This can be shown by comparing England, where civilian handgun ownership is banned and the rates of homicides is relatively low, to America where all citizens "have the right to bear arms" and the homicide rate is frightenly high.
A British citizen is 50 times less likely to be a victim of gun homicides than an American.
It is unmistakable that the greater number of guns that are available in a community the more frequently they will be used in personal violence. And although there may be a proportion of "law-abiding citizens " who follow the law, it is often them who supply guns to the criminals.
Most of the 500 or so gun related deaths in Australia a year are due to careless or drunken shooters mishandling "licensed" firearms.
And in 11 multiple shootings between 1987-1993 in both Australia and New Zealand, 84% of the 70 victims were shot by licensed gun owners, according to New Zealand researcher Phillip Alpers from the Harvard Injury Control Research centre.
There are also a proportion of shooters who are not "law-abiding". Alpers has also found that the majority of massacres where committed by lawful gun owners- he found that in mass shootings of more than 10 people, 79% of the victims were shot with "licensed" handguns and 86 percent of these mass shootings were committed by lawful gun owners.
If this is not enough to the ban for guns in our community, what is?.
The gun buy-back in 1997, following the Port Arthur massacre was high successful. 643,726 semi-automatic rifles, machine guns and millions of other rifles where taken out of our community. The results showed success, homicides fell by 10% and the proportion of armed robbers using firearms fell by 37%. There is no reason why a similar buy-back of guns would not be as successful and contribute to the decreasing homicide rates.
The existing gun laws have been successful in reducing the number of crimes in which guns are used, but in the wake of the recent killings, this legislation should be further tightened.
