One of the lead authors of the study, Professor Simon Chapman, says there are clear lessons for other countries in the Australian experience.
Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study points out there have been no mass killings in Australia in the two decades since major changes were introduced to gun ownership laws.
It was in 1996, after 35 people were killed and more than 20 wounded at Port Arthur in Tasmania by a gunman using a semi-automatic weapon, that then-Prime Minister John Howard brought in stricter national gun control legislation.
Rapid-fire long-arm sales were banned and many such weapons already in private ownership were surrendered or seized, and destroyed.
An estimated one million firearms were handed in to authorities under a voluntary gun buyback.
University of Sydney Emeritus Professor Simon Chapman says the effect has been profound.
"When the National Firearms Agreement was signed by all Australian governments in 1996 we'd had 13 massacres in the 18 years before that. 20 years on we haven't had a single massacre. So, that's the standout finding: that the National Firearms Agreement, in outlawing semi-automatic and rapid-fire pump-action shotguns, has reduced - in fact so far, eliminated - massacres of that sort."
Professor Chapman says even before Port Arthur more than 90 per cent of the population supported stricter gun control laws.
"We saw that in a referendum, which was actually held in North Sydney Council just before the Port Arthur massacre, where 93 per cent of citizens said they wanted governments to toughen gun laws. I think if they'd been asked after the Port Arthur massacre they probably would have been nearer to 100 per cent wanting that. So, there was massive support around the community and politicians read that and introduced the radical reforms that they did."
Professor Chapman says Australia is a good example to other countries struggling with mass casualty killings.
In the United States, a recent shooting resulting in the death of 49 people in a nightclub in Orlando again revived the push from Democrats in the Republican-dominated Congress to take action on gun control.
Democrats stepped up their protest with a mass sit-in in the House of Representatives.
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, like president Barack Obama, sees Australia as a good example.
"They believed, and I think the evidence supports them, that by offering to buy back those guns they were able to curtail supply and to set a different standard for gun purchases in the future."
But just this week the US Senate rejected four gun bills aimed at keeping firearms away from people with suspected tied to militants.
Professor Chapman says his study's findings should also send a message to those seeking to weaken Australia's gun controls.
"There are a small number of politicians in state and federal politics whose very existence seems to be predicated on trying to do just that. We have a Shooters Party in New South Wales, for example, and every day they are trying to dream up ways to water down the effect of the gun laws. I think that the community ought to be awake to that and they ought to contact their local politicians every now and then and remind them that they are very supportive of what we've been able to achieve in Australia with tough gun laws and they don't want to see any more backsliding."
