By The Denver Post Editorial Board
10/19/2015

The United States isn’t Australia and the likelihood that it will embark in the foreseeable future (or ever?) on a massive mandatory gun buyback scheme in imitation of Australia is essentially zero.

So it’s unfortunate that Hillary Clinton last week said that such a gun buyback plan “would be worth considering … on the national level if that could be arranged.”

Not only isn’t such a buyback in the cards, even raising its specter could easily harden opposition to legitimate gun-control measures (which she also supports). Such talk stokes the fear of gun owners who believe the ultimate goal of campaigns for modest, appropriate regulations is to confiscate firearms.

Australia has only 24 million people and they have never owned anywhere near as many guns as Americans do. But the biggest difference between the two nations when it comes to guns is one that John Howard, the prime minister at the time of the buyback in the 1990s, readily acknowledged in a New York Times column he wrote after Sandy Hook.

Australia, he wrote, “does not have a Bill of Rights, so our legislatures have more say than America’s over many issues of individual rights, and our courts have less control. Also, we have no constitutional right to bear arms.”

More: Hillary Clinton’s Suggestion of a Gun Buyback Is a Step Back