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This article gives facts and information on politics roles in gun control and also facts and statistics about gun control. For example this article gives information on international considerations on gun control.It also gives information on the history of gun control and how long it has existed. This article states how bad and good the state of gun control is today. It also gives information on the black panther protest and the sand hook shooting aftermath.

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Table of Contents

gun control, politics, legislation, and enforcement of measures intended to restrict access to, the possession of, or the use of arms, particularly firearms. Gun control is one of the most controversial and emotional issues in many countries, with the debate often centring on whether regulations on an individual's right to arms are an undue restriction on liberty and whether there is a correlation between guns and crime. Proponents of gun-control legislation assert that the strict enforcement of gun-control laws saves lives and reduces crime. By contrast, opponents of gun control assert that minimal restrictions on guns ensure that individuals have adequate means for self-defense and that a wider distribution of firearms results in safer communities.

International considerations

Gun control is an issue throughout the world, with each country having the sovereign authority to regulate firearms within its borders. The vast majority of industrialized countries have strict gun-control regulations. For example, Japan places restrictions on the possession and use of all firearms except in limited instances (e.g., hunting, athletic events, and research). Canada permits the possession and use of firearms for competitions and target practice, but it forbids the possession of handguns unless an individual can show that a handgun is needed for self-defense. The United Kingdom has banned handguns altogether and limits the possession of firearms to activities such as hunting, target shooting, pest control, and slaughtering. Meanwhile, Germany permits the ownership of certain firearms so long as an individual meets the requirements for a firearms ownership license, which include that the applicant be age 18 or older and have expert knowledge in the handling of firearms and have the necessity to possess such firearms.

Historical origins of gun control

If gun control is defined as placing legal restrictions on arms to protect civil society, its origins can be traced back to ancient Rome. In Rome arms were seen as the means to maintain standing armies. To prevent these armies from undermining and overthrowing civil authority, Roman law forbade military arms from crossing the Rubicon. This law would remain in effect until Julius Caesar violated it when he maintained a standing army to assume power as emperor of Rome, a historical event that was etched as the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. In fact, this historical event is of such significance that both the English Bill of Rights (formally An Act Declaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of the Crown; 1689) and the U.S. Constitution (1789) include provisions that prevent the maintenance of standing armies during times of peace without the consent of the legislative branch.

In England arms were always controlled by Parliament and the crown according to socioeconomic status. As English reformer and MP John Sadler wrote in 1649 in his pamphlet titled "The Rights of the Kingdom," "Men ought indeed have Arms, and them to keep in Readiness for Defence of the King and Kingdom," but Parliament defined which men were to "provide and bear arms, how, and when, and where." It should be emphasized that arms were primarily seen as tools for the common defense of the realm. Even for this purpose, however, arms were strictly regulated by the government to ensure that they were readily available for the common defense and were out of the hands of dangerous persons. For example, during the reign of Henry VIII (1509-47), restrictions were placed on "weapons" and "defensive armour" being brought to any town, church, market, or other congregation except upon the hue and cry (a practice whereby criminals were pursued with cries and sounds of alarm). Henry VIII had enacted other gun-control laws, including restrictions on the length of guns, on who was qualified to possess guns, and on when and where they may be fired.

Gun restrictions in England were rarely the subject of parliamentary debate. However, from the mid-17th to the late 18th century, members of Parliament periodically proposed laws that would remove gun restrictions and allow English householders to have and maintain guns for the defense of the realm. For instance, during the convention in 1689 that drafted the English Declaration of Rights, Thomas Erle, who had served as a general and was a member of Parliament, proposed that "every substantial householder in any town or city should be provided of a good musket in case of invasion." In 1693 a similar proposal was made to allow every Protestant to keep a musket "for the security of the government." Such proposals failed, however, because they would "arm the mob" and thus were considered "not very safe for any government."

Naturally, the safety of the government was not the only reason restrictions on guns were imposed in England. Gun-control restrictions sometimes supported the hunting of game or the access of hunters to game preserves, as well as to prevent crime and murders. In the 1750s the Scottish philosopher and historian Adam Ferguson opposed such restrictions as preventing the establishment of a national militia because, although a "few domestic inconveniences" would occur, this should not "deter us from the necessary Steps" in arming the people for "our own Defence, against a foreign Enemy." The English writer and MP Soame Jenyns also justified the removal of gun restrictions to further the establishment of a national militia. Although "Accidents [such as murder] may sometimes happen," it did not matter, he argued, because "every man" in the militia will "beget three Children before he kills one Man."

In the end, neither of these arguments affected the well-established gun restrictions in England. In fact, when mid-18th century militia reform was finally adopted, George II (1727-60) ensured that all militia arms were kept by local lord lieutenants and only distributed during times of militia muster and training. This was a practice that dated to the 1550s, during the reign of Mary I, when the law required that all guns and arms in cities, boroughs, towns, parishes, and hamlets were to be kept by local government officials and in places of safekeeping.

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Gun control | Laws, Debate, Pros, Cons, & Facts

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Gun control, politics, legislation, and enforcement of measures intended to restrict access to, the possession of, or the use of arms. Debates over such measures often center on whether regulations are an undue restriction on liberty and whether there is a correlation between guns and crime.

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This video talks about the statistics of gun related crime and death.

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Leftists Caught LYING To Push Gun Control

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This video talks about the many ways we can help gun control and stop school shootings

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How Do We Fix America's Gun Control Problem? | The View

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This article gives the view point of gun control as there needs to be stricter laws. This article gives information on many claims like guns save lives and how that is wrong. It also talks about the evidence on armed civilians and how this is not that effective. This article also states the problems of mass shootings and how gun control needs to be stricter. It also gives examples on surveys and how they portray to gun control.

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Increased Civilian Gun Ownership Will Not Reduce Crime

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Guns and Crime, edited by Noël Merino, Greenhaven Press, 2015. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, http%3A%2F%2Flink.galegroup.com%2Fapps%2Fdoc%2FEJ3010015267%2FOVIC%3Fu%3Dpl2683%26sid%3DOVIC%26xid%3D03cb4a36. Accessed 8 Mar. 2019. Originally published as "The Answer Is Not More Guns," Salon, 18 Dec. 2012.

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The article A Ban on Assault Weapons Would not Reduce Crime states information about Assault weapons and their role in gun control. Fore example it states, "So called Assault weapons have not been used in more a small percentage of firearm related crime. Another fact it gives is the second amendment protects the right to own semi auto weapons and magazines for self protection. This article also give facts like, " Semi-Automatic guns are not more powerful than other guns.

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A Ban on Assault Weapons Would Not Reduce Crime

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Reason #4: So-called "assault weapons" have never been used in more than a small percentage of firearm-related violent crime. The study that Congress required of the federal "assault weapon" and "large" magazine ban of 1994-2004 concluded that "the banned weapons and magazines were never used in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders" even before the ban, and that the law's 10-round limit on new ammunition magazines wasn't a factor in multiple-victim or multiple-wound crimes.

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This picture depicts a semi automatic rifle on the constitution .

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As the pressure continues to build for congressional action on gun violence in the wake of the Orlando massacre, the gun control debate will continue, in Congress and elsewhere. The opponents of proposals like universal background checks and closing the "terror gap" are deploying their well-worn bumper sticker arguments, with a superficial appeal that too often wins the day, in defiance of logic and evidence. Here are the three worst arguments against stronger gun laws and why Congress should reject them out of hand.
Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People
This is the granddaddy of them all, a brilliantly clever way of conveying two related ideas: (1) because guns themselves are morally neutral objects that become a problem only when used by dangerous people, it makes sense only to focus on punishing bad people who use guns, rather than regulating guns themselves; and (2) even if dangerous people can't get guns, they will simply use other weapons to inflict death and injury. In short, there is no gun problem; there is only a people problem.

Would we find this reasoning persuasive in other contexts involving dangerous products? Consider automobiles, for example. A car also is pretty innocuous sitting in a driveway, until it comes into contact with a driver who may be untrained or reckless. Yet our public policy toward preventing auto injuries is not confined to punishing careless or reckless drivers following a tragedy. We think it equally important to have a licensing system in place to prevent untrained and potentially high-risk people from driving in the first place. Similarly, we should have laws in place to prevent dangerous people from having guns-at the very least, required background checks for all gun sales.

Yes, it is true that dangerous people could turn to other weapons if denied access to guns. But this is a false equivalence. Research shows that attacks with guns are five times more likely to be lethal than attacks with knives, for example. Does anyone really believe that the Orlando shooter could have killed 49 people and injured 53 others with a knife or baseball bat? Guns don't kill people, but people with guns kill people, far more effectively and efficiently than with other weapons.
Criminals Don't Obey Gun Laws, Only Law-Abiding Citizens Do
This is the futility argument. According to the National Rifle Association and its allies, since gun laws are directed at criminals, who of course pay no attention to any laws (that's why they're called criminals), gun control can't possibly be effective, except in making it harder for law-abiding citizens to have guns to defend themselves.

First, the argument is transparently circular. Of course, as to individuals who are willing to disobey gun laws, the laws are futile by definition. But what about the possibility that there are potentially violent individuals who are deterred from carrying guns by the illegality of doing so? Surely compliance with a law cannot be determined merely by looking at the instances of when the law is violated. If it could, we would regard all our criminal laws as ultimately futile because all of them are frequently violated. Should we repeal our laws against homicide because murderers don't obey them?

It turns out that there is substantial evidence that many criminals may refrain from gun carrying because of gun control laws. In one survey, incarcerated felons who had not carried weapons during the commission of their crimes were asked why they decided against being armed. Fifty-nine percent chose the response "Against the law."

In addition, the argument proceeds from a false premise, i.e., that the effectiveness of gun control laws depends on compliance by criminals. Take the Brady Act, for instance. It requires licensed gun dealers to submit the gun purchaser's name for a background check and to refuse the sale if the check reveals a disqualifying record. If the dealer is willing to obey the law, the criminal's preferred source of guns will be denied him. "Terror gap" legislation simply adds persons on the "no-fly" list and other suspected terrorists to the categories of persons who will be denied purchases from licensed dealers. The effectiveness of such background checks do not depend on the willingness of criminals and suspected terrorists to obey the law.

Of course, it is possible that dangerous gun buyers will turn to other sources for their guns, but that is a reason to extend mandatory background checks to all gun sales, not just sales by licensed dealers. There may be some gun sellers who will ignore the law, but we don't consider other laws to be ineffective simply because compliance is not universal. The point is that gun control laws can reduce access to guns by criminals and terrorists without compliance with those laws by criminals and terrorists.
Any Gun Control Is a Slippery Slope to Confiscation
This canard is particularly important to the gun lobby because, since even most NRA members actually support modest measures like background checks, it is strategically critical for the NRA to argue that such reforms should be defeated because they will lead ultimately to more radical measures that the gun-owning public strongly opposes.

The slippery slope argument would have validity if it were difficult to logically distinguish the proposal at the top of the slope (say, universal background checks) from the feared proposal at the bottom of the slope, i.e., a complete ban on gun ownership. But of course support for a proposal like universal background checks, closing the "terror gap," and even licensing of gun owners and registration of guns does not logically entail support for a broad gun ban. The slippery slope is more like a flight of stairs, in which it is quite possible for make a valid argument for taking the first step, e.g., universal background checks, which would still allow law-abiding citizens to own guns, without logically committing oneself to several steps down, e.g., a gun ban, under which even law-abiding citizens would be barred from gun ownership.

Even as a historical matter, there is no basis to believe that enacting some gun regulation leads inevitably to broad gun bans. Take the idea of registering guns like we register cars. Gun partisans have an intense fear of registration because they regard it as a slippery slope to confiscation; once the government knows who owns the guns, it will be nicely positioned to confiscate them. But the State of Pennsylvania, for example, has maintained a database of persons who lawfully purchased handguns since 1931, and there is no reason to believe that the authorities are likely to start knocking on the doors of Pennsylvania gun owners, demanding surrender of their guns.

The fact is that the slippery slope argument is, at its core, nothing but uninformed speculation. There is, however, a steep social cost to that speculation if we allow it to block enactment of sensible policies, like universal background checks, that help to prevent dangerous people from getting guns. If Congress had been persuaded by the slippery slope argument during the Brady Bill debate, since 1994 we would have allowed more than two million legally prohibited gun buyers to buy guns over-the-counter that were, instead, blocked by Brady background checks.

How many more Americans must needlessly perish before we insist that our gun policies be based on reason and evidence, not on the bumper sticker logic of the gun lobby?

Dennis A. Henigan is the author of "Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People," And Other Myths About Guns and Gun Control (Beacon Press 2016) on sale now in e-book and in print July 26. He is the director of legal and policy analysis at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and formerly vice president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

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The 3 Worst Arguments Against Gun Control

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As the pressure continues to build for congressional action on gun violence in the wake of the Orlando massacre, the gun control debate will continue, in Congress and elsewhere. The opponents of proposals like universal background checks and closing the "terror gap" are deploying their well-worn bumper sticker arguments, with a superficial appeal that too often wins the day, in defiance of logic and evidence.

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This picture is showing a assault rifle since that is one of the main concerns in the gun control debate.

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This picture is explaining why making Gun Control laws stricter increases violence.

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This picture is showing a handgun on the constitution showing the right to bear arms.

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The article Gun Control talks about all gun control facts and mass events. It states about the mass shootings in florida and the U.S. The article also gives information about the second amendment and how that plays a part in gun control. This article gives more information on gun control laws and restrictions. This article also states facts about the efforts of the obama and trump administration on gun control.

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On March 9, 2018, Florida governor Rick Scott signed into law the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, a move that surprised those on all sides of the gun reform debate, as it marked the first gun control legislation passed in that state in decades.

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The mass shooting in Roseburg, Ore. has reignited debate over gun control and gun rights in the United States.

Below are a series of questions drawn from what people have been searching for on Google since the shooting - and an attempt to answer them.

1. "Gun control" is a broad term that covers any sort of restriction on what kinds of firearms can be sold and bought, who can possess or sell them, where and how they can be stored or carried, what duties a seller has to vet a buyer, and what obligations both the buyer and the seller have to report transactions to the government.

Sometimes, the term is also used to cover related matters, like limits on types of ammunition and magazines, or technology, like the type that allows guns to fire only when gripped by their owners.

In recent years, gun control debates have focused primarily on background checks for buyers, allowing people to carry weapons in public, and whether to allow the possession of assault rifles.

2. What is the state of gun control today?

Federal law prohibits certain people from owning firearms: those with certain kinds of criminal records or mental illness; drug addicts; immigrants without legal status; veterans who left the military with a dishonorable discharge; anyone with a permanent restraining order keeping them from a partner or a partner's children. And there are others barred as well; a full list of the prohibitions can be found here.

Federal law requires that licensed gun dealers conduct a background check, through a database run by the F.B.I., to see if the customer is among those prohibited from owning a gun.

But the system has major holes in it, among them incomplete listings of criminal cases. Perhaps the biggest hole is that small-scale sellers, including many who do business at gun shows, are not required to do background checks - the so-called gun show loophole.

The law's provision on the mentally ill is extremely porous, too. It prohibits gun possession by a person "adjudicated as a mental defective" by a court or other authority. Most people with serious mental illness never receive such adjudication, and those who do can petition courts to have it reversed. Many mass shootings have been carried out by people who were recognized by those around them as being deeply disturbed, yet were able to own guns legally.

From 1994 to 2004, federal law also banned the sale of many types of assault rifles and high-capacity magazines, but the law expired and has not been renewed. A few states have assault weapon bans of their own that remain in place.

In fact, most gun controls exist at the state level, with New York, California, New Jersey, Maryland, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Illinois and Massachusetts being the most restrictive.

Some states have more stringent background check systems than the federal one, for example, and some require checks before private sales like those at gun shows. Some states require a license or permit to own a gun, but most do not.

Laws on carrying weapons vary enormously. Most states allow anyone who legally owns a gun to carry it openly, in public, without requiring a license or permit. A few states also have no permit requirement to carry a concealed gun. Concealed carry requires a permit in most states, but the majority of those states grant the permits automatically to any legal gun owners who want them. States also vary in their rules on gun possession in specific settings, like campuses and houses of worship.

For example, in Rhode Island, any person with a concealed carry permit can bring a gun onto the grounds of a public school, but next door in Massachusetts, written permission from school officials is required - and rarely given.

3. What do law enforcement authorities say about gun control?

There is no consensus. In fact, law enforcement officials have the same kinds of cultural and regional divides as everyone else.

In general, big-city police chiefs are more likely to support gun control, and small-town chiefs and sheriffs are more likely to oppose it. Those in the Northeast are more likely than those in the South and West to favor it.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association endorses closing the gun show loophole, strengthening the background check system, reinstating the assault weapons ban and other measures. The Major County Sheriffs' Association disagrees on assault weapons, but agrees on strengthening background checks.

The National Sheriffs Association, which includes more sparsely populated areas, has stated that it "does not support any laws that deprive any citizen of the rights provided" by the Second Amendment. And some rural sheriffs have simply refused to enforce new controls.

4. Where does the American public stand?

Over the past 25 years, Americans' support for stricter gun control laws has been generally declining even as the number of mass shootings is on the rise. While some high-profile shootings have resulted in calls for increased restrictions, that support has proved fleeting thus far. Gun control is one of the most sharply divisive issues in the U.S. today.

This chart, compiled by the Roper Center, provides a summary of public opinion on the issue since 1989. The most recent reading was taken in mid-September by Quinnipiac University, and found Americans were evenly divided. Several polls in the last several months have shown a similar divide with majorities of Democrats and those without a gun in their households favoring more restrictions on guns and majorities of Republicans and gun owners voicing opposition.

The results, however, also depend in part on how you ask the question. Surveys that ask broadly whether people favor stricter gun laws show the public roughly evenly divided but when surveys ask people about specific gun restrictions, the picture becomes much more pro-control.

Overwhelming majorities support universal background checks, and steps to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill people. Those changes have vast support among Republicans and Democrats, and gun owners and non-owners alike. (In 2013, The New York Times profiled several people from across the country who had intimate experiences with firearms, including gun enthusiasts who fell on both sides of the gun control debate.) Majorities also favor the creation of a federal database to track all gun sales, and an assault weapons ban, though answers to those question show more of a partisan divide.

5. What are the arguments against gun control?

The arguments come down to principle, law and practicality.

Gun rights advocates see weapon possession as a matter of individual rights. They say that people have the right to arm themselves for hunting, self-defense, sport - or just because they want to.

Legally, the debates often come down to the Second Amendment, whose 18 th century context and language have been endlessly parsed and debated: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Gun rights advocates say that means an individual right to gun possession, while gun control advocates say it means the people's collective right, through a militia.

For generations, the Supreme Court avoided directly answering the question, though its decisions were often seen as favoring the collective interpretation. But in 2008, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time, in a 5-to-4 decision, that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to have firearms. Even so, debates continue to rage on what sorts of limitations on that right are allowable.

On a practical level, gun owners argue that the weapons actually make society safer, giving people the power of self-defense, and dissuading criminals from victimizing people who might be armed. In particular, they say that an armed citizen can stop a mass shooter.

6. What are the arguments in favor?

They begin with numbers. The United States has far more gun ownership than other developed countries, and far more gun violence. In 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the nation had more than 33,000 firearms deaths: 70 percent of all homicides (11,208), more than half of all suicides (21,175), and hundreds of accidental and unsolved deaths.

Fewer guns, better records on who has them, and some restrictions on purchase, possession and storage, gun control advocates argue, would still allow law-abiding people to have firearms, while resulting in far fewer deaths. They contend that it is not a question of disarming the public or absolutes - most people agree that individuals should not have bazookas or machine guns - but a matter of where to draw sensible limits.

While gun-rights advocates say more people armed equal a safer society, people who favor gun control say the opposite is true: the more people carry weapons, the more likely it is that an everyday dispute can escalate to lethal force. Social scientists say there is little reliable data one way or another.

7. Why does nothing get done about gun control?

Gun rights advocates, led by the National Rifle Association, form a powerful lobby that politicians fear to cross. For many of them, it is a core voting issue, a line they will not cross, which, as President Obama recently lamented, is less often true for those who want gun control.

These advocates have effectively deployed the argument that after mass shootings, when emotions run high - and interest in new restrictions spikes - is not the time to debate the issue.

Opponents of gun control often talk about President Obama wanting to take guns away from lawful owners, and although he has never proposed to do that, many gun owners continue to believe it.

The gun lobby has also become more unyielding in recent years. The N.R.A. has hardened its opposition to expanded background checks, for example, and after years in which the group gave subdued responses to mass shootings, after the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting, Wayne LaPierre, the N.R.A.'s executive vice president, famously declared that school employees should have been armed, because " The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Over the past generation, American politics have become more bitterly partisan, and regional divisions more rigid. As a result, gun control has become an increasingly partisan issue, with Republicans more uniformly opposed - at a time when Congress and most state houses are in Republican hands.

The result is that in recent years, states have gone in opposing directions. Responding in many cases to the same mass shootings, some have made their gun laws stricter (such as Oregon and Connecticut) while about the same number (including Arkansas and Georgia) have made theirs weaker.

In Congress and in more conservative and rural states, gun control tends to be a non-starter. Gun control advocates say politicians' fear of the gun rights lobby is exaggerated, but even in swing states and some more liberal ones, that lobby has a reputation for punishing those who step out of line.

After Colorado enacted new gun controls, in 2013, gun rights groups succeeded in recalling two Democratic state senators who had voted for the measures, including the Senate leader. In 2014, they targeted two Democratic governors who had signed tougher gun restrictions into law, John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Dannel Malloy of Connecticut, but both were narrowly re-elected.

Another example of the gun lobby's power came after Smith & Wesson broke with the rest of the gun industry in 2000, agreeing to several control measures to settle government lawsuits over gun violence. The N.R.A. led a boycott of Smith & Wesson, its sales plummeted, and rather than setting an example that other gun makers would follow, the company backed out of the deal.

Megan Thee-Brennan and Catrin Einhorn contributed reporting.

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The mass shooting in Roseburg, Ore. has reignited debate over gun control and gun rights in the United States. Below are a series of questions drawn from what people have been searching for on Google since the shooting - and an attempt to answer them.

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This picture is showing Norway and Australia making gun control laws stricter.

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As more U.S. companies were indicating their support for stricter gun laws this week, two foreign governments announced that they had made significant progress in regards to restricting firearms access on Wednesday.

In Australia, authorities revealed that citizens handed over 57,000 illegal firearms between July and September last year during a gun amnesty. Meanwhile, the Norwegian government now appears to have a majority for its plan to ban semiautomatic rifles - similar to those used in a string of deadly mass shootings in the United States - by 2021, despite protests from farmers and hunters.

If passed, the law would classify previously legal rifles used by hunters as "military-style" weapons, and would be accompanied by other measures, such as upgraded background checks ahead of the purchase of handguns, according to Peter Frolich of the Norwegian Parliament's judicial affairs committee who spoke to the Associated Press.

Both initiatives indicate the lengths to which governments have gone in response to mass shootings in their respective countries, even if they occurred years or decades ago.

Australia's firearms amnesty is based on a similar nationwide scheme that followed a mass shooting at a tourist site in the country in 1996, resulting in the deaths of 35 people. At the time, the Australian government decided to buy back firearms and managed to significantly reduce the number of weapons in circulation, partially also due to stricter ownership laws.

The measure is based on the assumption that any reduction of the numbers of available weapons that could fall into the wrong hands can help to prevent shootings, and there is some statistical evidence for this. In his famous study, "Public Mass Shooters and Firearms: A Cross-National Study of 171 Countries," University of Alabama criminology professor Adam Lankford found a link between the number of guns and mass shootings that killed four or more people. The data set ranged from 1966 through 2012.

Since 1996, a number of countries, including Canada, Britain and Norway, have tried out modified versions of Australia's scheme, allowing owners of illegal weapons to hand them in without having to fear legal repercussions.

In Norway, lawmakers' willingness to reduce the number of firearms in circulation can mainly be traced back to the 2011 Utoya attack, in which right-wing attacker Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in one of Europe's most gruesome terror attacks. Most of the victims were children or teenagers. One of the weapons he used was a semiautomatic rifle.

Since then, the Norwegian government has pondered the feasibility of a much broader ban of semiautomatic rifles than is in place elsewhere. A commission proposed such restrictions last fall and lawmakers are now set to approve the measures.

In both Australia and in Norway, two major shooting massacres appear to have changed the national debate over gun ownership, but both examples also show the limits of such approaches in the United States. Gun amnesties on illegal firearms naturally only work if certain types of firearms were banned or their access was limited. Based on numbers provided by Canadian authorities, amnesties usually help to reduce the number of illegal firearms accidentally inherited by daughters or sons or gun owners. But such initiatives are ill-equipped to combat illegal weapons ownership among criminals or individuals willing to commit attacks.

To prevent massacres, they usually only tend to work if deployed in tandem with the European-style measures deeply loathed by American conservatives: broad bans or restrictions on firearms ownership.

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Norway and Australia move forward with new gun control measures, as U.S. debate rages on

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As more U.S. companies were indicating their support for stricter gun laws this week, two foreign governments announced that they had made significant progress in regards to restricting firearms access on Wednesday. In Australia, authorities revealed that citizens handed over 57,000 illegal firearms between July and September last year during a gun amnesty.

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Comprehensive and meticulously documented facts about gun control. Learn about ownership rates, crime, background checks, accidents, politics, and more.