Argumentative Essay: The Issue Of The Port Arthur Massacre In Australia

Nineteen year ago, on Sunday the 28th of April 1966, the largest gun massacre by a civilian - anywhere in the world - occurred on home soil, at the popular historic tourist site- Port Arthur, Tasmania. During the peak time lunch hour at Broad Arrow Café a lone figure entered, ordered and ate a big lunch, reached into his bag and withdrew two military-style semi-automatic rifles and started indiscriminately shooting, at staff and tourists. The range of guns used by the Port Arthur murderer- Martin Bryant, were designed for killing large numbers of people, and they delivered: within the first 15 seconds 17 shots had been fired, by the end of the rampage 35 people lay dead and 24 wounded. To this day the Port Arthur massacre remains one of the

deadliest shootings worldwide committed by a single person.
Videos/pictures of the killing spree and Martin Bryant and the massacre (throughout paragraph 2)
Martin Bryant pleaded guilty to his crimes and was given 35 life sentences, with 1035 years of non-parole period, insuring the impossibility of parole for this man. To this day the Port Arthur massacre remains one of the deadliest shootings worldwide committed by a single person.
Scene 1:
Judge- How do you plead Mr Bryant?
Martin (unseen) – guilty
Judge- guilty as charged, I sentence the defendant to life sentences times 35
Australia had experienced minor shooting prior to the Port Arthur case but this once seemed to shake the nation to its core, Australians simultaneously reacted to the event with widespread shock, anger and horror, and the political effects were significant and long-lasting. Adding to the horror was the fact that the perpetrator said he bought his firearms from a gun dealer without holding the required firearms license. Before the Port Arthur tragedy there was no uniform national firearms legislation in Australia, and each of the States and Territories were in control of their own legislative schemes to regulate the ownership and use of firearms, however even this wasn’t strictly enforced. State gun laws varied widely. In New South Wales, handguns were effectively banned after World War II but the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games sparked a new interest in the sport of pistol shooting and laws were changed to allow the sport to develop. Rifles and shotguns were less restricted than handguns. Western Australia and the Northern Territory had severe restrictions even on sporting rifles and shotguns, but in Queensland and Tasmania they could be bought without restrictions. Fully automatic arms were banned on the Australian mainland from the 1930s, but remained legal in Tasmania until 1996. At the time, it was estimated that civilians owns about 3.5 million firearms in Australia.
After the massacre, recognising the strength of public opinion, prime-minister John Howard began pushing for law reform and greater gun control so the recently elected Coalition federal government decided to work towards engaging the states and territories to enact identical gun laws. This move was an attempt to ensure there would never again be another event like the Port Arthur massacre in Australia.
The government moved rapidly in the wake of the Port Arthur shooting, and within four weeks agreed on a new set of gun control policies for adoption by the federal government and the eight states and territories of Australia.

Despite the overwhelming impact of the Port Arthur killings, some States – particularly Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania – remained hesitant about a crackdown on gun laws. However after the poll rates showed that 85% of Australians were in favour of gun laws, Prime Minister John Howard made the move to set in stone the new nationwide gun reform. Proposals included: a ban on semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns including the importation, ownership, sale, possession, manufacture or use, comprehensive firearm registration and gun owner licensee, a requirement that all gun licence applicants prove a “genuine reason” for owning a firearm (Self-defence did not count, secure firearm storage and the insurance of the following of the uniform national gun laws. A firearm “buyback” scheme was initiated, which allowed people to surrender the newly banned weapons, without any legal consequences and through this people would receive payment funded by a Medicare levy as compensation. The buyback purchased and destroyed nearly 1 million firearms, most of them alike the guns used in the massacre,

semi-automatic.
In the years after the Port Arthur massacre, the risk of dying by gunshot in Australia fell by more than 50% -- and stayed there. A 2012 study by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University also found the buyback led to a drop in firearm suicide rates of almost 80% in the following decade. In the 19 years since the announcement of legislation specifically designed to reduce gun massacres, Australia has seen no mass shootings. As Howard wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times in 2013, "Today, there is a wide consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate, but also the suicide rate."