Australia also had reduced number of gun-unrelated deaths. In fact the percent reduction in those cases was larger than the reduction of gun deaths.

So the stricter gun laws can't be considered the sole explanation for fewer deaths.

There's been a world-wide reduction in crime since the 1970s. It's very possible to isolate the impact of Australia's gun laws by comparing to other similar countries that didn't implement a major gun ban at the time.

Has that been done? I think it would be quite hard to provide any meaningful comparison between countries, because the results would be clouded by many other factors that can influence them.

I don't have a horse in this race, but this argument seems to do double-duty:

> "Violent crime without firearms went down, maybe it was just people getting less violent."

> "Violent crime without firearms went up, people are going to be violent with or without guns."