Australia's new gun control is a model for the U.S.

At other rallies, effigies of his deputy prime minister Tim Fischer were hanged by opponents of gun control.

The battle for gun control in Australia, after the country's worst massacre in which 35 people were shot dead, was risky both personally and politically. Howard alienated a large part of his conservative, rural base and was almost thrown from office.

 

 

But the gun reforms made Australia a safer place, with fewer homicides and suicides.

"I knew that I had to use the authority of my office to curb the possession and use of the type of weapons that killed 35 innocent people. I also knew it wouldn't be easy," Howard wrote, "Penalizing decent, law-abiding citizens because of the criminal behavior of others seemed unfair...I understood their misgivings. Yet I felt there was no alternative,"

Democrats want to ban military assault rifles and high capacity ammunition clips after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, in December. But his plans were scuttled in the Senate.

BRUTAL GUN POLITICS

Fischer, a Vietnam war veteran, farmer and gun owner, said the politics of gun control in Australia were brutal.

"It was a battle royal, and John Howard laid down a template that was worth defending and taking to the public square, taking to the people, and shifting the tectonic plates in the process. And the result ... 200 less coffins a year," Fischer told Reuters.

"It was the right thing to do, but people had to be persuaded. And this is why our friends in the United States ... should now consider it seriously."

In Australia, gun owners were compensated when they handed in previously legal weapons. Almost 700,000 guns were destroyed, halving the number of homes with a gun. That would be equal to taking 40 million guns out of action in the United States.

But the reforms angered many constituents of Fischer's rural-based National Party, who vented their anger two years later at the ballot box. The pro-gun One Nation party won almost one million votes and the government narrowly avoided defeat.

STUNNING RESULTS

Australia had 13 gun massacres in the 18 years before the 1996 gun reforms, but has not suffered one mass shooting in the 16 years since!

Studies found a marked drop in gun-related homicides, down 59 percent, and a dramatic 65 percent drop in the rate of gun-related suicides, in the 10 years after.