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Ten years of suicide data after John Howard’s decision to ban and then buy back 600,000 semi-automatic rifles and shotguns has had a stunning effect.

The buyback cut firearm suicides by 74 per cent, saving 200 lives a year, according to research to be published in The American Law and Economics Review.

Christine Neill, now with Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, said she found the research result so surprising she tried to redo her calculations on the off chance the total could have been smaller.

Two of the independent rural MPs now holding the balance of power in Parliament opposed the plan.

At the time the Queensland MP Bob Katter said Australia had “got to the ludicrous point of completely disarming the nation” and said ”everywhere they ban guns the death rates from guns go up”.