Molly is a J.D. Candidate, Class of 2026, at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
This post is part of a series written by students in the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School’s The Second Amendment – A Modern and Historical Perspective class. The posts were written by students as an assignment for the class and edited by their professor, Jonathan Goldstein, in preparation for publication.
In April of 1996, an Australian man murdered 35 people and wounded 23 in Tasmania by using two semi-automatic rifles. The Port Arthur Massacre led to Australia enacting the National Firearms Agreement (NFA), which prohibited all semi-automatic and pump-action rifles and shotguns, created a buyback program, put a 28-day waiting period for firearm purchases, tightened licensing rules, and implemented a national firearm registry.[1] Today, Australia’s laws surrounding guns are much stricter than the United States, with a much longer process to lawfully obtain a handgun and a more limited list of guns allowed to be owned. Australia’s National Firearm Agreement has sparked international conversations not just about gun control but its applicability to other countries. Here, I summarize some of the disagreements on the effectiveness of the NFA, and its applicability to our country’s legal system.
First, social scientists are divided over the effectiveness of the Agreement. One of the most common statements about the NFA is that there have been no mass shootings in Australia since its enactment. While Australia never experienced the same prevalence of mass shootings as other countries like the United States, the lack of mass shootings seems like an indicator that the NFA is effective in preventing tragedies like the Port Arthur Massacre from happening again.[2] Prime Minister John Howard stated that “[f]ew Australians would deny that their country is safer today as a consequence of gun control.”[3] But mass shootings are not the only indicator of gun violence. The Australian Bureau of Statistics found that the rate of gun-related deaths per 100,000 residents have fallen since the NFA.[4] A study by Andrew Leigh at the Australia National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laureir University found that in the decade after the Agreement, gun suicides dropped by 65% and homicides by 59%.[5] But others disagree with these figures, saying that the NFA did little to address gun violence. A different study on suicide and homicide mortality rates from 1978-2015 found that the NFA had no “statistically observable additional impact” on firearm-related suicides or assaults in Australia.[6]
Further, some people point out that there are more guns than ever before in Australia. The 1996 buyback program – which some call a “confiscation program” – removed 650,000 guns from homes. But now, there are over 4 million registered guns in the country, 800,000 more than before the initiative.[7] The National Rifle Association reported that there was a 69% increase in armed robberies.[8] Others state that not only did the NFA not do anything to address gun violence in Australia, but that it created inconsistent regulations for law abiding citizens. In her book “Gun Control in Context: Learning from the Australian Gun Control Experience,” Suzanna Fay interviewed gun owners to highlight issues with Australia’s current gun control measures. Gun owners continue to be concerned with the implementation of the NFA, saying that the regulations are too complex and hard to understand, and change too quickly.
But even with the polarizing conclusions on the NFA, American policy makers have turned to Australia as a model for potential U.S. legislation.[9] President Obama, in calling Australia a nation “like ours,” praised the country for turning grief into mobilization in passing the NFA.[10] While running for President, Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Australia a model “worth looking at.”[11] Others have criticized the attempts to similarize the United States to Australia. Australia, for example, never had the same hunting culture as the U.S., and the right to bear arms was never constitutionally protected like in America.[12] Further, people criticize that the NFA is not something we would want to emulate, with the NRA claiming that the Agreement “robbed Australians of their right to self-defense and empowered criminals.”
But commentators on both sides agree on one thing: that guns, whether we like it or not, are part of our lives. It is the extent of which, and the stringency of restrictions, that they disagree on. It should not be forgotten that both the National Firearms Agreement and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act – America’s first federal gun violence prevention legislation passed in nearly thirty years – required across-the-aisle support to pass through the legislature. With rising polarization and partisanship in the United States, it is clear that little to no progress will be made on this issue unless people from both parties work to find common ground on this issue.
[1] Elements of the National Firearm Agreement, like the registry, remain unimplemented or implemented inconsistently throughout the Australian states. Sky Predavec, Alice Grundy & Rod Campbell, Australian Gun Control: 29 Years After Port Arthur (The Australia Inst. 2025), https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/P1606-Australian-Gun-Control-29-years-after-Port-Arthur-Web.pdf.
[2] Mass shootings include the killing of 4 or 5+ people. The 2014 armed hostage crisis at the Lindt Cafe is often mentioned in this discussion, but it is not considered a mass shooting because three people died.
[3] Dan Bilefsky, Austin Ramzy & Ian Austen, How Australia, Britain and Canada Have Responded to Gun Violence, N.Y. Times, October 2, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/world/americas/australia-britain-canada-us-gun-legislation.html.
[4]Andrew Leigh & Christine Neill, Do Gun Buybacks Save Lives? Evidence from Panel Data (IZA Inst. of Lab. Econ. Discussion Paper No. 4995, 2010), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1631130.
[5] Id.
[6] Stuart Gilmour, Kittima Wattanakamolkul & Maaya Kita Sugai, The Effect of the Australian National Firearms Agreement on Suicide Homicide Mortality, 1978-2015 (2018) (finding that “[t]he NFA had no additional statistically observable impact on firearm-related suicides in women (P = .09) and was associated with a statistically significant increase in the trend in men (P < .001). Trends in non–firearm-related suicide deaths declined by 4.4% per year (95% confidence interval [CI] = 4.1%, 4.8%) in men after the introduction of the NFA and increased in women by 0.3% (95% CI = 0.1%, 0.7%). Trends in non–firearm-related homicides declined by 2.2% per year (95% CI = 1.5, 3.8%) in women and 2.9% per year (95% CI = 2.0%, 3.7%) in men after the introduction of the NFA, with a statistically significant improvement in trends for women (P = .04) but not for men (P = .80).”)
[7] These guns, however, are not the same type as the guns owned by Australians pre-NFA.
[8] Australia: There Will Be Blood America’s 1st Freedom (Jul. 9, 2015), https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2015/7/9/australia-there-will-be-blood.
[9] Supra note 6.
[10] Dan Bilefsky, How Australia, Britain and Canada Have Responded to Gun Violence N.Y. Times, Oct. 3, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/world/americas/australia-britain-canada-us-gun-legislation.html.
[11] Amy Chozick, Hillary Clinton, Calling Out the N.R.A., Gets a Quick Reply, N.Y. Times, Oct. 16, 2015, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/10/16/hillary-clinton-calling-out-the-n-r-a-gets-a-quick-reply.
[12] Rachel Franks, Tom Frame, Gun Control: What Australian Got Right (and Wrong), The Dictionary of Syd.: Blog (2019), https://dictionaryofsydney.org/blog/tom_frame_gun_control_what_australian_got_right_and_wrong.