Within weeks of a mass shooting that killed 50 people at two Christchurch mosques, New Zealand has introduced legislation that would ban the type of guns used in the attacks.
In first of three votes needed to enact the law, lawmakers almost unanimously voted to ban semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. Even though the measure has yet to be passed, Prime Minister Lucinda Ardern has already used her executive power to prevent sales of the banned weapons to keep people from stockpiling.
In light of such quick measures, here is a look at the effect other mass shootings have had on gun laws around the world.
In 1996, Martin Bryant, then 28, went on a killing spree in Port Arthur, Tasmania. He killed 35 people and wounded 23 others. Australia acted swiftly to enact the , which banned the use of all semiautomatic rifles, shotguns and pump-action shotguns. It also mandated that all gun owners provide authorities with a reason for possessing a firearm, register all weapons with authorities and undergo safety training. Australia also instituted a gun buyback program that took more than 600,000 weapons out of private hands.
BRITAIN
In 1987, after unemployed laborer Michael Ryan, 27, used a copy of a Kalashnikov AK-47 to kill 16 people and then himself in Hungerford, England, Britain outlawed semiautomatic weapons and limited the sales of some types of shotguns.
But the response was far greater after Thomas Hamilton, 43, used several handguns to kill 16 children and their teacher at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland in 1996. banned virtually all private citizens from owning handguns. The law also made it harder to own sporting rifles by demanding far-reaching background checks. The government also instituted a gun buyback program that took tens of thousands of firearms out of private hands.
In 1989, Marc Lepine, 25, stormed a Montreal engineering school armed with a semiautomatic rifle and killed 14 female students. The violent act shocked a nation that already had tough restrictions on automatic weapons and handguns. Lawmakers reacted by passing laws requiring registration and licensing of all rifles and other long guns, which account for a majority of firearms in Canada. But it didn’t last. The highly unpopular national gun registry was abolished in 2012.
In 2002, Robert Steinhauser, 19, a student expelled from a high school in the eastern city of Erfurt, returned to the school armed with a rifle and a handgun and killed 13 staff members, two students and a police officer before taking his own life. Within months, German lawmakers raised the legal age for carrying sporting weapons from 18 to 21 and made a psychiatric evaluation mandatory for gun buyers younger than 25.
Another school shooting, in the southwest town of Winnenden in 2009, led to further legislation. Tim Kretschmer, 17, returned to his school and killed 15 people, including nine students, most of them female. Germany acted immediately to toughen its gun laws, including allowing police to spot-check the homes of gun owners and impose fines if weapons are not locked away.
In 2011, right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, then 32, detonated a car bomb in Oslo, killing eight people and then used a semiautomatic rifle and a pistol to kill 69 people, mostly teens, at a youth summer camp organized by the Norwegian Labor Party on the island of Utoya. At the time, Norway already had strict gun laws on the books. But it has taken years for Norway to change its laws. Last year, Oslo announced plans to ban semiautomatic weapons by 2021 – a decade after the massacre.
Like other countries, the U.S. passed some of its strictest gun laws after major acts of violence.
In 1934, high-profile gangland crimes, such as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago that killed seven, prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign a law that required gun owners to register machine guns, short-barrel rifles and shotguns. It also imposed a $200 tax on transfers of those weapons. The same tax remains today.
In 1968, the assassinations of President John Kennedy, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy saw the introduction of the , which banned interstate shipments of weapons and ammunition to private individuals. It also prohibited the sale of guns to minors, felons, fugitives, drug addicts and “mental incompetents.” But in 1986, some of the restrictions were lifted, allowing dealers to sell firearms through the mail.