Updated April 29, 2016 09:47:34
Crowds are expected to gather on April 28, 2016, to mark the 20th anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre.
A service will be held at the historical penal colony site to remember the 35 people killed and others injured by Martin Bryant using a semi-automatic rifle in 1996.
The tragedy prompted extensive reforms to gun regulations by federal, state and territory governments.
In an interview on American television network CBS on March 13, 2016, the prime minister who drove the reforms, John Howard, said: "It is incontestable that gun-related homicides have fallen quite significantly in Australia, incontestable."
Asked to respond to critics who say changes in gun deaths are not a result of his reforms, Mr Howard said there has been a "74 per cent fall in the gun-related suicide rates, isn't that evidence?"
Have gun-related homicides fallen significantly since Mr Howard's reforms, with gun-related suicide rates dropping by 74 per cent? And is that evidence of the effect of the reforms? ABC Fact Check investigates.
Mr Howard's claim is not cut and dried.
Data from the Australian Institute of Criminology shows the rate of homicide victims dying from a gunshot wound has dropped since the reforms came into force, but not consistently in every year.
ABS data indicates the rate of assault by firearm causing death has also declined since the reforms, but not in every year.
Data from the ABS also indicates the rate of suicide by firearm fell by 67 per cent from 2.1 deaths per 100,000 of the population in 1996 to 0.7 deaths in 2014.
However, experts consulted by Fact Check said the impact of Mr Howard's reforms on those declines is debatable.
Some research argues the reforms did not significantly influence firearm homicide rates or already falling rates of firearm suicide.
Other research argues the reforms accelerated the rates of decline, with one study suggesting firearm suicides dropped by 74 per cent from the 1990-95 average following the buyback scheme.
While it is accurate for Mr Howard to assert that gun-related homicides and suicides have dropped since his reforms were implemented, there is more to it.
Studies on the impacts of his reforms have come to varied conclusions and experts contacted by Fact Check said other factors would have influenced the drops, even though the reforms are likely to form part of the story.
In response to the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, the Howard government brokered a National Firearms Agreement with the states and territories.
A 2012 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology report summarised the reforms:
The agreement resulted in restricted legal possession of automatic and semi-automatic firearms and further restricted the legal importation of non-military centrefire self-loading firearms to those with a maximum magazine capacity of five rounds. The agreement further committed all states and territories to a firearms registration scheme and licensing of persons in order to legally possess and use firearms. Previously, only handguns needed to be registered; obligations around long-arm registration varied between jurisdictions. In addition was the introduction of laws that were designed to minimise the legal acquisition of firearms by unsuitable persons.
The agreement was implemented by the states and territories in stages in the years after 1996, including a 12-month national amnesty and buyback scheme allowing gun owners to sell newly banned firearms to the federal government.
The federal legislation relating to Commonwealth funding for the reforms came into force on September 4, 1996.
Federal, state and territory governments began a review of the reforms in 2015.
An Australian Institute of Criminology report on sources of homicide data said "there are three main data collection systems that produce largely independent sets of statistics on homicide" in Australia.
They are: the National Homicide Monitoring Program (NHMP) managed by the institute, and the Causes of Death and Recorded Crime collections managed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The NHMP uses data derived from police offence reports and data is recorded on a financial year basis.
Data in the Causes of Death collection is recorded on a calendar year basis and compiled from information on death certificates, provided to the ABS by state and territory registrars of births, deaths and marriages.
This collection also includes data on suicides by firearm.
The ABS Recorded Crime collection uses data from police offence reports, recorded on a calendar year basis.
Relevant figures from this collection are not publicly available.
Suzanna Fay-Ramirez, a criminologist in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland, said that would not affect the assessment of Mr Howard's claim, as the relevant data from police reports would be reflected in data from the NHMP.
She added that the Causes of Death collection is "the most comprehensive" source of data on suicides by firearm.
Samantha Bricknell, research manager, violence and exploitation, at the Australian Institute of Criminology, said: "The Causes of Death data and the NHMP data should be sufficient."
Rick Sarre, a professor of law and criminal justice at the University of South Australia, had a similar view.
The most recent NHMP report, published in 2015, said the term "homicide" refers to a person killed unlawfully, resulting in a charge of murder or manslaughter, with the exception of most driver-related fatalities.
The Australian Institute of Criminology provided Fact Check with NHMP data on homicide victims whose cause of death was a gunshot wound for each financial year from 1989-90 to 2011-12.
Fact Check has graphed the data below.
The graph shows the rate was falling until 1992-93, when it increased to 0.56 deaths per 100,000 of the population from 0.43 deaths in 1991-92.
The figure dropped to 0.38 deaths in 1993-94 and rose to 0.50 deaths the following year.
It peaked at 0.61 deaths in 1995-96 - the financial year of the Port Arthur massacre and the year before the reforms began.
The rate has fallen since then, but not consistently in every year.
The explanatory notes for the ABS Causes of Death collection said deaths recorded as "assault" are, in other words, murder or manslaughter.
The ABS provided Fact Check with data derived from this collection on the rates of assault by firearm causing death in each year from 1990 to 2014.
The graph shows the rate was steady at 0.5 deaths per 100,000 of the population in 1991 and 1992, rising to 0.6 deaths in 1992.
The figure dropped to 0.4 deaths in 1993 and remained constant until 1996 - the year the reforms began - when it peaked at 0.6 deaths.
The rate fell to 0.4 deaths in 1997 and 0.3 deaths in 1998, remaining constant until 2000.
It dropped to 0.2 deaths in 2001, remaining constant in 2002, then rising to 0.3 deaths in 2003.
The rate fell to 0.1 deaths in 2004 and has remained fairly steady at 0.1 or 0.2 deaths per 100,000 of the population in every year since.
The ABS provided Fact Check with data derived from the Causes of Death Collection on the rate of suicides by firearm in each year from 1990 to 2014.
Fact Check has graphed the data below.
The graph shows the rate was declining fairly steadily from 1991 until 1996 — the year Mr Howard's reforms came into force.
The rate dropped more sharply until 1998, before increasing slightly in 1999, dropping slightly in 2000 and rising by a similar scale in 2001.
The figure fell at a fairly steady rate until 2005 and then increased slightly in 2006.
The rate has been fairly steady since 2006, despite a slight lull in 2011.
The data indicates the rate fell by 67 per cent from 2.1 deaths per 100,000 of the population in 1996 to 0.7 deaths in 2014.
Experts contacted by Fact Check said the impact of Mr Howard's reforms on the decline in firearm homicides and suicides is subject to debate.
Professor Sarre said: "It is incontestable that gun-related homicides and suicides have fallen since 1996, what is contestable is how much you can attribute that to [the reforms]."
Dr Fay-Ramirez said: "What we determine as significant and not significant is probably the part that's more up for debate, rather than the actual declines in and of themselves."
Dr Bricknell said: "There is a debate and the different analyses that have been done have demonstrated that either there was a significant decrease post reforms or there wasn't."
A spokesman for Mr Howard referred Fact Check via email to two studies in support of his claim.
The first was a study by Simon Chapman, an emeritus professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Sydney, Philip Alpers, an associate professor in the same school and university, Kingsley Agho, a senior lecturer in biostatistics in the School of Science and Health at Western Sydney University, and Mike Jones, associate dean (research) in the Faculty of Human Sciences and deputy head of the Psychology Department at Macquarie University.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Injury Prevention in 2006 and republished in the same journal in 2015, examined whether the 1996 gun law reforms were associated with changes in rates of firearm homicides and suicides.
"The rates per 100,000 of total firearm deaths, firearm homicides and firearm suicides all at least doubled their existing rates of decline after the revised gun laws," the study said.
The authors concluded that the 1996 gun law reforms were followed by "accelerated declines in firearms deaths, particularly suicides".
The second was a 2010 study by Christine Neill, an associate professor of economics at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, and Andrew Leigh, then a professor of economics at the Australian National University and now federal Labor's Shadow Assistant Treasurer.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal The American Law and Economics Review in 2010, tested whether the reduced stock of firearms resulting from the buyback affected firearm homicide and suicide rates.
It said the reduction in firearm suicides following the buyback "represents a 74 per cent decline from the 1990-95 average".
The authors found "the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80 per cent" and "the estimated effect on firearm homicides is of similar magnitude, but is less precise".
Dr Bricknell co-authored a study with Frederic Lemieux, a professor in the Department of Sociology at the George Washington University in the US, and Tim Prenzler, a professor of criminology and justice at the University of the Sunshine Coast, published in 2015 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice.
The study discussed the debate over the impacts of Mr Howard's reforms on firearm homicides and suicides.
It said one side of the debate, including the studies Mr Howard's spokesman referred to, argues the rates of decrease in firearm homicides and suicides — "particularly suicides" — were "more pronounced" after the reforms than before.
On the other side, it referred to studies concluding that "there was little evidence that firearm reforms (including the gun buyback) produced any significant effect on firearm homicide or firearm suicide," largely written by Samara McPhedran, a senior research fellow in the violence research and prevention program at Griffith University and chair of the International Coalition for Women in Shooting and Hunting, and Jeanine Baker, research co-ordinator at the International Coalition for Women in Shooting and Hunting.
Dr Bricknell and her colleagues said the research on both sides of the debate had limitations, including "the small number of incidents (particularly homicide), the variable nature of the data, the absence of control groups and the consequent, apparent 'fragility' of some/all of the tests applied".
Some of the authors of the studies under review acknowledged that "at best, associations might be inferred from these data, even if specific effects cannot be agreed upon," they said.
One of the studies reviewed, written by Dr McPhedran and Dr Baker, was published by the peer-reviewed British Journal of Criminology in 2006.
It concluded that "the only category of sudden death that may have been influenced by the introduction of the NFA was firearm suicide", adding that "societal factors could also have influenced observed changes".
"It is probable that other factors affecting suicide, such as increased funding for suicide prevention programmes in various jurisdictions, would have contributed to the social factors that influence suicide by all methods, given that such programs focus on general intervention techniques rather than specific suicide methods," the study said.
"Homicide patterns (firearm and non-firearm) were not influenced by the NFA, the conclusion being that the gun buyback and restrictive legislative changes had no influence on firearm homicide in Australia."
A more recent study by the same authors, published in the peer-reviewed journal Health Policy in 2008, examined whether the rate of decline in national suicide trends differed for males and females.
"Given that declines in non-firearm suicide occurred post-1996, it is unclear whether the accelerated rate of decline in firearm suicide after the introduction of strict legislation can be attributed to legal reform. It is possible that the accelerated rate of decline was simply in keeping with the more general patterns of decline that began to emerge in the late 1990s," the study said.
Dr McPhedran authored a systematic review of five studies — including the two referred to Fact Check by Mr Howard's spokesman — to examine the impacts of legislative reform on firearm homicide in Australia.
The review, published by the peer-reviewed journal Aggression and Violent Behaviour in 2016, said none of the studies examined "found evidence for a statistically significant impact of Australia's 1996 legislative changes on firearm homicide rates".
The review also highlighted "the general absence of studies which undertake detailed consideration of whether specific elements of legislative change — rather than legislative change overall — may have had effects that were not apparent from the overall firearm homicide trends".
Dr Fay-Ramirez said: "These studies perhaps have different results, not because of data quality or difference, but because of the approach they take to understanding the crime drop".
"The Neill and Leigh paper has focused on the effect of the gun buyback on gun-related deaths and they did indeed find some unexpected effects. However, gun reform is much more than just the buyback scheme. It is also the constant effort of enforcement by state firearms registries over a sustained period of time — something very difficult to measure and account for in studies like these," she said.
"Very little academic research has focused on the more intricate and complex nature of gun law compliance and enforcement."
She said increases in social support or government investment in social welfare are common factors that help depress crime rates and could be linked to the drop in firearm homicides and suicides.
"In light of the broader societal factors that may be influencing the crime rate, Australia's gun reforms are likely part of the reason we have seen a sustained decrease," she said.
"Even where there are debates on the effect of Australia's gun reform, generally speaking almost all of them that I've seen accept that there has been at least some minimal benefit of that gun reform."
Professor Sarre said suggesting Mr Howard's reforms "caused" the declines is "a very difficult assertion to make", but "you can make a broad assertion to say we're better off in terms of gun suicides and gun homicides".
"Whether you can say we're 20 per cent better off, 80 per cent better off, is subject to debate... But the bottom line is, if [the reforms] had the effect of reducing the number of guns that are available to Australians, it is strongly correlated with the gun homicide and suicide deaths on the wane."
He said the reforms were "a strongly and highly influential contributing factor", but other factors would have come into play, such as "the way in which we treat guns - we don't revere guns".
Dr Bricknell, who could only speak to the homicide claim, said Mr Howard is "not incorrect" as "we have had a significant decrease in firearm homicides since the reforms".
"Whether that decrease is so significantly different to the drop prior to [the reforms] is debatable and is still yet to be resolved because we've had all these different analyses done that have come up with quite different responses," she said.
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Topics:law-crime-and-justice, crime, suicide, murder-and-manslaughter, howard-john-winston, australia
First posted April 28, 2016 06:50:52