Malcolm Turnbull: PM dodges US gun control debate in Washington press conference

Malcolm Turnbull has avoided weighing into the US gun control debate, saying Australia had a “completely different” history and laws.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull speaks during a news conference with President Donald Trump. Picture: AP

Malcolm Turnbull has avoided weighing into the gun control debate in the United States after his first Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump, saying Australia had a “completely different” history and laws.

Speaking at a joint press conference with the US President in the East Room of the White House, the Prime Minister said Australia would not provide policy or political advice on gun control in the wake of last week’s Florida school shooting that left 17 people dead.

Asked by an American journalist if he discussed Australia’s gun laws with Mr Trump, including the buyback program introduced by John Howard after the Port Arthur massacre, or urged him to “reconsider” his latest response to mass shootings, Mr Turnbull said: “It’s a

completely different context historically, legally and so forth. We are very satisfied with our laws, we maintain them, they’re there, they’re well known, we refer to them, but we certainly don’t presume to provide policy or political advice on that matter here.

READ MORE: Trump supports joint US-Australia Navy exercises

“You have an amendment to the Constitution which deals with gun ownership, you have a very, very different history. We’ll focus on our own political arguments and debates.”

Mr Trump said Australia and the US were “very different countries with very different sets of problems” but insisted his administration was “well on the way to solving” gun massacres.

Mr Howard introduced gun laws in 1996 that greatly restricted a person’s access to a gun unless they needed it for work and his government bought back 700,000 guns across the country.

The US President meanwhile is advocating comprehensive background checks with a focus on mental health, arming some teachers with concealed guns, lifting the age a person can buy certain rifles from 18 to 21, and banning “bump stock” devices that allow semi-automatic

weapons to fire as rapidly as an automatic weapon.

Mr Trump said gun-free zones like schools were appealing to “very sick” people like the Florida gunman and it was important to have offensive as well as defensive capability.

American students needed to be protected by people who “loved” them, he said, and not armed security guards like the one at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who did not enter the building during the shooting.

“When you have somebody with a gun staring you down it’s going to be a lot different for them to walk into those schools,” he said.

“We need people that can take care of our children. We’re not going to let this happen again ... They’re basically cowards … If they know bad things happen to them once they get into that school by people who love the children – see the security guard (in Florida) doesn’t know

the children, doesn’t love the children, this man standing outside of the school the other day doesn’t love the children, probably doesn’t know the children. The teachers love the children, they love their pupils, they love their students.”