

But the biggest impact could be on other forms of violence.

A 2011 survey of crime and suicide data concluded that the program “seems to have been enormously successful in terms of lives saved.”

Subsequently, the gun-related homicide rate in Australia has declined, as has the gun-related suicide rate, the study found.

Murders and suicides without guns did not rise. Recent investigations have confirmed these findings.

The reforms were initially controversial, even among the Conservative government that approved them, as well as from some rural communities.

But fears of an electoral backlash or even violent resistance (Prime Minister of AustraliaJohn Howardwore a bulletproof vest while speaking) did not become material.

“Few Australians will deny that their country is safer now as a result of gun control,” Howard wrote in 2013 in The New York Times.

However, gun ownership rates in Australia have risen again in recent years, as have gun-related homicide rates.

Canada and Norway: gradual change

Not all reforms have been as dramatic as in Britain or Australia.

Canada tightened restrictions on gun ownership in response to a 1989 mass shooting that killed 14 college students.

Licenses are required for firearms and rifles, and those firearms must be registered with the authorities.

Similar rules already apply to pistols.

But the new rules, which have proven controversial in rural communities, were not implemented until 1995, six years after the hunt, and most were abolished in 2012.

While Canada’s gun rules are still stricter than those in the United States, they are more flexible than most other countries.

Their gun ownership rates, gun killing rates, and frequency of mass shootings follow a similar pattern:

a fraction of those in the United States, but higher than most other developed countries.

Norway’s progress has also been relatively slow following a far-right terror attack in 2011 that killed 77 people.

Although the country has one of the highest levels of gun ownership in Europe, it has relatively lower rates of gun-related violence.

The country has had strict rules for many years, including mandatory gun safety classes and a complex licensing process.

But I know took seven years after the 2011 massacre to enact a ban on semi-automatic assault-inspired weapons.

It started at the end of last year.

New Zealand, like Norway has traditionally high levels of gun ownership but strict restrictions, along with low rates of gun violence, have acted more quickly.

When a far-right extremist killed 50 mosque residents in 2019, authorities were slow to less than a week in announcing a ban on military-style semi-automatic rifles and high-capacity magazines such as those used by the attacker.

But Norway, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia are outliers in an important sense:

each started with high levels of gun ownership, relatively few restrictions, or both.

In most countries, fewer guns or previously gun rights were restricted after mass shooting, and, perhaps as a result, there was also less mass shooting in those countries.

However, such governments often act.

In Germany, after a gunman killed 16 people, the government raised the minimum age for carrying some firearms allowed from 18 to 21.

When another attack hit Germany seven years later, both very rare events in a country with minimal gun violence, lawmakers set new rules allowing random police checks on gun owners.

Because gun ownership is now tightly controlled, there are few steps left to implement.

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