Care to link to the issues/stats that your friends claim, Ken?
I’ve covered gun violence for years. The solutions aren’t a big mystery.
America can prevent shootings. But it has to come to grips with the problem.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/21/17028930/gun-violence-us-statistics-charts
"Some staunchly pro-gun people I know have brought up some changes made in Australian gun laws a few years ago, and claimed that those changes have had horrible unintentional consequences.
They've claimed that the changes caused increased rates of violent crimes and, apparently, an increase in home invasions due to restrictions on using weapons to defend your home from break-in attempts, and even claimed that people have been convicted for murder simply for using guns in a home invasion situation."
Gun Control in Australia, Updated
In 2009, we wrote an Ask FactCheck item for readers who wanted to know, “Did gun control in Australia lead to more murders there last year?” The answer at the time was “no,” and that’s still the case.
In fact, the most recent government report on crime trends in Australia says, “Homicide in Australia has declined over the last 25 years. The current homicide incidence rate is the lowest on record in the past 25 years.”
snip
In 2002, Australia further tightened gun laws, restricting the caliber, barrel length and capacity for sport shooting handguns.
Since 1996, the number and rate of homicides — defined as murder and manslaughter — has fallen. Below is the chart that appeared in our 2009 Ask FactCheck article, showing a 20 percent decline in homicides from 1996 to 2007.
How Australia Conquered Guns, and Why America Can't
https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/02/australia-ambassador-on-why-gun-laws-cant-save-america/553655/
After each mass shooting in the United States, many gun control advocates point to Australia, where a bipartisan coalition passed sweeping gun legislation that effectively ended mass shootings and dramatically reduced gun violence nationwide.
More than 20 years ago, Australia had its own mass shooting, a devastating massacre in which a man with a semi-automatic rifle opened fire at a tourist destination on the Tasmanian peninsula, killing 35 and injuring 23. Twelve days later, a conservative prime minister introduced the National Firearms Act, which banned the sale and importation of all automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, forced people to produce a legitimate reason for wanting to buy a weapon, and installed a 28-day waiting period. Perhaps most controversially, the law called for a massive mandatory gun buyback during which the government confiscated and destroyed 700,000 firearms, effectively reducing gun-owning households by half. The bill required bipartisan support, passed within six weeks, and is still reviewed every six months for any updates, to which all parties must agree before any changes can be made.
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