Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull rules out watering down gun laws despite review of regulations
Malcolm Turnbull was in the island state of Tasmania to attend a 20th anniversary commemoration of Port Arthur mass shooting.
Australia’s prime minister said on Thursday that a review of national gun laws would not weaken strict regulations that had kept Australians safer since 35 people were shot dead by a mass murderer 20 years ago.
Malcolm Turnbull was in the island state of Tasmania to attend a 20th anniversary commemoration of one of the world’s worst mass murders by a lone gunman at the historic tourist site of Port Arthur on April 28, 1996.
Federal and state governments responded by severely restricting ownership of rapid-fire weapons and by buying back about one-in-five guns from Australia’s public arsenal.
Turnbull told Hobart Radio 7HO that the National Firearms Agreement was one of the then Prime Minister John Howard’s “greatest achievements and it has kept Australians safer ever since”.
You only have to look at the tragic examples ... in the United States of what happens when you have very little if any restrictions
A government inquiry into a 2014 siege in a Sydney cafe in which a gunman and two of his hostages died recommended a review of that agreement with a view to modernising it.