> Even Australia, the poster child for instituting draconian restrictions

It has certainly always been painted that way, particularly in US media driven by NRA framings.

An alternative description might be that Australia simply (almost but not quite) made gun regulation uniform across all states and territories.

At the time of the Port Arthur massacre all the states with larger populations had gun regulation, much like they had car and truck regulations - paperwork on ownership, licencing, etc.

Two relatively low population states, Queensland and Tasmania, had no regulation and territories had zero to mixed regulation.

Following a then world record lone shooter event in Tasmania the public pretty much overwhelmingly supported uniform regulation across the country- which meant imposing much the same laws as were then current in Western Australia on the alternative reality of Queensland.

Much of the buy back went towards buying back old guns and unused extra just in case guns that owners decided weren't actually worth formally licencing and paying annual fees (like a car rego) for.

The result of near uniform gun regulation across the country, all sales tracked, etc. was a decrease in gun incidents and two decades of near zero mass shooting events.