This Australian comedian nails why American gun control is such a failure
Jim Jeffries/YouTube
Now Jim Jefferies can throw his hat into the ring of comedians who find the profound truth in jest.
In his latest Netflix stand-up special, "BARE," Jefferies tackles the issue of gun violence in the US - a poignant rant in the wake of two Virginia reporters who got shot on-air on the morning of Wednesday, August 26.
"In America you have the Sandy Hook massacre," Jefferies muses, "where tiny little children died, and your government went 'Maybe we'll get rid of the big guns?' And 50 percent of you went, 'F--- you, don't take my guns!'"
In Jefferies' home country of Australia, that story played out way differently when the largest massacre in the nation's history occurred in 1996.
"The Australian government went: "That's it! No more guns!" And we all went, 'Yeah, all right then, that seems fair enough, really.'"
That discrepancy in outrage could end up making all the difference.
Just two weeks after Australia's massacre, Prime Minister John Howard assembled his cabinet to pass gun control legislation. On May 10, 1996, the legislation passed - the import of automatic and semiautomatic guns was now illegal.
In addition, between October 1996 and September 1997, more than 700,000 guns were bought back by the government and promptly destroyed.
It was the single-largest destruction of civilian firearms of any country between 1996 and 2005. An estimated $500 million was paid back to former gun owners.
America may have 39 million more guns to deal with, but we also have many more shootings. Some measure of gun control should probably seem, as Jefferies puts it, "fair enough, really."
You can watch the rest of Jefferies' bit below:
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