> But access to the firearms is the civil right you were arguing about.
Right. So when a gun ban causes gang members to kill each other with knives instead, you've taken away everyone's civil rights without actually preventing any deaths. Which is why the only intellectually honest thing to do is to look at all homicides.
> Either way, as a percentage, homicides in Australia went down after the gun buyback, more than in the US, either by firearm or not.
The comparison is highly sensitive to the choice of begin/end date. For example, if you look at the 5-year impact of Australia's gun buyback (1997-2002), the U.S. rate went down about 18% while the Australia rate actually went up 10%.
Literally the only thing that the US did better in is "more, absolute" reduction in homicide (firearm and other).
Your initial precedent, that gun control made things relatively -worse- in Australia is only borne out by the most contorted perspective on numbers, and not anything relative or comparable between the two.