On Friday 28 of this month ten years will have passed since 35 people died and 19 people were wounded when Martin Bryant used a military-style rifle to shoot people attending the historic Port Arthur prison centre in Tasmania. Hundreds of other Australians had died in previous gun massacres; particularly in 1987 when a total of 32 died in six gun massacres – indeed, next year will mark the 20th anniversary of that worst year for gun masacres in Australia’s history; the year of Melbourne’s Hoddle Street and Queen Street gun massacres, the year that four teenage women were shot dead with a legally owned shotgun in the Sydney suburb of Pymble. But numbers are just numbers so let’s briefly remind ourselves what it means to be a gun victim.
Ten years ago single mother Carolyn Loughton from Ferntree Gully in Victoria was dining with her 15 year old daughter Sarah at Port Arthur’s Broad Arrow cafe when Bryant started shooting. The pair tried to escape form the cafe through a door, but it was locked. As Bryant kept killing people Carolyn threw herself over her daughter in a desperate bid to save her; but she failed and in turn received a terrible shoulder wound herself. Carolyn had to seek financial help to ensure that Sarah’s grave had a headstone. Her bullet wound required a decade of expensive medical treatment which left Carolyn poor, jobless and heartbroken. And can anyone forget the misery of Walter Mikac whose wife and two daughters were shot dead by Bryant.
Can you imagine a man who will hunt down a three year old and a six year old girl and fire a high powered bullet at close range into each of their bodies? Well, we should never forget that that is exactly what one gun owner did. Was this unique? Of course not; almost exactly three months previously in the Queensland suburb of Hillcrest 32 year old gun enthusiast Peter May shot dead his own six year old and eleven year old daughters, once again at close range with a high powered rifle. Then there was the 1990 case of Perth gun enthusiast Don Clemensha who shot dead his daughters, 14 year old Catherina and 15 year old Deanna. This list of gun loving youngish men shooting younger women seems endless.
Normal (meaning thoughtful and concerned with humanity) people would evaluate all this gun killing with the fact that guns seem to be designed to kill and that they are fundamentally different to say tennis racquets or cricket bats. The gun lobby tell us otherwise. They say that guns are sporting implements and that shooters should not be picked-on for a few bad-eggs. This argument may convince some if there were only one or two bad-eggs every century but sadly there are far too many selfish, callous, heartless, unstable and opportunist gun owners around for the bad-egg theory to hold water.
The Port Arthur gun massacre finally forced Australian politicians to realise that the gun control movement was right, that shooters could not adequately control themselves and that the gun lobby had fooled them for decades with their bad-egg theory.
The improved gun laws which were enacted between 1988 and 1998 have surely been responsible for the fact that the number of gun deaths per year have been remarkably lowered. Prior to 1988 about 700 Australians died each year from gun wounds. In the mid 2000′s that figure has been at least halved. Thus now each year about 400 fewer Australians die from guns. The gun lobby does not tell you this but it does mean that those who died at Port Arthur did not die in vain.
There are, however, at least two terrible weaknesses in the 1997 National Agreement on Gun Laws which introduced the improved gun controls which exist throughout Australia today. Handgun laws were not strenghtened and the training and credentialisation of long gun shooters was not improved. The 2002 Monash University handgun shooting partially improved the the handgun laws but the Australian public has still to endure the sheer nonsense of long gun safety training which is in the hands of gun clubs and is childishly easy to pass. Statistics given by the Victorian police show that for every 1000 people who take the one hour safety training program and then sit the Shooters Licence test 999 pass. This is not a test, it’s a give-away.
If it’s that easy to get a Shooters Licence then it’s exactly that easy to legally own a gun. The safety training does not include even three hours study of the damage that guns have caused to the Australian people; and the lessons thereof. It does not include a study of the nature of animal life despite the fact that gratuitous hunting is permissable.We call on all Australian parliamentarians to:
1. Vastly extend the length of the safety training course and raise the standard of exam testing for those who apply for a Shooters Licence. Place the courses into the hands of independent TAFE Colleges and call for at least limited accountability.
2. Ban all handguns except those required for the Commonwealth and Olympic Games handgun shooting competitions.
3. To help in the fight against illegal guns disassociate the recreation or sport of shooting from the trade in guns. Only allow privately owned guns to be purchased through specially prepared police stations working with a special division of the National Crime Commission, perhaps called the Gun Control Authority.
We in Gun Control Australia conclude with a haunting image experienced by several of us who decided to visit Port Arthur victim Carolyn Loughton’s Ferntree Gully home two months after the death of her 15 year old daughter, Sarah.
It was a weekday in early afternoon. Hundreds of newish but modest homes greeted our eyes. We stood, too scared to open the gate – hoping for someone to pass-by so that we could make a discreet enquiry. Nobody could be seen – it was as though nothingness had enveloped the entire housing estate. We look, wait another ten minutes then knock on the door, but it’s obvious no one has lived in this house for months. Everything is in perfect order with perfect quietness. As we depart we turn to look for the last time at the white picket fence which guards the house. On every one of a hundred pickets there is a brave bunch of flowers or a teddy bear with a faded message from one of Sarah’s school mates.Then a faint breeze comes up and ever so softly the dead flowers rustle.