A Turnbull government MP has used parliament to lambast the United States for allowing its citizens to use guns to inflict more damage than all of its enemies combined.
Liberal backbencher John Alexander, a former tennis professional who lived and worked in the country for several years and owned houses in Atlanta, said the US was top of Australia's "best friends list" and its staunchest ally.
It has been the world's policeman and the greatest force for peace wherever peace is threatened, he told the lower house on Monday.
"It is therefore difficult to reconcile that the US is empowering its own people to do to themselves greater destruction of human life than the combined forces of all enemies over the past 150 years," Mr Alexander said.
"Until you control gun ownership, you are your own worst enemy."
Labor frontbencher Ed Husic also used the motion on Australia's relationship with the US to criticise President Donald Trump's travel ban.
The Muslim MP, who has travelled to America every year since 2005, said it was wrong to shut out people on the basis of their faith.
He told MPs he can't see himself returning to visit while people of his faith are being taken out of a line because of their religion.
"What America is doing to itself and the way that its behaving is disappointing to so many of its friends," Mr Husic said.
"America, I think the world of you. But I, and people like me, cannot be shamed by you. This is not the promise of the America we love."
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