Vice President Kamala Harris lauded the restrictive gun laws in Australia, which repurchased and destroyed large shares of the nation’s firearm stocks, during a Thursday diplomatic event.

Harris paused during a state luncheon with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to mourn over a mass shooting in Maine; she used the massacre, in which the shooter killed eighteen people and injured thirteen others, to praise the gun control regime in Australia.

“In our country today, the leading cause of death of American children is gun violence. Gun violence has terrorized and traumatized so many of our communities in this country,” she said. “Let us be clear, it does not have to be this way, as our friends in Australia have demonstrated.”

Australia enacted a National Firearms Agreement following a shooting in 1996, thereby initiating gun buyback and voluntary surrender programs that confiscated as much as one-third of the national stock. One memo on the website of the Australian Parliament noted that there exists “no legal right to gun ownership” in contrast to “the position of the United States” on gun rights, as well as contrasted the more relaxed licensing laws in New Zealand and Canada.

“Owning and using a firearm is limited in Australia to people who have a genuine reason and self-protection does not constitute a genuine reason to possess, own or use a firearm,” the memo continues. “The Australian system requires both the licensing of individual shooters and the registration of each firearm.”

Harris meanwhile leads the newly established White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which seeks to “identify new executive actions we can take within our legal authority to reduce gun violence,” according to a speech delivered by President Joe Biden last month.

Biden has placed gun control at the center of his agenda and has taken several actions to regulate firearms. After the mass shooting last year in Uvalde, Texas, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which added extended background checks for adults under twenty years old, clarified firearms license requirements, and funded state red flag laws.

Biden likewise signed an executive order this year directing administration officials to move the nation “as close to universal background checks as possible without additional legislation,” as well as “increase appropriate use” of red flag orders and “safe storage of firearms.” He released a statement on the Fourth of July calling the nation to “once again ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines” following a lapsed prohibition initially enacted with his help in 1994.