This article does not reflect the situation accurately.

Australia's over the top knee jerk action in the 90s is not a gold standard for gun control.

Almost immediately a black market in gun trade started up via importation (or worse theft) - thus since modern hand guns were not very common amongst the criminal elements up my was (North Qld - Australia) - they soon were - also since not a great proportion of the population sought to get a gun licence, there was a shift to where the criminal element though having an illegal gun (pistol) would give them an upper hand - this IMO soon changed though after a few years, since having such when they were finally busted by the police was probably going to be jumped on harder than any other petty crime they might have endeavoured in.

What mattered most was giving the police the power to remove guns from and prosecute repeat mishandling tools. Scarring the wannabe crime lord / drug king / big time tough guy for what happened in the courts to the few unfortunate examples who mishandled a gun in public. Locking up any loose guns (this is somewhat painful if one needs quick access to a gun but ... it means to stop angry drunks and malignant narcissists having a temper tantrum doing something impulsive.) Controlling the sale of ammunition so that the criminal element has difficulty using any guns they do happen to have.

I miss the weekend gun culture that used to exist in my locale - but it's a different world now - short on common sense.

Similar in Canada, we had the worlds highest gun ownership per capita, and one of the very lowest gun crime rates, every kid was instructed in proper gun handling, and guns were in no way fetishised or seen as anything other than tools with a higher level of responsibility attached. I would carry my rifle down the hill to the hardware store and pass it up to the gun guy, and say " I need bullets for this", and walk out with my gun and bullets to go hunt squirles for the tails, that I sold to fly fisherman to make lures, so I could have some spending money. We were violent little bastards as well, but no one ever thought of bringing a gun to a fist fight, ever, the concept introduced was that a gun was a tool, or a theoretical weapon of war. And war is what we have now, a fight to retake a sense of personal responsibility, and escape an ever more intrusive state run beurocracy. My personal observation is that the mucker extreamists are acting out a sentiment that is felt by a much wider segment of the population, and for every one of the ones shooting at people, there are 200 with a gun a grab bag, a camp and 1000lbs of vacume packed dehydrated food, but the sentiment is different, as there are 2 guitars, and a canoo for every gun.