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As president, Barack Obama claimed that mass shootings were a uniquely American issue, that these shootings don’t happen in other countries. That, of course, was total equine fecal matter. It happens in pretty much every nation on earth. We tend to think it’s uniquely American because so much of our attention is focused domestically.

But the senseless slaughter in Christchurch, New Zealand should have ended that thinking.

However, the flip side is made up of those who acknowledge that there have been mass shootings elsewhere, but also swear that Australia ended its mass shootings with its gun control laws.

I’ve noted before that they were wrong, of course.

Then again, a recent headline should illustrate that nicely all on its own. Four people are dead in an Australian rampage shooting.

A SHOOTER who gunned down four people during an hour-long pump-action shotgun rampage in Australia was wearing an electronic tag after being released from prison.

The 6ft 5ins gunman was dressed in hi-vis workman’s clothing when he allegedly fired “up to 20 shots” at Darwin’s Palms Motel just after 6pm local time today.

Cops are now reportedly investigating the man’s alleged links with local outlaw motorcycle gangs as they revealed he was out on parole after being freed from jail.

Speaking at a press conference, Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw confirmed he had been out on parole after being released in January.

Well…those laws certainly worked, now didn’t they?

The problem here isn’t that Australia has insufficient laws. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Guns are as tightly controlled in Australia as they are pretty much anywhere in the world.

No, the problem here is that a criminal was able to get a gun and commit a crime. This time, it was a motel rampage that resulted in four people being murdered.

Undoubtedly, some will try and argue that this supports gun control proposals being bandied about in Congress. They might claim the death toll could have been worse had the gunman had an AR-15.

That, too, is equine fecal matter.

The death toll “only” being four people is more of an artifact of where the rampage happened. A motel isn’t a school or a place of worship. It’s a place where people are spread out among various rooms. When the shooting starts, people can run. They can barricade themselves into their rooms. They can act in multiple ways to try and protect themselves.

Meanwhile, the killer has to go room to room and sort of hope that he can still find people after the first couple of rooms.

He could have been armed with a full-auto weapon, and it wouldn’t likely have made a bit of difference in the death toll. The type of weapon is meaningless in an attack of this sort.

What isn’t meaningless, however, is that for all of Australia’s much-vaunted gun control efforts, a convicted criminal out on parole and wearing an ankle monitor was able to get his hands on a shotgun and murder four people. It’s almost like gun control doesn’t work to keep guns out of the hands of bad people. Funny that.