Australia, America and Gun Control

I have always been very passionate about the issue of gun control. So naturally, when I was presented with the opportunity to give a four-minute TED-style talk on any public health related issue, gun control sprang to mind.

In my Global Public Health class this semester we have been talking a lot about evidence-based public health, and this idea really seemed applicable for my topic. Obviously gun control is fairly controversial here in America, so I was hoping that cold, hard statistics and the examples of previous successful attempts might limit the push-back. I know that there are just some minds that cannot be persuaded, but at least with evidence-based public health I knew I would have legitimate points to argue.

Australia in particular has always seemed like a shining example of how gun control can actually be incredibly successful. In 1996, after a mass shooting in Port Arthur, the government immediately put new policies into place. Private sale became illegal, weapons were required to be registered, and you had to provide a legitimate reason for needing a weapon (and self-defense did not count). Along with that, the government funded two nation gun buy-back programs where they collected anywhere from a fifth to a third of the total number of firearms in circulation at the time. I wanted to share all this information with the class, as well as suggest the idea that maybe American should try something along these lines.

The U.S. has an insane number of mass shootings—372 in 2015 alone. This makes it pretty clear to me that this is a public health issue, not just a topic for political debate. If the U.S. had as many cases of Ebola or meningitis as we do deaths by firearms, surely the public would be genuinely outraged and concerned and something would be done. I look at Australia’s example as a sort of research trial. Now, we as students and scientists should recognize the incredible results and implement treatment wherever it is needed, namely right here in America.