Vice President Kamala Harris praised gun control laws in Australia, where citizens have no legal right to own guns and where widespread gun confiscations took place in the 1990s, in a speech on Thursday.
Harris said Australia’s gun laws proved that mass shootings don’t have to be a regular occurrence, during his remarks given at a State Department luncheon earlier in the day with the Australian Prime Minister. which is Anthony Albanese. His comments came after a shooting in Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday left at least 18 dead and more than a dozen injured.
“As we gather details, we must continue to speak the truth about the moment we are in,” Harris said. “In our country today, the leading cause of death for American children is gun violence. Gun violence has terrified and traumatized many of our communities in the United States.”
“And let’s be clear, it doesn’t have to be this way — as our friends in Australia have shown,” he continued to applaud.
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According to a brief on the Australian Parliament’s official website, there is no legal right to gun ownership in Australia “in contrast to the position in the United States.”
In addition, Australian law requires individuals to prove they have a genuine reason for owning a firearm. Self-defense is not considered a valid reason under that law.
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Additionally, the country’s laws further mandate that individuals purchasing firearms must have a license and that each firearm they own must be individually registered. That requirement, according to the Australian Parliament brief, contrasts with New Zealand and Canada, which require gun buyers to obtain a license, but allow them to freely purchase firearms after obtaining said license.
Australia’s crackdown on gun ownership came in 1996 following a series of widely publicized shootings. The so-called 1996 National Firearms Agreement banned automatic and semi-automatic firearms, instituted gun registration, established stricter storage requirements for all firearms, and severely restricted non-military style firearms. semi-automatic rifles and shotgun purchases.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at the end of the Investing in America tour at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 14, 2023. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
The Australian government also instituted a mandatory gun buyback program that resulted in it collecting nearly 700,000 privately owned firearms.
“Ultimately, we won the battle to change gun laws because there was majority support across Australia for banning certain weapons,” former Australian Prime Minister John Howard wrote in a Newe York Times op-ed in 2013. “And today, there is a broad consensus that our 1996 reforms not only lowered the gun-related homicide rate, but the suicide rate as well.”
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On Wednesday night, suspect Robert Card opened fire in a Lewiston bowling alley before leaving and opening fire in a nearby restaurant, killing more than a dozen people.
Card — a trained firearms instructor and petroleum supply specialist in the Army Reserve with a history of mental health issues — remains at large while more than 350 law enforcement personnel from federal, state and local agency continues to search for him.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
