IBA Global Insight – gun control
Wednesday 24 September 2025
Activist and Trump ally Charlie Kirk was fatally shot in September 2025 while speaking at a campus event in Utah. The killing of Kirk – which took place on the same day as a shooting at a high school in Colorado – illustrates the need for greater gun control in the US. Below, we’ve selected some of the best of Global Insight's continuing coverage of these and related issues.
Feature: America's gun gridlock
After a series of shootings drew national attention and prompted renewed calls for an assault weapon ban and other gun controls, then-US President Joe Biden asked in a speech, ‘Why in God’s name do we allow these weapons of war in our streets and at our schools?’ He was speaking a day after six people were killed with an AR-15-style rifle at a school in Tennessee.
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News analysis: US passes key gun safety law ‘but more has to be done’
The US Bipartisan Safer Communities Act introduced measures including a crackdown on interstate gun trafficking and straw purchasing, whereby an agent purchases a gun on behalf of another, as well as $250m in funding for community violence intervention programmes. Many hailed the legislation as ‘just the start’.
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Column: Cracking America’s gun control conundrum
Civilian guns kill ten times the number of Americans each year as the number of fatalities on the bloodiest day in United States history, on the Civil War battlefield at Antietam. By contrast, the European Union loses only one tenth as many lives to civilian guns each year as the combatants lost on the bloodiest day at the Battle of the Somme.
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Column: Gun control – New Zealand shows the way
The Pacific nation introduced swift and sweeping reforms of gun laws following the mass shooting in Christchurch in 2019, which killed 51 people and saw 50 others wounded. The country’s Parliament subsequently voted 119-1 to introduce a nationwide ban on semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles, a move that highlights the lack of action to tackle gun violence in the US.
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News analysis: Brazilian government tightens firearms regulation
In 2023, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced a new executive order that further tightened legislation around the number of firearms civilians are allowed. It also introduced additional regulations for hunters, target shooters and gun collectors, as well as new rules for the transportation of privately-owned firearms.
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