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25 juillet 2023 - 17:33
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Do "gun buybacks" work?
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On May 3rd, 2023, Serbia experienced two mass shootings that left more than 15 people dead. While Serbia has one of the highest gun ownership rates in the world, mass shootings are rare, and the shootings shocked the country.
In response, one of the big things the Serbian government did was implementing a weapon surrender scheme. So far 26,000 unregistered weapons, 1.3 million rounds of ammunition and 6,000 explosives have been voluntarily surrendered.
It’s too soon to know what impact this will have on Serbia’s gun ownership rates – but we can look at Australia, where they implemented the world's largest mandatory buyback program in 1996. Nearly three decades later, Australia has removed more than 650,000 guns from the streets. To understand what the data says about the effects of the program regarding gun deaths and mass shootings, check out our explainer above.
Sources and further reading:
Zack Beauchamp’s Vox article about Australia’s gun buyback program which inspired this video can be found here:
https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9212725/australia-buyback
You can read Dr. Ramchand’s meta-analysis evaluating the the effects of Australia’s National Firearm Agreement, including the gun buyback program, here:
https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/1996-national-firearms-agreement.html
The study that explores female firearm homicide victimization can be found here:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29332507/
The study specifically about gun buybacks is here:
https://sci-hub.ru/10.1093/aler/ahq013
For more information on Australia’s National Firearms agreement established in 1996, I recommend this detailed review that also includes a look at other countries with initiatives to remove firearms:
https://www.gunpolicy.org/documents/7918-firearm-regulation-in-five-countries-international-experience-and-research/file
This speech by former Australian Prime Minister Howard given just days after the Port Arthur mass shooting, outlines the motivations behind the NFA:
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22chamber/hansardr/1996-05-06/0089%22;src1=sm1
This RAND research article examines the effects of small, local gun buybacks in the US:
https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/analysis/essays/gun-buyback-programs.html
To understand US gun death data in more depth, check out this Pew Research article:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/
This Reuter’s article has a good summary of the initial results of Serbia’s gun amnesty::
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/after-two-mass-shootings-can-serbia-rid-itself-guns-2023-05-22/
This The Conversation article explains how Australia’s NFA and gun buybacks saved lives, but cautions that we are now taking steps back:
https://theconversation.com/australias-gun-laws-save-lives-but-are-we-now-going-backwards-58134
To read about Australia’s new and changing gun ownership figures, take a look at this University of Sydney study:
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2021/04/28/new-gun-ownership-figures-revealed-25-years-on-from-port-arthur.html
Finally, Australia’s mass shooting data in this video, includes incidents that killed four or more people through 2020. Since then, Australia experienced a mass shooting in December of 2022. You can read about it here:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jan/22/wieambilla-shootings-killers-daughter-speaks-out-about-their-descent-into-world-of-conspiracies
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