Yes, Australia's gun laws work

Arm yourself with data and facts in the guns debate

In this piece: we examine what defines a “mass shooting” in statistics, cover Australia’s gun law history, and discuss America’s ongoing gun violence epidemic.

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With 391 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, there have been ample opportunities for Americans to debate necessary measures to curb gun violence.

Predictably, the conversation only seems to ignite when a school is targeted, a crowded public space is shattered, or an attack can be neatly packaged as political, ideological, or religious. The rest fade into the background noise of a country long accustomed to its own bloodshed.

This weekend, two separate attacks — one at Brown University, another at Bondi Beach in Australia — reignited that cycle. Almost immediately, social media filled with misleading claims and outright falsehoods about Australia’s gun laws and distorted comparisons to America’s rates of gun violence.

So before the outrage hardens into myth once again, let’s slow down and set the record straight.

Click here to read my post from Sunday examining the media coverage of both events.

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What defines a “mass shooting”

Before any serious comparison of gun laws across countries can begin, we have to do the unglamorous but essential work of defining our terms. The numbers people cite in these debates don’t simply exist — they are constructed, bounded by methodology, and shaped by what each dataset chooses to include or exclude.

“Mass shooting” is not a single, universally agreed-upon concept. It’s an umbrella term covering several distinct statistical definitions, each designed for a different analytical purpose. What they share is one critical constant: none of them include the shooter or shooters in the casualty count. Only victims — those injured or killed — are counted.

Gun Violence Archive (GVA) Definition

In the United States, the most commonly referenced definition comes from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA). Under the GVA framework, a mass shooting is any incident in which four or more people are shot, whether injured or killed, excluding the shooter(s).

This definition is intentionally broad. It captures the full scope of firearm violence in public and private spaces alike, from schools and workplaces to apartment complexes and neighborhood gatherings. Its purpose is not to isolate motive, but to measure frequency and harm.

FBI Definition

The FBI uses a far narrower lens. Within its “mass murder” classification, the threshold is four or more people killed, not merely injured, again excluding the shooter(s).

This definition dramatically reduces the number of incidents counted, because it omits shootings where victims survive — even when those events involve the same level of chaos, terror, and public risk. As a result, FBI statistics are often more conservative but also less representative of how gun violence is experienced by communities.

For example, the shooting at Brown University would not be counted in FBI data because while 11 people were shot at a public place, only two died.

Schildkraut and H. Jaymi Elsass (2016) Definition

Then there is the most restrictive definition, developed by Jaclyn Schildkraut and H. Jaymi Elsass (2016) and commonly used in academic research. Their criteria require four or more victims shot (injured or killed) in a public or populated location, within a single 24-hour period, where victims are selected randomly or for symbolic or personal reasons.

Crucially, this definition explicitly excludes gang-related violence, domestic violence, and terrorism-linked attacks. The goal here is analytical precision — isolating a specific phenomenon of public mass violence — not capturing the full toll of gunfire.

Each definition answers a different question. The problem arises when they are mixed interchangeably, or worse, weaponized to minimize reality. Narrow definitions produce smaller numbers that can feel reassuring. Broader definitions reveal the scale of violence most Americans actually live with.

So when we compare gun violence across countries — or argue about whether a problem is “rare” or “overstated” — the first and most honest step is to ask: Which definition are we using, and why?

Because statistics don’t just measure reality. They frame it. And in a debate this consequential, framing is everything.

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Australia’s Gun Laws

After the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, Australia enacted sweeping national gun-safety reforms through the National Firearms Agreement. The response was fast, bipartisan, and grounded in public safety rather than ideology.

As a result, fewer than 30 people have been killed in mass shootings in Australia since 2015 — a figure that includes incidents with four or more fatalities (FBI) and stands in stark contrast to the American experience. And half of all deaths and injuries and injuries in Australia during the last 30 years occurred during Saturday’s shooting.

But Australia did not ban all guns. That myth persists largely because it’s politically useful elsewhere.

Today, roughly four million Australians legally own firearms, primarily for farming, hunting, and sport shooting. According to the Small Arms Survey, Australia ranks around 51st globally in civilian gun ownership.

Among Western democracies, Australia’s gun homicide rate remains comparatively low. International datasets from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) consistently show Australia well below the U.S. in firearm-related deaths with regulated civilian gun ownership.

It’s also true — and important — that the firearms used in Saturday’s attack were legally purchased and properly licensed. These guns were not smuggled in. They were bought and registered in Australia.

Australia has never claimed its system is perfect or foolproof. What it has demonstrated is something far more important: when gaps are identified, they are addressed rather than ignored. Officials have already acknowledged that the wrong people were able to access weapons, and reforms are underway to close those loopholes — exactly as the system was designed to do.

The results of Australia’s 1996 reforms are not abstract. Peer-reviewed studies published in journals like JAMA and Injury Prevention, along with analysis from the Australian Institute of Criminology, show that gun homicide fell by roughly 70% in the years following the reforms. Firearm suicides declined sharply as well, without a corresponding rise in other methods — a key public-health benchmark.

Perhaps most striking: Australia has 15 of the past 30 years without a single mass shooting. Not fewer mass shootings. None.

That reality matters when weighing credibility.

A country that has endured 391 mass shootings in a single year — not over decades, not cumulatively, but this year alone — is in no position to lecture others about gun safety. Least of all a nation that responded to tragedy with evidence, action, and measurable results.

Australia did not eliminate violence. It reduced it. Dramatically. And it continues to refine its laws when they fall short.

That’s what taking public safety seriously looks like.

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Examining mass shootings in the Untied States

Globally, the United States stands apart — and not in ways that can be explained away by population size or cultural idiosyncrasy. When measured as a rate per 100,000 people, the U.S. ranks among the top five countries in firearm homicides, around 23rd in firearm suicides, and first — by a wide margin — in mass shootings.

This distinction is not accidental. It is structural.

Roughly half of all mass shootings in the United States occur in workplaces and schools, spaces meant to be routine, predictable, and safe. These incidents are not statistical outliers; they are a recurring feature of American life. And their frequency has risen sharply since the 1990s, coinciding with the widespread civilian availability of high-capacity, easily modifiable semi-automatic firearms.

The difference is not simply how often shootings occur, but how lethal they are.

American mass shootings result in fatality rates approximately 3.5 times higher than comparable incidents in other Western nations — not because Americans are uniquely violent, but because the weapons involved are uniquely destructive. Firearms designed for rapid fire, paired with large-capacity magazines, dramatically increase both the number of victims and the severity of injuries in a matter of minutes. Survivability drops. Emergency response windows collapse.

This is why comparisons that focus only on intent or motive miss the point. Mass violence exists everywhere. Mass casualty events at this scale do not.

It is also why narrowing the definition of a mass shooting does not meaningfully change the underlying reality. Whether counted under the GVA’s broader framework or the FBI’s more restrictive one, the United States still experiences orders of magnitude more mass shootings than peer nations — year after year.

The data are unambiguous: countries with fewer high-capacity firearms in civilian circulation experience fewer mass shootings and fewer deaths when they do occur. This relationship holds across income levels, cultures, and political systems. It is one of the most consistent findings in global public-health research on violence.

Which brings us back to credibility.

A nation that averages more than one mass shooting per day does not suffer from a lack of debate. It suffers from a refusal to act on what the evidence has already made clear. While other countries respond to failure with reform, the United States responds with denial, redefinition, and distraction.

The result is not freedom. It is normalization — of grief, of fear, of preventable death.

And until that cycle is broken, the numbers will continue to speak more honestly than the politics ever have.