US has it wrong on gun laws: Tim Fischer

AUSTRALIA has got it right on its gun laws and the US is badly wrong, former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer says.

FORMER deputy prime minister Tim Fischer says the latest mass shooting in the US shows that Australia has got its firearms policy right and the US has got it badly wrong.

Mr Fischer, deputy prime minister under John Howard at the time of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, says the decision then to introduce tough national gun laws had stood the test of time.

"There has not been one gun massacre in Australia since 1996," he told AAP shortly after returning from the US where he was attending conferences on railways in Philadelphia and Dallas.

"In the US every day around 80 people die from guns. There is a 15 times greater chance of being shot dead in the USA per million people than here in Australia."

In the latest attack in the US, a black-clad gunman killed at least four people in a shooting rampage in California before police shot him dead.

Mr Fischer said that gunman was armed with an assault weapon of the type banned in Australia in the 1996 gun law reforms.