'We know other countries in response to one mass shooting have been able to craft laws that almost eliminate mass shootings,' said US President Barack Obama earlier this month. 'Friends of ours, allies of ours, Great Britain, Australia — countries like ours. So we know there are ways to prevent it.'
The conservative US journal National Review disagrees. It says there are 350 million guns in circulation in the US, compared with fewer than half a million handguns circulating in Britain when its government banned them in 1997, and 650,000 guns that were 'easily confiscated' after the Australian ban in 1998. It asserts that if the US government tried to confiscate guns, it would bring in 100 million, leaving between 200 and 250 million 'on the streets'.
Its unspoken conclusion is that the genie is out of the bottle: that all Americans need guns now, because so many bad guys have them already. 'Contrary to the President's implications, Britain and Australia are not "countries like ours" when it comes to the right to keep and bear arms: they are completely, utterly, extraordinarily different.'
Thankfully, America is not like Australia. Some Australians are relieved that we are not. A sad President Obama, who likes and feels at home here, wishes we were.
Usually, it is the other way around. There is a natural envy and longing some feel in Britain, Australia and Canada — smaller, fellow English-speaking countries with broadly similar cultures and politics — for our confident, successful American cousin. Yet America is also capable of plumbing the worst depths.
We fellow anglophones are content to live safely around the middle. A few vote with their feet, in both directions. Ambitious young Australians take the yellow brick road to the US. Americans who hanker for a simpler, safer way of life do the reverse.
What is changing? Potentially, a lot. In the internet and mass media age, the seductive power of American models of public culture and political discourse grows.
So often, when I think about some new disturbing development in Australia, its roots are traceable to the US; whether it be Tea Party style politics, anti-immigrant nativism, know-nothing anti-science, earnest biblical fundamentalism, breakdown of respect for communities, disregard for the welfare of poor people or a militarised foreign policy that needs enemies.
And yet America at its best offers such shining examples to Australia: its high culture, science and technology; its advanced medical research, prolonging both life and quality; its seriousness of moral purpose; its diversity; its many aspects of grace, charm and civility.
What are we to do with this contradictory America? How do we get the best from our common language, traditions and values, while protecting ourselves against America's worst excesses?
Sadly, there is a powerful fatal attraction some Australians feel to the worst of America: the materialism, dumbed-down politics, exceptionalism, arrogant self-regard, claim to define and arbitrate international norms of conduct, indifference to the poor, and weird, lurking dystopianism.
And we are so easily culturally colonised. We do most of it to ourselves. There is no American plot to dominate Australia: stuff like the Trans Pacific Partnership, American military presence in Darwin and Australian soldiers making war on people in the Middle East happens without explicit urging.
Many Australians hope the recent leadership change in Canberra might represent a return to a more civilised, 'British' style of political discourse. On this reading, the parliamentary Liberal Party wisely rejected on behalf of the population at large Tony Abbott's sloganeering, Tea Party-style divisive politics in favour of something more diverse, more respectful of voters, more intelligent.
But it was a close-run thing. Abbott could so easily still be there. Imagine the aftermath of the Parramatta shooting if he were.
I watched Hillary Clinton this week talking about gun control to a dull, passive audience. She sounded like Abbott. She spoke in slogans. She spoke with great earnestness, as if she was actually urging Americans to reject guns.
But no: she was merely advocating what National Review mocks as 'pointless, around-the-edges reforms': universal background checks, limits on types of guns and ammunition that can be sold etc. Such low horizons, but this is how she sees the limits of possibility in the United States.
For us, we can still enjoy a safer gun control future, but we need to fight to defend it. The powerful American National Rifle Association has already targeted Australia, and public figures like Senator Leyonjhelm have been seduced.
In all fields, we need to be alert to the risky blandishments of the American cultural model. There is good reason for Australian content rules in our media: it would be so easy to succumb, to transmigrate our souls to New York and Hollywood.
We need to remain open to other cultural models and resist the deluge of American commercial mediocrity. At the same time, we must love and seek out America at its best.
Australia doesn't need one great and powerful friend any more. In today's multipolar and multicultural world, we need a diverse circle of mutually respectful friends. I don't believe Australians, especially young Australians, actually want to live in a permanent state of cultural cringe towards America. Yet I fear that many in our political class mistakenly assume the inevitability of this.
Tony Kevin is a former diplomat.