One of Howard's "greatest legacies"

New research into the effect of John Howard's firearms restrictions after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 argues that it has saved more than 200 lives each year and hundreds of millions of dollars. It has also cut multiple death shootings in Australia from one every year or two to zero over the last thirteen years.

The restrictions banned certain weapons (semi-automatic rifles and certain shotguns) and involved the compulsory purchase of about 660,000 weapons. It was one of Howard's first major initiatives after being elected and was very divisive at the time. The new research seems to vindicate his position.

I have always thought it was a good move and coming as it did on the cusp of my eligibility to begin voting, it gave me a positive impression of Howard.

No divine guarantees

There is no guarantee that the world we live in will 'tolerate' us indefinitely if we prove ourselves unable to live within its constraints. Is this – as some would claim – a failure to trust God, who has promised faithfulness to what he has made? I think that to suggest that God might intervene to protect us from the corporate folly of our practices is as unchristian and unbiblical as to suggest that he protects us from the results of our individual folly or sin. This is not a creation in which there are no real risks; our faith has always held that the inexhaustible love of God cannot compel justice or virtue; we are capable of doing immeasurable damage to ourselves as individuals, and it seems clear that we have the same terrible freedom as a human race. God's faithfulness stands, assuring us that even in the most appalling disaster love will not let us go; but it will not be a safety net that guarantees a happy ending in this world. Any religious language that implies this is making a nonsense of the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament and the urgency of the preaching of Jesus.

- Rowan Williams, "Renewing the Face of the Earth:
Human Responsibility and the Environment"

This claim is central to my project. That we can destroy ourselves. Suicide is possible. Sadly, and all too frequently, as individuals. Perhaps not so easily as a race (though I wouldn't rule it out). But certainly as a society. There is no divine guarantee of civilisational continuity. And so there is no short-circuiting the debate over whether this might not in fact be our present trajectory through an appeal to God's sovereignty.