[quote]A US gun lobbyist has said Australia is not on the same planet as the US when dismissing the success of Australian gun control laws. Head of the Virginia Citizens Defence League Phillip Van Cleave made the comments during an interview with correspondent John Oliver that aired on the Daily Showlast Friday. After Mr Van Cleave said that it was impossible for gun control to ever work Oliver suggested the example of Australia disproved his point — prompting a bizarre answer from the firearms advocate. "It's not the United States. It's some other planet: different people, different everything ... [b]but in the real world, with human beings, it's not going to work and gun control isn't going to work. "[/b] When Oliver told him that Australia had not had a single shooting massacre since gun laws were reformed in 1996 the lobbyist first dismissed the evidence as a "statistical anomaly" before saying that Australia experienced very few mass shootings anyway. Oliver then showed him footage of the implementor of Australia's gun laws, former prime minister John Howard, saying that the nation suffered 13 massacres in the 18 years before guns laws were reformed but had not seen a single one since 1996. Mr Van Cleave then backed himself into a corner by saying "unless you can get rid of 100 percent of crime, it's not worth doing anything at all." When Oliver pushed him on it the gun advocate changed his analogy to swimming pools. "There are more drownings in backyards where they have swimming pools," he said. "If they don't have a pool, there are no drownings in backyards, okay? So if the US has a very high number of guns, therefore, there's going to be more chances for somebody to be killed with a gun." "That’s my point," Oliver replied. The episode segment was the first of three that Oliver has filmed while on assignment in Australia, and has since been widely shared online.[/quote] http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/261-280/tandi269/view%20paper.html Gun violence did noticeably decline in Australia, as information.