It should be troubling to Australian governments that since 1988, after more than 1 million guns have been destroyed as a result of government buyback programs, numerous amnesties, voluntary returns, the banning of semi-automatic weapons and the tightening of gun import controls, the number of guns in private hands in Australia is as large as it has ever been. It's not hard to see why. Since 1988, while governments have been running a variety of gun control programs,... (GunPolicy.org)

MANILA, Philippines — One person has been killed since the election gun ban started this year while at least 16 total firearms have been confiscated across the country, a police spokesman said Tuesday. Chief Superintendent Generoso Cerbo Jr., Philippine National Police (PNP) Spokesman, said that Fernando Morales was killed after he fought back at police who were serving a warrant of arrest to him in San Juan, Batangas Monday around 1:30pm. Morales was an alleged... (GunPolicy.org)

Police figures have revealed there are almost 790,000 registered firearms in NSW, but an average of five weapons are held by each licensed owner. A University of Sydney study revealed this week that Australians now own as many guns as they did at the time of the Port Arthur massacre, despite more than 1 million firearms being handed in and destroyed nationally. Philip Alpers, an adjunct associate professor at the university's school of public health, said the nation... (GunPolicy.org)

Since the 1997 gun buyback, your chance of being a victim of gun violence has more than halved. Yet as Monday's Herald pointed out, the number of guns in Australia has increased by nearly one-fifth over the same period. What's going on? The simplest answer is that the population is a fifth larger than it was in 1997. In reality, Australia has about as many guns per person as we did after the gun buyback. The only way to conclude the gun buyback has been undone is to... (GunPolicy.org)

Well, this is awkward: Some Americans are celebrating Gun Appreciation Day on Jan. 19 — two days before President Obama's second inauguration, nine days after a teenager opened fire at a California high school, the same week as the one-month anniversary of the Newtown, Conn. school shooting and the same month as the second anniversary of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting in Tuscon, Ariz. But Gun Appreciation Day isn't a long-standing tradition with poor timing. Nope,... (GunPolicy.org)

The headquarters of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the gun industry's trade association, is 3.2 miles, a seven-minute drive, from Sandy Hook Elementary School. After last month's massacre, all the pictures of NSSF executives had been taken down from the organization's website, said Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the UC-Davis Medical Center. "I suspect they were taken down because they were involved. This was their... (GunPolicy.org)

NEW YORK - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday signed into law one of the nation's toughest gun-control measures and the first to be enacted since the mass shooting last month at an elementary school in neighboring Connecticut. The bill passed the Democratic-led Assembly on Tuesday afternoon, a day after sprinting through the Republican-majority Senate. State lawmakers have been in session for just a matter of days. New York's legislation comes just a day before... (GunPolicy.org)

A little-known kibosh on government research into the public health effects of gun violence is expected to be lifted after President Barack Obama called Wednesday for renewed scientific inquiry - and funding - to address the problem. Obama issued a presidential memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other scientific agencies to research the causes and prevention of gun violence - and he called on Congress to provide $10 million to pay... (GunPolicy.org)