GUNS don鈥檛 kill people, people do. Expect to hear this refrain as the US National Rifle Association locks horns with gun-control advocates in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre. While this atrocity was the work of a seriously disturbed person (see 鈥淲arning signs on the road to violence鈥�), also significant were the weapons used by Cho Seung-Hui: semi-automatic pistols capable of rapid fire. Mass killers plan their rampages, and most choose semi-automatic handguns holding 10 or more rounds per clip.
Such weapons were not widely available in the US before the mid-1980s, since when the incidence of mass shootings has taken off. This trend cannot prove cause-and-effect, yet studies underline the special threat posed by semi-automatic pistols. Police records from New Jersey, for instance, reveal that assaults with these weapons result in 15 per cent more wounded people than those involving revolvers (Injury Prevention, vol 9, p 151).
Events in Australia, meanwhile, illustrate the power of gun control. In 1996, after a gunman in Tasmania killed 35 people, semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns were banned. (Access to semi-automatic handguns was already controlled.) Since then, gun deaths have dropped, and most striking are the figures for mass shootings. In the 18 years prior to 1996, there were 13; in the past decade, none (Injury Prevention, vol 12, p 365).
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Such stringent controls are unlikely to be accepted in the US, where the right to bear arms has such wide support. But debate on the lessons from Virginia Tech should include a rethink on the extent of public access to semi-automatic weapons. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that fewer families would be mourning if Cho had been limited to a revolver with six shots per reload.
