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The claim made by gun-control activists is that a causal relationship exists between Australia’s gun laws and declines in gun deaths. But as is often noted by social scientists, correlation does not imply causation.

Consider the rates of firearm and non-firearm suicides following the implementation of the NFA. According to the American Medical Association, the decline in total non-firearm suicides between 1997 and 2013 was greater than firearm suicides during the same period. As such, it is not possible to attribute changes in firearm suicides to the NFA.

What about gun homicides?

Both a 2007 study and 2008 report revealed that the NFA had no observable effect on firearms homicides. What’s more, a systematic review of research on the NFA reported that no study found evidence of a statistically significant impact on firearm homicide rates.

Based on the evidence, the high cost of the Australian gun buyback has not translated to noticeable reductions in firearm deaths. And the statistics tell a similar tale in Britain.

Six weeks before the Port Arthur massacre, 16 schoolchildren and their teacher were killed by a gunman in Dunblane, Scotland. In response, the UK government banned the private ownership of firearms under the 1998 Firearms Act. The results were less than encouraging.

As Joyce Lee Malcolm details in her book, Guns and Violence: The English Experience, “armed crime rose 10 per cent in 1998, the year after the ban on handguns.” In fact, Home Office figures from April 1999 to March 2000 revealed a 16-per-cent increase in violent crime and a 28-per-cent increase in muggings. Between 1996 and 2000, violent crime more than doubled, with mainland British police forces introducing armed foot patrols for the first time.