There are but three certainties in life: death, taxes, and Americans fighting for their constitutional right to own guns and therefore be an accident away at any given time for killing someone.
As the U.S. elections ramp up, so too does the debate on gun control. President Obama is for it, as is Democratic hopeful Hillary Clinton. Republican frontrunners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are, of course, against it, because they (and their voters) love their guns like Aussies love lamb: with disproportionate levels of enthusiasm.
And every time the debate hits the news cycles, so too does Australia, because we are considered the gold standard thanks to John Howard bringing in gun control following the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
Yet anti-gun control campaigners use any means possible to discredit us as an example, like Cruz literally saying that sexual assaults went up significantly after gun control was introduced “because women were unable to defend themselves.” Honestly.
“It is incontestable that gun-related homicides have fallen quite significantly in Australia, incontestable,” he said.
“I mean, if you had 13 mass shootings before Port Arthur and you had none since, isn’t that evidence?
“And if you had a 74% fall in the gun-related suicide rates, isn’t that evidence?
“Or are we expected to believe that that was all magically going to happen? Come on.”
Sadly, his exasperation is not just aimed at the United States but at members of our own government. Senator Leyonhjelm was *also* interviewed for the program, and he said:
“I don’t think there’s any relationship between the availability of guns and the level of violence.”
But back to Howard, who really drops the mic on this one:
“People used to say to me, ‘You violated my human rights by taking away my gun. And I’d [say] ‘I understand that. Will you please understand the argument [that] the greatest human right of all is to live a safe life without fear of random murder?’”
