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experience, with the exception that the essay “The Relationship Between Firearm Availability and Suicide” includes some evidence from Switzerland and Israel (RAND Corporation, 2018, Chapter Sixteen). RAND’s Gun Policy in America initiative has primarily focused on evidence from the U.S. However, there is also evidence that raises questions about whether, for at least firearm suicides, those changes can be attributed to the NFA or to other factors that influenced rates of these outcomes around the time the NFA was implemented.įollowing a 1996 mass shooting in which 35 people in Tasmania, Australia, were killed, Australian states and territories reached the National Firearms Agreement (NFA) to adopt “a consistent set of firearm management principles into their own legislation and regulation” (McPhedran, 2016, p.65). The strongest evidence is consistent with the claim that the NFA caused reductions in firearm suicides, mass shootings, and female homicide victimization. Studies examining the effect of removing so many weapons from the community have found that homicides, suicides, and mass shootings were less common after the NFA was implemented, although such incidents were declining prior to 1996. Summary: Australia’s 1996 National Firearms Agreement (NFA) banned several types of firearms and resulted in the government buying hundreds of thousands of the banned weapons from their owners.