How countries around the world responded to mass shootings

The school shooting on Tuesday is the latest example of such a massacre in the United States, where firearms are a ferocious partisan political issue. As in other cases, the attack in Texas was followed by outbursts of anger and grief on social media, as well as calls for strong gun control measures.

Many people around the world are asking the same question again: Why isn’t America taking steps to end gun violence?

From the UK to New Zealand, here are the changes some countries have brought about since their own mass murder.

Great Britain

In August 1987, Michael Robert Ryan killed 16 people in Hangerford, England. The scale of the massacre shocked the country. The Washington Post at the time described the event as “the worst in modern British history”.

Ryan, 27, unemployed, was armed with a Chinese copy of the AK-47 and various weapons. His cause was never discovered. He killed himself and his only close relative, his mother.

In response to the massacre, British Interior Minister Douglas Hurd called for an investigation into the legal possession of the weapons used by Ryan. The Firearms (Amendment) Act of 1988, passed with support from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party government, banned semi-automatic firearms and restricted the sale of certain types of rifles.

These weapons were rare in Britain, so their effect was limited. But stricter rules were introduced in March 1996 after Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and their teachers at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland, using Browning and Smith and Wesson pistols.

Public anger over the murders has launched a strong root campaign called Snowdrop. The Firearms Act of 1997 ended restrictions on the possession of almost all firearms. Tens of thousands of guns were collected by their owners, the market value of which was given. The police have spent years destroying the illegal transport of weapons.

Gun violence peaked in 2005 and has gradually declined over the years.

Relatives of victims of mass shootings in the UK said their experience could help them comply with US gun control legislation.

“We will have our eyes on Dunblane and we will no longer need our eyes on Dunblane,” said Jack Crozier, whose 5-year-old daughter Emma was killed in the massacre. Anniversary event in March 2021. But we have to look at what happens in other countries, especially in America. “

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Australia

Martin Bryant, 29, killed 35 people in April 1996 using a legally purchased Colt AR-15 semi-automatic rifle near Port Arthur Fort in Tasmania, Australia. It was the deadliest massacre in Australia in the 20th century and took place a few weeks later. Murders in Dunblane.

The killings have drawn widespread attention to the relaxation of Australia’s gun laws, particularly in Tasmania. The island, which has its own state government, has only been applying for firearms licenses since 1988 and does not require a weapons license.

The Australian federal government, then headed by center-right Prime Minister John Howard, worked in coordination with states to limit the possession of automatic and semi-automatic rifles and rifles. In one year, the government bought 650,000 firearms.

Studies have shown that the program was successful and Australia became a less violent place in the years following the ransom.

In 2013, Howard wrote an article for the New York Times urging President Barack Obama to follow suit. “Some Australians deny that their country is safer today due to gun control.” Howard wrote.

The UN leader condemned the Buffalo mass shooting as a “shameful act” of racist violence.

New Zeland

In March 2019, 28-year-old Brenton Harrison Tarant opened fire on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 51 Muslim faithful, including an AR-15 rifle. In less than 24 hours, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the country would change its gun laws.

Unlike Australia, New Zealand had relatively weak arms regulations and a strong arms lobby. Before the attack, the country had around 250,000 firearms, with a population of 5 million. Tarant, an Australian citizen who has lived in New Zealand since 2017, bought his gun legally but traded part of it illegally.

Ardern was able to get swift support for stricter gun laws by introducing temporary measures within days. The following month, Parliament formally announced the changes, with overwhelming support from both sides, with only one MP against. The plans included a weapons purchase plan, as well as restrictions on AR-15s and other semi-automatic weapons.

Due to the poor tracking of these weapons, officials were initially unsure how many were in the country. “It’s a really open checkbook,” gun safety expert and former New Zealand police gun control officer Joe Green told The Post, “because they don’t know when they’ll be back.”

A second weapons law was passed in 2020 requiring the creation of a new firearms register, which gun license holders must renew when buying or selling firearms.

In an interview with CNN’s Christian Amanpour in June 2019, Ardern said he was surprised that gun control laws were passed by the United States. “Australia suffered a massacre and changed its laws. New Zealand had its own experience and changed its laws. “To be honest, I don’t understand the United States,” he said.

Canada

In April 2020, wearing authentic Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniform and driving a simulated police cruiser, Gabriel Wortman conducted a 13-hour raid in Nova Scotia that killed 22 people in one of the deadliest mass shootings in history. modern Canadian.

Police killed a 51-year-old dentist at a gas station. Court records showed that he was armed with two semi-automatic rifles and two pistols. There was no firearms license and some of the guns were smuggled out of America.

Two weeks later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a ban on more than 1,500 makes and models of “military-style assault weapons”, including the AR-15 and Ruger Mini-14, used in the 1989 massacre in 14 people died. At the Montreal Polytechnic. The ban makes it illegal to shoot, transport, sell, import or inherit these weapons.

Trudeau, who promised tougher gun control measures during the 2019 election campaign, said his government was working on a ban ahead of the pandemic. The Conservative party said the ban imposed by regulators was opportunistic.

In response, the federal government passed legislation that would create red flag laws, introduce new firearms crimes, and allow municipalities to ban restrictions on the handling, storage and handling of firearms.

It also pledged to implement a voluntary procurement program for prohibited firearms announced last year. The amnesty measure, which continues until April this year and will last until the fall of 2023 for some gun owners, aims to give people a respite. The government will develop a mandatory purchasing program.