Is this evidence that Australia’s laws reduced gun violence and homicides? In our 2009 story, we wrote that there was no consensus on that point.
For example, we wrote that a 2003 AIC study looked at rates of firearm-related deaths between 1991 and 2001 and found that some of the decline in firearm-related homicides (and suicides, as well) began before the 1996 law was enacted.
On the other hand, a 2006 analysis by scholars at the University of Sydney concluded that gun fatalities decreased more quickly after the gun law passed. “Australia’s 1996 gun law reforms were followed by more than a decade free of fatal mass shootings, and accelerated declines in firearm deaths, particularly suicides,” the authors of that study wrote.
In 2011, David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, co-authored a paper that reviewed the available studies, as of 2011, on the effect of Australia’s buyback program on firearm deaths. He wrote that “many studies … found strong evidence for a beneficial effect of the law.”
Hemenway and his Harvard colleague and co-author, Mary Vriniotis, summarized the evidence in support of the theory that the buyback program saved lives:
“While 13 gun massacres (the killing of 4 or more people at one time) occurred in Australia in the 18 years before the NFA, resulting in more than one hundred deaths, in the 14 following years (and up to the present), there were no gun massacres.”
“In the seven years before the NFA (1989-1995), the average annual firearm suicide death rate per 100,000 was 2.6 (with a yearly range of 2.2 to 2.9); in the seven years after the buyback was fully implemented (1998-2004), the average annual firearm suicide rate was 1.1 (yearly range 0.8 to 1.4).”
“In the seven years before the NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate per 100,000 was .43 (range .27 to .60) while for the seven years post NFA, the average annual firearm homicide rate was .25 (range .16 to .33).”
“[T]he drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms most affected by the buyback.”
The authors, however, noted that “no study has explained why gun deaths were falling, or why they might be expected to continue to fall.” That poses difficulty in trying to definitively determine the impact of the law, they write.
“Whether or not one wants to attribute the effects as being due to the law, everyone should be pleased with what happened in Australia after the NFA — the elimination of firearm massacres (at least up to the present) and an immediate, and continuing, reduction in firearm suicide and firearm homicide,” the authors write.
