Up To 16 Mass Shootings Avoided In Australia Due To Our Tough Gun Laws

‘Many lives’ have been saved


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New research has emerged in the wake of the Florida shooting which estimates up to 16 mass shootings have been avoided in Australia.

Twelve days after 35 people died in the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, then-Prime Minister John Howard introduced the National Firearms Agreement which was adopted by the Australasian Police Ministers’ Council.

Since the introduction of the "historic" reform, University of Sydney emeritus professor Simon Chapman told the Sydney Morning Herald his research team found the probability of a mass shooting in to be around 1 in 200,000.

“That’s odds slightly worse than a ticket holder winning first prize in the NSW $5 jackpot lottery: 1 in 180,000,” he said.

“Or as I once heard a famous statistics professor telling a gormless student 'about the same odds of winning if you didn’t have a ticket'.

“Over the 18 years prior to 1996, mass shootings occurred here at a rate of about three every four years.

“Had they continued at this rate then, under our rare events model, the expected number of mass shooting incidents since 1996 would by March 2018 have been 16.3.”

Professor Chapman said the Australian ban on buying semi-automatic rifles and shotguns has saved "many lives". 

He said: “These types of guns are the ones that mass killers in the USA select today with depressing regularity and which will go on being used until enough Americans, sickened by the carnage, say stop.”

13 March 2018




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