In the aftermath, the center-right government acted quickly to enact strong new gun laws, despite a pro-gun culture in Australia that was similar to what exists in the U.S. today. “At the time, there was intense opposition,” says Stanford law professor and economist John Donohue. “In fact, when the Prime Minister made the announcement [about the new laws], he had to wear a bulletproof vest.” At one protest, an effigy of the deputy prime minister was “lynched.”

“The Australian experience is actually astonishing,” says Donohue. “I did spend quite a bit of time looking at it. On a per capita basis, Australia actually had a much higher mass shooting problem than the U.S. prior to 1996. So they went from having a worse problem to essentially having no problem.”

The American NRA had been supporting Australian groups opposing gun control laws, but there wasn’t a strong gun control lobby within the country. “There was no one who had a powerful economic interest to push for more guns everywhere,” Donohue says. “That meant that you didn’t get all of this rhetoric being constantly blasted out to the public that you see in the U.S., and you didn’t get the gun interests funding research that suggested guns are good.” On the other side, experts like public health researchers were vocal in calling for more gun control.

In the U.S., the constitutional amendment (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the , shall not be infringed”) was originally understood to be talking only about militias—something that the country’s founders thought was necessary to be able to fight off a standing army. In 2008, the Supreme Court interpreted it differently, arguing that it’s talking about an individual right to bear arms at home. That decision was political, says Donohue.

“It’s all about the politics, who’s on the Supreme Court, and who funds the politicians who appoint the people on the Supreme Court,” he says. “It was a 4-5 decision. If George W. Bush had lost the election in 2000, it would have gone the other way. . . . And if Hillary Clinton had won the election instead of Trump, that decision might have even been overturned.”

The majority of Americans support increasing gun control—in one 2015 survey, even 72% of NRA members said they supported universal background checks. But it will take more public pressure to outweigh interest groups like the NRA, Donohue says. And after tragic shootings, over and over, that still hasn’t happened. “I still think that at some point, there will be a reaction,” he says. “I don’t think we’re there yet. But at some point, one of these mass shooters is going to get up in a stadium and maybe kill 100, 200, or more. And then I think you might get to an Australian point where people say, you know, enough is enough.”