The solution to mass shootings cannot be found in other countries

Once again, a school shooting has renewed calls for gun control. For many Americans, this tragedy is emblematic of our moral crisis: the inability to pass new gun laws after each previous school massacre that shocked the nation. But can such laws work?

Some gun restrictions can help prevent some mass shootings in schools or elsewhere and limit the damage from others. Raising the minimum age for gun purchases to 21 — a measure backed by 72% of Americans in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll — would have stopped the 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde, Texas, Salvador Ramos, from legally buying two AR-15 rifles. Limiting magazine capacity could drastically reduce casualties. Universal background checks, also widely popular, could stop some shooters. Republicans, and the gun lobby, are rightly blamed for blocking reforms.

Yet many liberals and progressives envision far more sweeping changes. They cite the experience of Australia, Britain and other countries that tightened gun laws after mass shootings — and in which gun violence is extremely low and mass shootings almost nonexistent. Most recently, new legislation including a ban on handgun sales has been proposed in Canada in the wake of the Uvalde shooting.

Let’s leave aside the question of whether such initiatives are feasible in the United States. President Biden has already said that he will not seek a handgun ban. The more salient point is that “why can’t we be more like Australia or Britain” is a non-starter.

Yes, Australia’s gun restrictions and mandatory gun buybacks enacted in 1996 after a mass shooting are widely cited as a success story, not only in virtually eliminating mass shootings but in reducing gun homicides in general. And yet most researchers consider the impact inconclusive, since gun homicide in that country was already dropping before 1996.

What’s more, Australia had very few fatal shootings even before the 1996 measures compared to the U.S.: Australia's annual firearms homicide rate was about 4.3 per million people "before" and about 2.5 per million "after." In the U.S., it stood at 46 per million in 2019 and 76 per million in 2020.

Similarly, Britain, which tightened firearms restrictions in 1987 and banned private handgun ownership in 1997, had extremely low homicide levels even before these changes. While about three-quarters of homicides in America involve firearms, murders without guns still happen at nearly twice the total murder rate in England.

It is also worth noting that the U.S. is not very good at keeping people from obtaining banned items. The War on Drugs, anyone? Here, the difficulty is compounded by the fact that there is already a huge quantity of firearms — nearly 400 million — in private hands in America, including 15 to 20 million AR-15s. Gun confiscation would raise massive civil liberties issues. Firearm bans would inevitably spur the rise of black markets. And modern technology such as 3D printing makes illegal manufacture of guns and ammunition easier than ever.

Does this mean there’s nothing we can do? Of course not. A variety of harm reduction strategies can be tried. But we need to be humble about their likely effects and remember the possibility of unintended consequences. The War on Drugs is now widely regarded as largely disastrous in its impact on incarceration and law enforcement abuses, especially in minority communities. A War on Guns could someday be remembered the same way.

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.