Australian gun laws back in the news in the U.S. following mass shooting in South Carolina

[CBHagman]

3. And now the NRA is bothering you.

[url]http://www.theage.com.au/world/your-gun-laws-are-a-mistake-national-rifle-association-to-australia-20150712-giaqal.html[/url]

In an article entitled Australia: There Will be Blood, the National Rifle Association in the US has launched an attack on Australia's gun laws in the latest edition of its most militant gun rights publication, America's First Freedom.

The article claims there is a "growing consensus" in Australia that the gun buyback and ban on semi-automatic weapons introduced after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 had failed to make the nation safer.

Not that I'd trust the NRA to tell me whether it was raining outside, but here are the figures for combating their nonsense:

[url]http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/jan/17/lisa-bloom/americans-are-20-times-likely-die-gun-violence-cit/[/url]

The United States is tops -- way tops -- for gun deaths, with a 2010 rate of 3.2 firearm-related deaths per 100,000 population, according to statistics collected by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Chile was second at 2.2, followed by Turkey and Switzerland, tied for third at 0.8. The rest of the countries fell below 1, if they made the map at all.

The U.S. rate is more than 20 times the rate of Australia, France, the United Kingdom (excluding Northern Ireland), Israel, South Korea, Japan, Norway, Poland and Slovenia. The U.S. rate firearm-related deaths is closer to 10 or 16 times the rates of countries such as Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, New Zealand and Spain.