I'm not from the US so I only have an outsider's view of the culture, and FWIW I'm also not from Australia although I have emigrated here now.

Australia seemed to have a deeper relationship with guns previously, that stemmed partially out of necessity (farming etc), but there are also a lot of parallels with US culture here – the American dream, being a colony hundreds of years ago, etc, some focus on personal rights and freedoms, being a federation of states, etc. I don't think it was as deep a relationship as the US, but coming from the UK it seemed that Australia had a very different view than the UK.

Australia turned this all around. The culture shifted, and people realised that for the greater good it was something they needed to get past, and they did.

Maybe there's hope for US gun control yet, although the turning point for Australia was a (single) mass shooting. Maybe the US needs a much bigger turning point. I'm a little surprised that the Las Vegas shooting a while ago didn't provide that.

I live in the US. I don't hold much hope in gun control changing after recent years. Recent federal and state policy is trending towards less regulation and removal of the previous administrations regulations.

In 2024, estimated 16,576 deaths in the US from guns (excluding suicide, which is a very large addition on top of that), and 499 mass shootings.

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