A 2006 view of gun control..

On Friday 28 of April this year ten years 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 from 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.