More than 50,000 firearms are to be destroyed after being handed in under a three-month national amnesty in Australia.<br /><br />They included a rocket launcher, semi-automatic guns as well as weapons from both World Wars and even the 19th century. Almost half were surrendered in New South Wales.<br /><br />Australia introduced tough gun ownership laws over 20 years ago, banning all semi-automatic rifles and semi-automatic shotguns. It followed a mass shooting in Tasmania in 1996, when a lone gunman killed 35 people in Port Arthur. <br /><br />The Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says the restrictions limit the chances of a Las Vegas-style massacre. <br /><br />Surveying some of the weapons recently recovered, he added that the amnesty – which ended on Friday – had also helped keep people safe.<br /><br />“Every single one of those 51,000 guns could be used, could have been used in a crime where Australians could be killed. Now they can’t. They’ve been collected and will now be destroyed,” the prime minister said.<br /><br />It’s estimated that the weapons handed in represent about a fifth of all illegal guns – thought to number over a quarter of a million – still unaccounted for in the country. <br /><br />A national review of gun control measures found that all Australian states were failing to apply restrictions, undermining the strict national laws.<br />
