Last week, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that the federal parliament would be recalled to debate sweeping new laws on guns and hate crimes, including the establishment of a new national gun buyback program. Unlike the 1996-97 gun buyback, the proposal now would split the costs equally between the federal government and Australia’s states and territories.
The scheme has already hit the first snag. One jurisdiction – so far – has rejected having to fund the buyback and indicated it would oppose the scheme if their tax dollars would be needed to pay for it. Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro of the Northern Territories (NT), a majority rural state, indicated that “[i]f the federal government wants to put a national buyback scheme in place, they should fund it. I will not have everyday Territorians foot that bill.” Commenting on the fact that New South Wales (NSW) is moving forward with new and more restrictive gun control, the minister responded that “[t]here cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach to reform;” instead, “a measured approach” is needed “to ensure reforms are genuinely needed, relevant and appropriate to each jurisdiction’s circumstances.” The NT’s Attorney General added that “[f]or many Territorians, firearms are a practical tool for work and lawful recreation, and any reform must recognize that reality.”
Cost aside, the bigger issue is whether any of these gun control measures deliver the anticipated outcome of greater public safety, or whether they are simply performative political theatre demanded of the moment. Australia’s previous national gun buyback in 1996-97 saw hundreds of thousands of self-loading centerfire rifles, self-loading and pump action shotguns, and self-loading rimfire rifles turned in by law-abiding citizens and destroyed. The thirty years since provide a useful context for evaluating its impact.
This month, Dr. John Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) examined violent crime rates in Australia and the United States based on total per capita violent crime estimates from crime victimisation surveys in the two countries (the Bureau of Justice Criminal Victimization report for 2024 in the U.S. and, for Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistics Crime Victimisation report for 2023-24). While the two sources of crime data were not comparable in every respect, the comparison established that even though the United States “experienced a serious violent crime increase of 59 percent during the Biden administration,... Americans are still safer from violent crime than Australians” – much more so, in fact.
In the most recent comparable years (with rates calculated per 1,000 people), the American violent victimisation rate was 23.3, while Australia’s was 39, a whopping 67 percent higher. Broken down by types of crimes, America’s rate in the total assault category (physical assault + threatened assault face-to-face) was just over 19; Australia’s was twice that, at 38. Australia’s rate for the rape/sexual assault category was three times that of the United States (6.0 vs. 2.0), and the burglary/break-in rate (calculated per 1,000 households) likewise exceeded that of the United States by a large margin (21.0 vs. 8.2). Robberies were the only category in which the United States’ rate of 2.2 exceeded that of Australia (2.0).
Another writer (the substack First Toil, then the Grave) looked at the difference between the United States and Australia with respect to mass shooting death rates. The author acknowledges that if the metric was simply mass shootings within Australia, the changes in Australia’s gun laws and the 1996-97 buyback were followed by a significant drop. However, the law and buyback did not eliminate mass shootings entirely, “and nearly thirty years on, Australia’s mass shooting deaths per capita are still only about one-fifth lower” than in America.
“If the program was as successful as is claimed, we would expect to see a sharp divergence in mass shooting deaths between Australia and the US, starting no later than September 1997.” Instead, calculating the rates of deaths/100K persons from mass shooting in both countries, the rate in Australia (0.268) is not all that far removed from that of the United States (0.325). Assuming that Australia’s gun control is at least one factor in these differences, the result is that it has reduced the Australian rate “to 79% of the equivalent figure in the U.S.” The author observes that,
By my count, between September 1997 and December 2025, a given American was only 21% more likely to be killed in a mass shooting than a given Australian was. Now, that’s certainly a metric that Australians have every right to be proud of — but it is not quite the vindication for the gun buyback program that many have claimed.
Peering into the future, the author predicts that the new gun buyback that the Albanese government plans to undertake is unlikely to have the same impact as the one in 1996-1997.
While undeniably appalling, mass shooting incidents represent a tiny proportion of crimes, including firearm-related crimes. Within their own country, everyday Australians have much more reason to fear assaults, break-ins, and burglaries. Australia’s “world-leading gun safety laws” have not only failed to prevent the latest mass shooting tragedy but have left its citizens exposed to more danger than the average American.
To be sure, the causes of crime are complex, although the CPRC researchers note that “US citizens have far greater and easier access to firearms for self-defense and defense of others than do Australians, and that legislation, regulation, and enforcement in the US is much more supportive of defensive use of firearms than is the case in Australia.”
To paraphrase Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, Australians have given up much of their freedom regarding firearms in exchange for promised greater safety, and have found themselves with neither.
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