In his most recent opinion piece, TMG Senior Advisor Arnold Buchman makes a heartfelt call to thwart gun violence and mass shootings in the U.S suggesting that the U.S. should adopt core elements of the successful gun control models implemented in Australia and in the U.K.
Margolin Group leaders, agree with Buchman’s perspective stating: “These senseless killings and all the trauma and heartache attendant thereto constitute a grave threat to the health of our communities – Addressing the problem must be a key priority of our national population health agenda.”
Arnold Buchman’s December 7th Op Ed – published on the heels of the San Bernardino massacre
And now San Bernardino. Yet again, we are face to face with the mass murder consequences of firearms availability.
We have come to know ”mass murder” means four or more dead during a single event. Other countries experience mass murders, but not with a regularity that speaks of a public health issue.
With enough guns out there to arm every American and a cultural “frontier” tradition of self-reliance on guns, it is all too clear that a “silver bullet” solution is beyond our political reach. But there is no good reason not to treat its painful mass murder symptom even knowing it will not cure the underlying illness. A couple of case studies.
In 1996, a gunman killed sixteen children and a teacher and himself at a primary school in Dunblane, Scotland. In response, the U.K.’s Tory government banned semi-automatic and pump-action firearms, banned private handgun ownership in mainland Britain, and instituted a $200 million buyback program, which led to the collection of 162,000 firearms.
That same year, over a two day period, 35 people were killed and 23 wounded in Port Arthur, Australia by a 28-year-old Australian using an AR-15, an FN FAL and a Daewoo Precision 12 gauge shotgun, all semi-automatic assault-type weapons.
Australia’s response was the National Firearms Programme Implementation Act restricting private ownership of semi-automatic rifles and shot guns and introducing uniform firearms licensing and a mandatory buy-back program for newly banned weapons. It was enacted with bipartisan support by a Conservative government whose Prime Minister would be quite at home in today’s Republican Party.
Great Britain saw a number of mass killings in the two decades prior to Dunblane. However, since 1996, there has been only one when in 2010, a man, licensed to carry firearms, killed 12 people, injured 11 and committed suicide. In the decade before the Port Arthur massacre, there had been 11 mass murders in Australia. Since enactment of the National Firearms Programme there hasn’t been a single one.
The remedy taken by the U.K. and Australia would not cure our gun violence plague. But, these case studies strongly suggest it would be effective in treating its mass murder symptom.