Twenty years after Australia enacted a gun ban, crime has continued to spike. In Melbourne alone, gun-related crime has doubled, and they’ve seen one shooting per week since January 2015.
So with violence on the rise and self-defense almost nonexistent, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is looking to enact further gun controls and refuses to lift the import ban on lever-action firearms with a magazine capacity larger than five cartridges. The “Adler ban”—named after the Adler A110 shotgun—was put into place last year and was scheduled to be lifted on Aug. 7 of this year.
These guns are currently classified as common Category A firearms, but Turnbull is determined to get them reclassified as Category C firearms, which would make them far more difficult to obtain. Independent Senator David Leyonhjelm, who has been critical of Turnbull’s reneging, wonders, “We had a deal, they didn’t stick to the deal, so how can I deal with them in the future?”
