After a loner armed with assault weapons turned a scenic resort into a mass of mangled bodies and thrashing injured in 1996, Australia took quick and decisive action. Twelve days later, the government pushed through a tough ban on semiautomatic rifles.

Australia, which had been bloodied by 13 mass shootings in the 15 years that preceded the slaughter in Port Arthur, Tasmania, hasn’t seen one since.

Gun control proponents say the Australian experience, and more modest successes in other nations that enacted strict gun controls after suffering mass shootings, could serve as examples to U.S. lawmakers dealing with the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre.

“Countries that have managed to thwart this kind of gun violence have thrown up multiple barriers,” said Alun Howard, policy officer for the International Action Network on Small Arms, a London-based group campaigning to end the abuse of light weapons.

“Of course, no system is perfect. Somebody may slip through multiple barriers,” he said. “But if you place several barriers in the path of unsuitable gun owners, you have more chances of preventing them from committing violent acts.”

In Washington, House Democratic leaders said they are working with the National Rifle Association to strengthen laws aimed at keeping mentally ill people from buying guns. The NRA, however, declined to comment on whether it thinks the tougher approach taken by other countries would work in the U.S.

Britain cracked down after gun enthusiast Michael Ryan massacred 16 people and wounded 13 others in 1987 in the rural English town of Hungerford. The slaughter led to a ban on semiautomatics like Ryan’s Kalashnikov rifle.

In 1998, two years after suicide gunman Thomas Hamilton used four legally owned handguns to slay 16 children and a teacher at a kindergarten in Dunblane, Scotland, Britain extended the ban to handguns.

Today, under laws that make it illegal for private citizens to own anything larger than a .22-caliber and subject them to thorough background checks, Hamilton would have a difficult time obtaining the guns he used in Dunblane: two .357-caliber Smith & Wesson revolvers and a pair of 9 mm Browning pistols.

“I feel very safe,” said Marion Collins, a college lecturer in Edinburgh. “Virginia Tech happened because guns are so accessible in America. I don’t understand why they continue to allow this situation.”

Britain has one of the world’s lowest gun homicide rates – 0.04 slayings per 100,000 people, according to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey for 2004. That puts Britain on par with Japan, where the rate is 0.03 per 100,000.

By contrast, the United States has a rate roughly 100 times higher: 3.42 gun murders per 100,000 people, the survey said.