NRA-ILA | Australia’s National Gun Buyback Already an “Extinct Policy”

The ineffectual virtue-signaling that so-called gun “buybacks” represent is finally being exposed on a global level, given the massive problems with the Canadian, and now the Australian, federal government gun bans and grabs.

Five days after the terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, New South Wales (NSW) last December, the Australian government announced a “National Gun Buyback Scheme” to purchase newly banned and illegal firearms. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had imposed a March 31 deadline for the scheme to be agreed to, with the necessary legislation to be in place by July 1 and the buyback completed by January 2028.

Australia’s states and territories are responsible for regulating gun ownership, licensing, use and sale, meaning their support is essential for any national buyback scheme to work, as was the case with the 1996 confiscation and buyback, the National Firearms Agreement (NFA).

The latest indications are that state and territory leaders are not buying-in to the scheme, with one big sticking point being money. Unlike the 1996 NFA, this buyback would be based on a 50/50 cost split between the federal government and the states and territories.

There are no official cost projections for the buyback, but the Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia (SIFA) estimates the scheme is likely to cost AUD$15 billion but could be as high as $20 billion (approx. US$10.6 to 14 billion). Such government expenditures are hard to justify at a time when three-quarters of Australians are struggling under a cost-of-living crisis.

News reports (here and here) show that less than half of the states and territories have signed on to the buyback; leaders of others have expressed their outright opposition. David Crisafulli, Premier of Queensland (with the second-highest rate of gun ownership in the country) emphatically rejected the gun buyback scheme, stating, “it doesn’t focus on keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists and criminals” and did nothing to address the anti-Semitism and hate that motivated the Bondi Beach tragedy.

Early this year, Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro of the majority rural New Territories and her Attorney General said they would not be supporting the scheme, pointing to its unsuitability and financial burden. The federal government’s approach failed “to ensure reforms are genuinely needed, relevant and appropriate to each jurisdiction’s circumstances,” and that “[f]or many Territorians, firearms are a practical tool for work and lawful recreation, and any reform must recognise that reality.” Last month, the premier of South Australia advised that his state already had the toughest gun laws in the country and there were “currently … no plans to amend” them. “We only have an interest in amending the gun laws to the extent that they are based on evidence and that needs to be thought through very carefully, and that’s our policy.”

No wonder that a prominent Australian political commentator, Sky News Australia host Peta Credlin, recently described the National Gun Buyback Scheme as a “massive failure.” “In all the hoopla after Bondi this was the Prime Minister’s response. Well, the deadline to sign up for the states was last night. The majority have not signed up, so it’s an extinct policy. It’s a joke.”

In comments that echo criticisms of Canada’s gun buyback fiasco, a SIFA spokesman notes that the federal government “prefers reactive, ‘midnight’ legislation over sound, consulted policy,” and that the gun buyback details are still missing. “This buyback hasn’t delivered a victory for public safety, it has only delivered uncertainty for thousands of law abiding Australians and the businesses that support them.” Shadow Minister for Home Affairs Jonno Duniam, a Liberal Senator for Tasmania, likewise referred to its ineffectiveness. “This was the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil, yet the Government has not introduced a single measure to strengthen our counter-terrorism responses … The Albanese Government’s national buyback has badly backfired. States and territories have walked away from this heavy-handed and unworkable scheme for good reason – because it was a desperate overreach by the Albanese Government in relation to the rights of Australians.”

Such disparagement is well-founded. A 2008 paper authored by University of Melbourne researchers, Australian Firearms Buyback and Its Effect on Gun Deaths, examined the impact of the 1996 NFA on firearm-related deaths and concluded that “there is little evidence to suggest that it had any significant effects on firearm homicides and suicides.” (One especially interesting factor of this study is that because Australia is “geographically isolated with no domestic supply of prohibited firearms,” the “leakage” of banned guns from contiguous counties or states “would not be a serious issue”).  

In spite of the evidence and opposition, the Albanese government has committed to pressing on. Attorney-General Michelle Rowland has stated as much, even as she appears to recognize the participation roadblock. “The key word here is ‘national.’ It’s only effective if it does have that national context and these reforms are sensible.”

Before embarking on this billion-dollar boondoggle, Australians may be well advised to reflect on the experience of another Commonwealth country and consider the (lack of) progress, cost and legacy of the program in Canada, now in its sixth year. In the words of one Canadian analyst, that “buyback” and confiscation program represents the “definition of regulatory capture run amok, and … will remain an ever larger, ever more obvious albatross about the neck of any future government that seeks credibility with regard to responsible spending and pragmatic, rational policy.”

In the United States, Australia has long been considered the spiritual homeland, for better and for worse, of the “gun buy-back” and is frequently cited by American firearm prohibitionists as a model for this country to follow. Now, faced with the prospect of actually paying for it out of their own pockets, the spirit among Australia’s states and territories has flown.