World events

hotly disputed issue. for example, suicides were already on the decline, and the gun ban didn't significantly change that. if you look at graphs charting suicides in Australia, the downward trend of suicides was not significantly accelerated or slowed by the gun ban, in fact, the only change was the spike in suicides by other methods than guns. (guess what, people who want to kill themselves find a way!)

in terms of homicides, the homicide rate in Australia was low and falling, and kept falling after the gun ban; scholars debate whether or not the ban really affected it. A 2007 British Journal of Criminology study and a 2008 University of Melbourne study both found the ban had no effect on homicides.

it seems a classic case of correlation =/= causation. suicides and homicides were low and had been plummeting, the gun ban may have helped, but it didn't, 'end gun violence'.

Not to mention that people can still get guns in Australia, you just have to go through bureaucracy. there's still 1 gun for every seven people there.

in terms of America adopting Australia's plan...

Vared Mehta points out, "Australia’s program netted, at the low end, 650,000 guns, and at the high end, a million. That was approximately a fifth to a third of Australian firearms. There are about as many guns in America as there are people: 310 million of both in 2009. A fifth to a third would be between 60 and 105 million guns. To achieve in America what was done in Australia, in other words, the government would have to confiscate as many as 105 million firearms."

America implementing Australia's plan would involve thousands of federal agents, heavily armed, going to thousands of homes in an attempt to round up millions of fire-arms. If we're going to discuss it, we need to be clear, this would be a massive, expensive,, messy operation.

in 2013, there were 500K - 3 Million uses of guns for defense in 2013, compared to 11K homicides (way too high, but 45-272 times less than the amount used for good).