Why Didn’t the Gun Laws Work?

Two heinous incidents of gun violence took place last weekend half a world apart. The mass shooting during finals at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and the antisemitic terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration on Australia’s Bondi Beach together left 17 people dead and injured dozens more. But aside from their unfolding within 12 hours of each other, these tragedies share little in common except for one thing: they both happened in places with relatively strict gun laws. Why didn’t these laws stop them from occurring? Let’s take a look. 

Suspects, Weapons, and Motives

After initially naming a person of interest in their investigation and later releasing him, authorities in Providence are still searching for the perpetrator of the shooting at Brown. It occurred on Saturday at 4pm ET in an engineering building on campus, and was carried out with a 9mm firearm, most likely a handgun. Two were killed and nine were injured. On Tuesday, law enforcement released new photos and videos showing a potential suspect. Officials hope the public can help identify the individual through body movements, posture, and gait. Needless to say, without a suspect, it’s impossible to determine a motive, though officials are exploring a possible connection to a shooting of an MIT professor on Monday.

In Australia, police have charged 24-year-old Naveed Akram with 15 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder, and additional charges, including committing a terrorist act. He and his co-conspirator in the attack, his 50-year-old father, Sajid Akram, who was shot and killed by police on the scene, were reportedly motivated by Islamic State ideology. The elder Akram, an Indian national who migrated to Australia in 1998, was a licensed firearms holder. The weapons used in the attack, which occurred on Sunday just before 7pm local time, included a Beretta BRX-1 “straight-pull” hunting rifle and a Stoeger M3000 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun.

Existing Laws

Rhode Island is considered to have some of the strongest gun violence prevention laws in the country, having added significant state regulations absent from federal law. Relative to this case, the state requires a background check and a seven-day waiting period for all firearm purchases. To buy a handgun, a person must be 21 years of age and obtain a “blue card” license by taking a mandatory safety class and passing a test. An additional permit is required to carry the gun. Rhode Island has also had an Extreme Risk Protection Order law (ERPO), commonly known as a red flag law, in place since 2018. However, since a suspect has not yet been identified, it is unknown whether his weapons were legally owned or if implementing an ERPO could have made a difference in this case.

In Australia, sweeping gun ownership restrictions were passed in 1996, just 12 days after a massacre in Port Arthur, Tasmania, where a lone gunman killed 35 people. Under Australian law, Sajid Akram possessed a category AB firearm license, a recreational license for which he met the eligibility criteria. This license entitled him to an uncapped quantity of certain kinds of rifles and shotguns, and he was legally in possession of six, according to a local police commissioner. He was also a member of a gun club. 

Before anyone concludes that these cases prove that “gun laws don’t work,” consider this. Of the 50 states, Rhode Island has the fourth lowest rate of gun deaths per capita, at 4.8 per 100,000 people. It is exceeded by only New York (4.7), New Jersey (4.6), and Massachusetts (3.7), all three of which, like Rhode Island, have some of the country’s most strict gun policies. By contrast, the states with the highest per capita gun death rates—the District of Columbia (30.6 per 100,000 people), Mississippi (29.4), Louisiana (28.3), Alabama (25.6), and New Mexico (25.3)—tend to have more lax gun violence prevention laws, meaning they add few, if any, regulations above federal law and have permissive laws governing the open or concealed carry of firearms in public.

And in Australia, the annual rate of total gun deaths fell from 2.9 per 100,000 people in 1996, when it passed national gun legislation, to just 0.88 per 100,000 in 2018, according to the Australian Gun Safety Alliance. That rate is far lower than that of the U.S., with its state-by-state patchwork of more relaxed gun laws: 13.7 gun deaths per 100,000 in 2023, according to Pew Research Center. While the U.S. endured more than 500 mass shootings in 2024 alone, despite a year-over-year decline, Australia has experienced just four mass shootings in 29 years. Philip Alpers, a professor at the University of Sydney who specializes in firearm injury prevention, says, “This is a success unparalleled in any other country.”

In short, while no gun law can stop every incident of gun violence—as evidenced by these two devastating mass shootings—targeted, common-sense gun safety policies dramatically reduce the death toll.

Regulatory Response

The U.S. is frequently criticized for a lack of adequate response to its gun violence problem, which is unrivaled among other developed, high-wealth nations. Nevertheless, in the highly emotional wake of a gun tragedy, there is also a risk of implementing draconian laws that wouldn’t have stopped the incident from happening in the first place. These can threaten the freedom of responsible gun owners and create unnecessary division between gun owners and non-gun owners.

Often, the issue isn’t the laws at all but their proper enforcement. For example, in Australia, the number of licensed firearms has steadily risen over the years. Some regulatory changes were never fully implemented. And after decades of an infinitesimally small number of outbreaks of violence, the country had grown somewhat  complacent, resulting in “loopholes and workarounds”—state-level changes that weakened national laws; background checks deemed too shallow by gun safety advocates; and the ability for non-citizens, like Sajid Akram, to obtain gun licenses.

Australian officials say they are ready to tighten up firearm access again. Among the new measures under consideration are capping the number of firearms that can be owned by an individual, further limiting the types of guns that are legally permitted, and making Australian citizenship a condition of gun ownership. “I think it’s time that we have a change to the law in relation to the firearms legislation in New South Wales, but I’m not ready to announce it today,” said Premier Chris Minns of New South Wales, the state in which Bondi Beach is located, on Monday. “You can expect action soon.” Given how quickly officials responded in 1996, he should be taken at his word.

Meanwhile, in Rhode Island, the focus for now is on school safety measures. Gov. Dan McKee has ordered a sweeping review of school security at every level, from K-12 to higher education. This is a rational approach, considering that at least 75 school shootings have occurred in the U.S. this year. But as with any policy, there will always be limits. Because these horrific crimes occur at the intersection of the individual and the lethality of their weapon, no gun law will prevent every gun crime. The issues impacting the individual—whether mental illness, ties to terrorism, or something else—must also be acknowledged and addressed.

As Ieva Jusionyte, a professor of international security and anthropology at Brown University and a MacArthur genius grantee, poignantly writes:

Our first thought is always about the laws and the infrastructure—doors, cameras—because those are simple, tangible things. But I’m afraid the task ahead is bigger than that. We won’t legislate our way out of this. We need to change our culture and our society—a society where it is, first of all, conceivable, and only then possible, that someone would walk into a classroom and open fire at students preparing for an exam.

At 97Percent, we grieve with all the families and communities, at home and abroad, dealing with the aftermath of these traumatic events.