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Australia's gun deaths drop after gun-control law

Last Updated: 2006-12-20 9:01:19 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Firearm deaths in Australia have dropped sharply in the decade since laws were passed to ban semi-automatic and other "rapid-fire" guns, according to a new study.

The laws were enacted after a 1996 mass shooting that killed 35 people, and they included a huge government "buyback" of civilian guns. In the new study, researchers found that a national decline in gun deaths that had been underway before 1996 gained speed after the mass buyback -- dropping twice as fast as it had been before the gun reforms were passed. The only "plausible" explanation is that the laws worked as intended, according to Dr. Simon Chapman, the lead author of the study and acting head of the University of Sydney's School of Public Health. Out of a population of 12 million, the government retrieved more than 700,000 guns, he pointed out. In the decade since, firearm deaths -- including homicides and suicides -- have fallen more steeply, and no mass shootings have occurred. "So the ability of someone intent on carrying out such an act was highly compromised by this exodus of weapons," Chapman told Reuters Health. "The gun lobby tries to argue that improvements in emergency care in hospitals might be responsible," he added. "This is utter nonsense." For the study, which is published in the journal Injury Prevention, Chapman's team examined official statistics on Australian gun deaths from 1979 onward. They found that in the years before the 1996 laws, there were 13 mass shootings in the country, whereas none occurred in the years afterward. Total firearm deaths, which include homicides, suicides and accidental shootings, had been declining at a rate of 3 percent per year before the gun reforms. After the laws passed, that decline increased to 6 percent per year, the study found. Firearm homicides and suicides both fell, with no apparent increase in murders and suicides by other means, according to the analysis. The drop in suicides was unexpected, Chapman noted, given that rapid-fire guns would not seem to be the weapon of choice in such incidents. He said it's possible that the ban prevented some suicides by generally decreasing people's access to a gun, men in particular. The pattern seen in Australia could extend to other countries, according to Chapman, though gun control reform requires "political will" -- something, he said, that's lacking in the U.S., for instance. Still, gun ownership had been high in Australia as well, Chapman noted. After the mass shooting of 1996, however, an overwhelming majority of the public supported gun law reform.

SOURCE: Injury Prevention,

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