Gun Control: The Debate Through the Lens of Australia's Experience

Growing up in a small town in Alaska I have always been surrounded by a culture focused on outdoor activities. These activities included everything from hiking and fishing to camping with the scouts and hunting with family. One tool that was always present was some type of firearm to protect us from unexpected and dangerous wildlife. It was this kind of environment that I learned both to appreciate and respect firearms.

I furthered this appreciation when learning in school about America's fight for independence from a tyrannical foreign government.

After a long and difficult struggle for independence, this nation placed into its constitution the right to keep and bear arms so that the people always had protection from a tyrannical government.

I've noticed in the past few years this country has seen a rise in mass shootings. It seems the prevalent message I have been hearing in the media is that these shootings are made possible due to relaxed gun laws found throughout the states.

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However, this argument was in direct contrast to the more traditional view I grew up with which stated that gun control only removes the freedom of law abiding citizens to use firearms to protect themselves. For this reason I have decided to focus my research on gun control to gain a better understanding of whether or not these gun laws work the way they are intended.

Introduction

I have found that gun law reforms have been a major topic of discussion and debate throughout the history of the United States but it was not until crime rates began to rise in the late 1960's and into the 1970's that the debate really took off.

This debate centered around whether firearm reforms will lead to less gun violence and ultimately less deaths or if these same reforms will take away the rights of individuals to protect themselves and their families. This subject has become more heated in recent years as gun related deaths and crime seem to have become more prevalent in our society.

The right to bear arms comes from the U.S. Constitution and has long been a part of America's history. Up until modern times it has served to keep the citizenry safe both from an all too powerful state and from law breakers of a more criminal nature. However, since the 1960's there has been an incline in the number of gun related acts of violence. Arguably the worst of these are mass shootings where the death toll seems to grow higher and higher with each successive act.

In response to this new trend one of the proposed solutions is to enact new gun control laws that will prohibit or limit the sale of weapons and ammunition to the general public (Bans on Specific Guns and Ammunition - Public Health Law Research, 2017). This has sparked strong debate about whether or not gun control laws will actually reduce gun violence. Gun rights advocates state that an increase in gun ownership by law abiding citizens will decrease crime and that criminal elements will always have access to guns no matter what the law, Lott (2010). Gun control advocates claim that indiscriminate or unrestricted gun rights cause safety concerns and are responsible for an escalation of gun related crime and deaths, Bruce and Wilcox (1998).

Statement of Purpose

This paper researched how gun control legislation will impact firearm related crimes and deaths. In addition, once these types of laws have been put in place, this researcher would like to understand if law abiding individuals would be more protected from crime or would they experience a greater vulnerability towards being victims of crime.

Although several states have already implemented stricter firearm laws, no similar laws have been applied nation-wide. For this reason, it makes it difficult to study the impact at a national level. To more fully understand the effects of nation-wide reform laws one must look at evidence elsewhere to better understand the impacts of these laws.

Just over 20 years ago on April 28, 1996, the country of Australia underwent a traumatic mass shooting where 35 individuals were killed and 23 others were wounded (Wahlquist, 2016). In response to this tragedy, a set of gun control laws, known as the National Firearms Agreement (NFA), were put in place to avoid similar shootings in the future. This legislation prohibited both semi-automatic rifles and pump action shotguns (Chapman, Alpers, and Jones, 2016). Since Australia and America share many similarities (including a background as former British colonies as well as the adoption of English common law as a basis for modern law) it would reason that there would also be many aspects of how the effects of nation-wide gun control laws in Australia would also be mirrored in the United States.

The Study Design

My purpose for this study is to show if the implementation of nation-wide gun control laws has impacted gun related deaths and crime within the country of Australia. It will also show if the presence of these laws effects individuals and families ability to stay safe from crime. Thus I present a two-fold hypothesis: (1) was the addition of the NFA gun control laws in Australia responsible for significantly reducing gun related deaths and (2) does unarming individuals put them at greater risk of violent crime when these laws have been put into place.

Understanding how gun control laws are impacting gun related crime and death rates in Australia will be of upmost importance to researchers, the general public, and policymakers in the United States as they debate and draft similar policies.

It is important to understand that there are varying definitions for the term, “mass shooting” throughout the international community. In the US, the usual definition is “...an indiscriminate rampage in public places resulting in four or more victims killed.” (Bjelopera, 2013) In contrast, the standard Australian definition for a mass shooting is “...one in which ⩾ 5 firearm-related homicides are committed by one or two perpetrators in proximate events in a civilian setting, not counting any perpetrators.” (Chapman, 2006)

Literature Review

There is a lot of information surrounding the topic of gun control. In fact, there is so much information on this subject that I had to become very discerning on what resources to use for my research. I found that much of the available information was in the form of editorials or other opinionated literature. Although these sources were very interesting to read, I learned that many either had no sources from where they obtained their information or their sources were unattainable when I tried searching for them. I concluded that any source I used must come from a reputable study or publication with valid sources.

In the last few years there has been several studies that have focused on how Australia's NFA laws are impacting violent crime. For this research violent crime includes homicide, sexual assault, kidnapping, and robbery. In almost all the studies that I have reviewed, the hypotheses centers around how the NFA legislation has impacted suicide or mass shootings. It is extremely important to understand the causality between these violent crimes and firearms, but it is also just as important to understand the relationship between firearms and other violent crimes such as assault, kidnapping, and robbery.

One of the first comprehensive studies to review the impact of the NFA laws was done by Reuter and Mouzos (2003). They learned that the buy-back program for low-risk firearms may have had a slight effect on homicides. Also noted was that there was no mass murders that took place with guns five years after the new gun control laws were put into place. However, more time was needed in order to more properly evaluate the effects of NFA.

After several more years a follow-up study was done to revisit the same issues post NFA. Using the available data Chapman et al. (2006) found accelerated declines in both gun deaths and gun related suicides. Conversely, it is interesting to learn that the same data used from nearly the same time period, Baker and McPhedran (2006) found that the only violent crime that was influenced by the gun control laws was firearm suicide. They also found that homicides (both firearm and non-firearm) were not effected by NFA.

More recently, it was interesting to find that Baker and McPhedran (2015) updated their findings with a broader expanse of time series data. They found that Australian legislative changes have not had a significant impact on pre-existing downward trends in firearm homicide. In addition, they reversed their previous findings noting that this same legislation has little or no impact regarding the previous downward trend of firearm suicide.

The latest study I found, Gilmour, Wattanakamolkul, and Sugai (2018) used the most recent government data to better understand the impact of NFA on suicide and homicide mortality. They used a new approach by using a difference-in-difference method (DiD) obtaining a control group of non-firearm deaths to compare against. They found that the NFA laws had no observable impacts on either suicide or assault mortality.

After reading through multiple studies and journals it became apparent to me that despite the fact that the different researchers are pulling data from the same source, over a twenty year period after NFA, there is still no consensus on whether or not NFA gun laws have impacted violent crimes.