YES IT IS AND WE WON!

I was living in Tassie at the time of the PAM. The name "Bryant" still makes me shudder.

I read the book last year on Michael Bryant - hard to read at times

Born or Bred? Martin Bryant: The making of a mass murderer.

Australia had a spate of mass killings with semi-automatic weapons and Port Arthur was the incident that caused the Australian Government's gun buy back. Since all semi automatic and weapons were recalled, there hasn't been another (touch wood). Some people hated Little Johnny for it, but it was one of the best things he every did.

Yes before the gun buy back there seemed to be a gun massacre every few years, hoddle street , strathfield, Queen street , lots of people killed by mad lone gunmen, then after the gun back not a single massacre for 14 years, shows those american gun nuts who say getting rid of guns won't reduce the murder rate are wrong.

I was staying in Hobart just last weekend and visited Port Arthur. Scenically it is very pretty and historically it is very interesting and well worth a visit. But I did feel sad when I went to the memorial garden and walked through the empty shell of the cafe. It was hard to imagine the horror that took place there, especially in such pretty surroundings.

I know a Canadian lady who was there when the massacre took place - she had just had lunch at the cafe and had left there 5 - 10 minutes earlier. She heard the gunshots and screams and decided to get the hell out. She was very lucky.....

Maybe, maybe not, the so-called "buyback" had an impact. Of course, no-one counts all of those killed/injured in home invasions or other assaults which might have been deterred by a greater prevalence of arms among citizens.

Of course there have been hundreds of people shot in one off incidents, but not great numbers of people taken down with semi-automatic weapons in public. I remember when the gun laws were so slack in Queensland in the 1980's, a German tourist was able to hire a 4WD, grab a semi-automatic weapon as soon as he got off his flight and drive around the NT and North WA hunting humans for sport.

And these people are less important due to that?

They are no less important - I've never suggested they were. The point I was making is that shooting one person is bad enough, without people being able to access weapons that are capable of taking down a number of people very easily.

So it's ok that citizens are left unable to defend themselves?

The average person wouldn't know how to use a gun anyway (fortunately) and by the time they had been ambushed, it would probably be too late for them to defend themselves. It's far more important that guns be made less available to petty criminals than to to make them more readily available in my opinion. My father owned guns, but as a child and young adult I saw them occasionally when he came home from a trip, then I never knew where they were stored or where the ammunition was kept, but a lot of people are not as careful. I took my kids to a family station a couple of years ago and they went out to take lunch to my cousins who were doing the muster and there was a gun in the 4WD they went in. The lady of the house made her husband check the weapon several times to make sure it wasn't loaded before the kids went, but it still made me nervous.

It's such a shame that Bryant is still alive.

I read a book about him also. Strange character but it would seem that the warning signs were there all along - maybe only in hindsight though.

Taking away guns and trying to convince people that guns don't exist won't stop the violence .
If someone can't shoot you with a gun they will shoot you with a knife, if you take away the knife they will shoot you with a truncheon, and so on until people
are being shot in the streets with pillows and kittens.

I remember the massacre in Hungerford, in the UK, as I was living in Newbury (about 8 miles down the road) at the time. One my friends Dad's was the policeman that was shot dead by Michael Ryan.