But mass shootings still account for only a small fraction of the roughly 8,000 gun murder incidents in the U.S. each year.1 This suggests that measures aimed at preventing mass shootings would save more lives if they also prevent other kinds of gun death. [...]
In New Zealand, after a man went on a shooting rampage at a neighbor’s house in 1990 and fatally shot 11 people, the country stopped offering lifetime licenses for guns, requiring gun owners to renew their permits every 10 years instead. Military-style weapons were not banned but required a special permit. After a 22-year-old gunman killed 10 students at a hospitality school and then took his own life in 2008, Finland raised the minimum age to own a gun (from 18 to 20) and added requirements to own a handgun (such as two years of supervised target practice and membership in a gun club). Canada and Germany also tightened access to guns after mass shootings within their borders. [...]
Did Australia and Great Britain’s reforms prevent mass shootings? It’s hard to say, simply because mass shootings are relatively rare. In the post-buyback period, Great Britain has had one massacre with guns while Australia has had none. It’s hard to calculate how many would have been expected without a ban. Australia looks more successful in this regard, because it had more frequent mass shootings before the ban (averaging about two mass shootings every three years from 1979 to 1996.3) Mass shootings in Great Britain, prior to the ban, were rarer. Prior to 1996, there hadn’t been a widely covered mass shooting in Britain since 1987. [...]
In parts of Great Britain, there isn’t strong evidence the ban and buyback saved lives. After the new gun law was implemented in 1996, the number of crimes involving guns in England and Wales kept rising through the 1990s, peaking in 2003 and 2004 before subsiding. The post-2004 drop is hard to credit to the buyback and possibly occurred because of an increase in the number of police officers. It’s possible that any effect of the ban, positive or negative, was swamped by other factors affecting gun violence. There has been one notable mass shooting in Great Britain since the law was passed, making it hard to judge whether the law has been a success in that respect.
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