no, the wrong hands generally means anybody that is not law enforcement, or does not need a gun for hunting or agricultural purposes.
I live in Australia - nobody i know owns a gun. Nobody. Even the black market for guns in Australia is nearly non existent.
Even my close friend that is a police officer - his gun stays at work and he comes home unarmed every day. And law enforcement very rarely discharge their weapons - he hasn't yet.
The problem is there are already more then 300 million guns in the USA and they are not going anywhere.
By comparison John Howard's gun buy back only covered 700,000 guns and still left about 2 million guns in circulation. This video gives some interesting info on how the Australian Buy-back would work in the USA
no doubt that is a problem.
but the answer to that problem isn't just to stick your head in the sand and not do anything ever.
Very true - they just need to do things that work.
your solution didn't work.
how many Mass shootings have there been in australia since the Gun Buy back?
how do you define "mass shooting'?
why are you asking me? you could google it - and you'll find the answer in about 500 different places.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/02/15/australia-hasnt-had-fatal-mass-shooting-since-1996-heres-what-did/340345002/
I was asking you because those 500 different places would have 500 different definitions.
So local cops have discretion about who may legally have a gun and there is no racial or gender discrimination in issuing permits? That sounds hard to believe, especially in a country as racist ass Australia.
For sure in America when police are given the power to discriminate in issuing permits they always discriminate by race and gender.
Here in America all of our gun laws are designed to prevent the poor and minorities from legally being able to defend themselves. They are an extension of Jim Crow laws.
And I have talked to Australians that own guns, you are wrong. There is a vibrant community of shooters down there.
anyhow your draconian laws did not reduce homicide suicide or mass shootings in a statistically significant way. During the same period after you stripped the law abiding of their weapons the gun homicide rate in America fell more sharply.
no local cops don't have the discretion. local cops just enforce the law, gun licensing is handled by a government department.
If you're going to make ridiculous claims like our laws not reducing homocide or mass shootings, how about you show some actual statistics? because the statistics has been well and truly shown the opposite of everything you say.
Australia had 13 mass shootings in the 18-year period from 1979 to 1996 but none since, when the gun buy back happened.
A 2008 study on the effects of the firearm buybacks by Wang-Sheng Lee and Sandy Suardi of University of Melbourne and La Trobe University studied the data and concluded "the NFA did not have any large effects on reducing firearm homicide or suicide rates."[53]
In 2009 another paper from the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention at Griffith University also studied suicide in Queensland only. The said "No significant difference was found in the rate pre/post the introduction of the NFA in Queensland;
Subsequently, they compared the incidence of mass shootings in Australia and New Zealand. Data were standardised to a rate per 100,000 people, to control for differences in population size between the countries and mass shootings before and after 1996/1997 were compared between countries. That study found that in the period 1980–1996, both countries experienced mass shootings. The rate did not differ significantly between countries. Since 1996-1997, neither country has experienced a mass shooting event despite the continued availability of semi-automatic longarms in New Zealand. The authors conclude that "if civilian access to certain types of firearms explained the occurrence of mass shootings in Australia then New Zealand would have continued to experience mass shooting events."[45] In 2012, McPhedran and Baker found there was little evidence for any impacts of the gun laws on firearm suicide among people under 35 years of age, and suggest that the significant financial expenditure associated with Australia's firearms method restriction measures may not have had any impact on youth suicide.[46] Head of the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, Don Weatherburn described the Baker and McPhedran article as "reputable" and "well-conducted" [47] Weatherburn noted the importance of actively policing illegal firearm trafficking and argued that there was little evidence that the new laws had helped in this regard.[48] He also stated that the 1996 legislation had little to no effect on violence saying the "laws did not result in any acceleration of the downward trend in gun homicide."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia#Research