Most Conservative Americans have the impression that Australia and New Zealand citizens have been systematically disarmed over the last twenty years.
Is that basically correct?
We do see that that Australian gun control is working Well.
At least the five were only stabbed to death instead of being shot.
I am sure they preferred that.
/S/
There are more firearms legally held in private hands in Australia than at any time in our history.
New restrictions were introduced in the late 1990s after a spate of gun massacres between 1987 and 1996, but they only affected a fairly limited number of firearms (basically high capacity semi-automatics), and further restrictions on handguns came in the early 2000s.
But only a fairly small proportion of Australians had ever owned weapons like that - we don't have the same culture around guns as the US does.
And the restrictions have been constantly exaggerated in the United States as well.
Law abiding citizens have little difficulty in owning firearms if they want to. But not all that many do compared to the US.
We do have universal registration, and actually carrying a firearm unless you are actually doing something like hunting at the time, etc, is heavily regulated. Storage rules are also very strict.
You have to have a licence and strict rules governing getting one. The percentage of people owning firearms has fallen a lot. Still there are 4 million registered firearms, but owned by fewer people.