Friday, November 21, 1997

Australia takes its shot at gun control

By Donald Kaul

I don't have many faults, but when I have one, I admit it. When someone thinks I have been unfair and confronts me with an opposing argument, I open my mind to it. I bend over backwards. I see the other side.

Thus it was that I was recently on the verge of changing my mind about gun control. A while back I wrote a mild column supporting gun laws. It was, I think, about the 75th such column I've written over the years, all of them saying more or less the same thing: Guns do too kill people, and we should start treating them like we treat other things that kill people -- cars and prescription drugs, for example.

I got a flood of mail in response -- some 200 letters, I suppose -- much of it arguing the National Rifle Association position (vigilante).

And a funny thing happened. As the letters kept coming in and I kept reading them, they began to make sense to me. Well yes, the Second Amendment does say thou shalt not register guns, doesn't it? And the little old lady in the parking lot -- my grandmother and yours -- what is she to do if a thug of indeterminate ethnic origin accosts her and threatens her life and honor, if she can't blow him away with her cunning little handgun?

And the government, what about the government? Don't Waco and Ruby Ridge teach us we need an armed populace to ward off the evils of a repressive, totalitarian state?

Not a lot of sense, mind you, but I was beginning to see the world through NRA glasses and it looked ... well ... different.

Then I read about Australia.

On a Sunday afternoon in April of last year, a blond gunman strolled through the seaside resort town of Port Arthur, Australia, shooting people. Before he was done, he had killed 35 and wounded 19 more with an arsenal of assault weapons.

In one particularly horrendous incident, a young mother tried to flee the scene with her two small daughters. She flagged down a car, hoping for escape, but the driver was none other than the gunman. He shot the mother and her 3-year-old, then spent two minutes hunting down the 6-year-old, whom he shot through the head as she lay curled up behind a tree. Police captured the gunman alive.

Surely you can imagine what would have happened had the incident taken place in, say, Kansas City. Gun control advocates would have said it proved we needed more gun control, the NRA that it proved we needed more guns. Others would have said it demonstrated the need for tougher judges. Still others would have claimed it as an argument for the death penalty. And nothing would have happened.

Here's what Australia did:

Within two weeks of the killings, the government introduced legislation that banned possession, manufacture and sale of all automatic and semiautomatic weapons, as well as pump-action shotguns. It installed a comprehensive gun registration system and a 28-day waiting period between the obtaining of a gun permit and the buying of a gun, and it passed a law requiring guns and ammunition be stored separately. It also started a gun buy-back program.

Now this isn't England we're talking about here, a country so wimpy that not even the police carry guns. No, this is Australia, which began its history in the British empire as a penal colony, a frontier country with a tradition of gun ownership. You would think the citizenry would rise in revolt at the new laws.

It didn't. Polls showed 95 percent of the people favored the laws. More than 640,000 guns were turned in at a cost to the government of $267 million.

The gun sellers' lobby complained, of course, but to no avail. (Maybe they don't need campaign finance reform in Australia.)

The jury is still out as to the effect of the new laws, but Australians seem happy with the overall result.

"It was symbolic," a prominent columnist and radio personality told the Washington Post. "The whole country feels better."

Well, why shouldn't it? It did the sensible thing. Rather than give in to the gun lobby, they took steps to control a dangerous, however useful, tool.

And to think I was almost ready to throw in the towel. Thank you, Australia, thank you for proving it's possible to like guns and still be sensible about them.

E-mail Donald Kaul at otcoffee@aol.com or write to him c/o Tribune Media Services, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1400, Chicago, IL 60611.