Researcher: U.S. could learn from Aussie gun buyback

The author of a report on Australia's sweeping gun reform program that was instituted after a mass killing in 1996 says the United States would have many fewer deaths by dramatically decreasing the number of households with guns, the Sydney Morning-Herald reported.

The National Firearms Agreement -- reached among the political parties less than two weeks after a gunman killed 35 people and injured 23 at a Tasmanian seaside resort -- cut firearm homicide by 59% over the next two decades and firearms suicide by 74%, the report showed.

The law banned semiautomatic and automatic rifles and shotguns and put in place a mandatory buy-back program for newly banned weapons.

The buyback led to the destruction of 650,000 guns, the Sunshine Coast Dailyreported.

In August, following the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo., former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who instituted the NFA, wrote in the Melbourne daily The Age that the United States should follow in Australia's footsteps.

"Australia is a safer country as a result of what was done in 1996," he wrote. "It will be the continuing responsibility of current and future federal and state governments to ensure the effectiveness of those anti-gun laws is never weakened. The U.S. is a country for which I have much affection. There are many American traits which we Australians could well emulate to our great benefit. But when it comes to guns we have been right to take a radically different path."

Andrew Leigh, as an academic at the Australian National University, published research in 2010 on the NFA and found that the gun buyback program lowered the proportion of Australian homes with guns from 15% to 8%.

''Our gun buyback took about a fifth of our guns out of circulation but it approximately halved the number of gun-owning households,'' Leigh, who is also a Labor party MP, said, the Morning-Herald reported. 'If the U.S. could dramatically decrease the number of households with guns, it would have many fewer deaths."

A 2011 study by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center of the Australian program noted that while 13 gun massacres (involving the death of 4 or more people at one time) occurred in Australia in the 18 years before the NFA, resulting in more than one hundred deaths, there had been no massacres since.

READ:The full report on the Australia gun buyback program

Leigh said that he does not foresee any retreat from the policy by major parties, although the Australian Party has vowed to fight for shooter's rights if it gains seats in the Senate next year.

Australian native Rupert Murdoch, who is now a U.S. citizen, has strongly echoed the calls for new restrictions on automatic weapons, citing the Australian example.

After the Sandy Hook massacre on Friday, Murdoch wrote on Twitter: ''Terrible news today. When will politicians find courage to ban automatic weapons? As in Oz after similar tragedy.''

That, says the Morning Herald, prompted a none-too-subtle comment from Australian Liberal Malcolm Turnbull about Murdoch's U.S. cable network. "I suspect they will find the courage when Fox News enthusiastically campaigns for it.''

In his 2010 report, Leigh wrote that there were several important factors in assessing the extent to which the result of the Australian gun buyback program could be extrapolated to other countries.

Among them:

• Australian borders are more easily controlled than in countries that have land borders;
• Australia's government in general and its policing and customs services in particular are highly organized and effective;
• The NFA had an extremely high degree of political support and was quite competently executed;
• The buyback was accompanied by a uniform national system for licensing and registration of firearms.