Australia gun amnesty nets 57,000 firearms … and a rocket launcher
Australia’s strict gun laws, enacted after a 1996 mass shooting that killed 35 people, are often held up by safety activists as a model for the US to follow
More than 57,000 illegal firearms including a rocket launcher and machine guns were handed in during a recent Australian amnesty in which gun owners could surrender such weapons without penalty.
The government and some gun policy analysts were surprised by the large number of weapons that were surrendered in the first nationwide amnesty since 1996, when a lone gunman killed 35 people in Tasmania state and galvanised popular support for tough national gun controls.
A virtual ban on private ownership of semi-automatic rifles and a government-funded gun buy-back cut the size of Australia’s civilian arsenal by almost a third.
The government said Thursday the three-month amnesty that ended in September collected 57, 324 firearms, including almost 2,500 semi-automatic and fully-automatic guns – the rapid-fire categories particularly targeted after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
“It was a very, very good result,” Law Enforcement Minister Angus Taylor said.
“This is another step in the process of making sure that we keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and gangs, and we keep Australians safe and secure.”
Taylor declined to comment on whether the United States and other countries should follow Australia’s example after the recent Florida high school shooting that killed 17 people.
