With the recent shooting in San Bernardino, gun control has once again been front and center of all presidential debates. Most Americans are all too aware of the state of gun control in the United States, and one cannot help but wonder about the gun policies of other countries.
Australia is often the most used example in the case for gun control. In 1996, following a shooting in Port Arthur where 35 people died and 23 were wounded, Prime Minister John Howard enacted sweeping gun reform in which there was an imposed buyback of all semiautomatic weapons, while heavily regulating the further purchase and storage of other firearms. The laws proved effective as there have been zero gun massacres in the 19 years since the reform. The rate of homicide and suicide by gun has also declined by approximately 50 percent.
Besides Australia, many other countries’ policies on control could be sampled by the United States. According to an article written in Newsweek, in Germany, anyone under 25 who wants to buy a gun must pass a psychological evaluation. Had this been present in the United States, the murders of people in Charleston, South Carolina by Dylann Roof in June could have been avoided.
In France, to obtain a firearm one must have no criminal record, and pass mental, criminal, and physical background checks.
In England and Japan, handguns are illegal for private citizens. And for these countries, the laws have proven effective. In a report done by the New York Times, in Germany, the probability of being killed by a gun is the same likelihood as being killed by a falling object in the United States (2.1 percent). In Japan, the probability of being killed by a gun is the same as being struck by lightning in the United States (0.1 percent).
So maybe it is just an American thing.