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Australian gun control is ‘childish’ and ‘insane’

An American Fox News anchor has described Australian gun control laws as “childish” and “insane”.

Tucker Carlson made the comments during a discussion on a mass shooting in Oregon last week, when nine people were killed and several others wounded at the Umpqua Community College campus in Roseburg.

“When there’s a driving accident, you don’t ban cars, you try to prevent drunk people from driving,” he said on Fox News’ Fox and Friends program.

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“The idea that taking guns away from the law-abiding will make us safer is insane and childish.”

Co-host Clayton Morris put forward the example of Australia and the effect of regulation.

“What people always throw out there, is look at Australia, they have no gun violence, they don’t have guns, their citizens aren’t allowed to have guns,” he said.

“But they have no freedom, you can go to prison for expressing unpopular views in Australia and people do,” Carlson threw back, without citing any examples.

Gun control has been hotly debated in the United States in recent months following a series of deaths and mass shootings, including at schools and churches.

So far in 2015, there were nearly 10,000 people shot to death in the US – much more than the 18 killed by terrorism in 2014.

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Following the Umpqua massacre, President Barack Obama condemned the idea that more guns could make the country safer.

“We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths,” he said in a statement.

“So the notion that gun laws don’t work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence.

“We know that other countries, in response to one mass shooting, have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings.  Friends of ours, allies of ours — Great Britain, Australia, countries like ours.  So we know there are ways to prevent it.”

But Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump argued the opposite and said the Umpqua victims would have been better off if “somebody in the room, anybody, had a gun”.

“These gun-free zones are a disaster because everybody is just a sitting duck,” he told Fox and Friends.

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