Less than a day after a shooting left 49 people dead in massacres at two Christchurch mosques, New Zealand's Prime Minister made an explicit pledge to alter the country's gun legislation.

"While work is being done as to the chain of events that lead to both the holding of this gun license and the possession of these weapons, I can tell you one thing right now," PM Jacinda Ardern told a press conference Saturday morning, "Our gun laws will change."

To American observers, the mosque shootings are a tragically familiar story, one that echoes hate-fueled US massacres at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue and Charleston's Emmanuel AME Church. But while the grief and horror of mass gun murder is well-known to Americans, if Ardern's promise emerges, the Christchurch shooting's aftermath could result in something yet unseen in the US—substantial gun reform.

New Zealand’s gun laws are more permissive than those found in most Western countries. The nation is home to one gun for every three people, a rate higher than that of neighboring Australia, which has a gun for every eight people. That's still far lower than America, which is home to 40 percent of the world’s firearms. In the US, guns outnumber human beings.

Loved ones of Christchurch victims mourn in the aftermath of the killings. Fiona Goodall Getty Images

But despite the relatively large number of guns in the country, New Zealand has long seen a low rate of gun crime: There were just nine murders carried out with firearms in New Zealand in 2016. The nation enjoys a reputation for safety—few police officers are armed, and the Prime Minister is the only politician in the country who travels with bodyguards.

Unlike the US, New Zealand already requires that gun owners undergo a background check and complete a class on firearms, but the government does not require that all firearms be registered. Since the mosque shootings, however, lawmakers are discussing banning semi-automatic weaponry of the kind deployed by the killer. The Prime Minister and her cabinet are meeting Monday to discuss gun reform, and the nation's Police Association President has called for the implementation of a gun registry.

Neighboring Australia offers one blueprint for reducing gun deaths. In the wake of a 1996 mass shooting, the nation outlawed semi-automatic weaponry and required that would-be gun owners justify their need for firearms. (Farmers and hunters are eligible, but personal self defense is not an accepted justification.) The government bought back citizens' firearms and destroyed a million guns. After the legislative changes, the rate of suicide by firearms fell by nearly 80 percent and the nation did not see another mass shooting for 18 years.

Gabrielle Bruney Gabrielle Bruney is a writer and editor for Esquire, where she focuses on politics and culture.

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