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Lee’s note: This is a two-part series that aims to educate Americans about the realities of Australia’s gun control experiment. It was written for us by  Justin Luke, a self-described “family man” based in suburban Sydney.
Justin is a passionate advocate of the shooting sports and heritage, and spends as much time as possible exploring, running, climbing and hunting all over the East Coast of Australia.
We’re privileged to have him on board, because we can learn a lot from what happened to gun owners Down Under.
Here’s a link to Part II.

Gun Control: The Australian Experience

Part 1 – Origins

Firearms arrived in Australia with the British colonists in 1788. Australia was originally closed to free settlers, and operated exclusively as a giant, open air British prison. Therefore, most of these were military arms used by the British Army and Navy to maintain law & order in the convict colony. Naturally, the government officers and employees brought their own firearms with them for sport, farming and protection. Pigs, rabbits, goats, dogs and cats were introduced and rapidly became feral, destroying many native species, ground drainage and farmer’s crops.
With increasing private immigration of free settlers in the 1850s (particularly as gold was discovered), the number of firearms increasedrapidly. Similar to the westward expansion in America, these firearms were simply regarded as another tool in the farmer’s tool box and were
used accordingly. Children were trained in their safe use, they put food on the table and hunted pests away from crops and livestock. Occasionally, bandits called “Bushrangers” would use firearms in crime, but levels of crime were generally low and consistent with other similar countries.
Australia has about the same land size as the continental US but only 22 million people. Most of these live in 4 cities around the coast (surrounded by huge residential suburbs) and one inland city called Canberra – basically Australia’s version of Washington DC. There are some small islands in the Torres Strait to the north, and a large island in the south called Tasmania (pronounced Tas–mania, not Tas-maneea). Much of the interior of the continent is desert, and the remaining farmland is used to feed the population – some of the farms are larger than small European countries.
Most of the city dwelling population are never more than 2 hours’ drive from the downtown areas. Thus, there is a huge disconnect between city urban life where decisions are made, and rural Australia where the food is produced. The “Outback” is a dry, rugged country populated by hard, rugged men and women who take pride in hard work and their heritage. If you were to take two phrases that summarise Australia’s historical attitudes, they would be something like “Leave us alone, we know how to take care of ourselves” and “give everyone a fair go”. The nation was built by free, hardworking people who walked out into the landscape on their own terms and carved it into productive farmland. Does that sound familiar?
Of course, there were criminal gangs (both in the cities and country) and Australia even had a rebellion at a place called the Eureka Stockade. It was quickly crushed by the government but forced important concessions which continue today in our system of parliament. The leader of the rebels, Peter Lalor ended up in Parliament where he continued to fight injustice.
In 1901, the states of Australia joined together to form a Commonwealth. This is different to a republic and our Federal Government has more explicit power than the US republic which is strictly limited by the Constitution. Let’s not get into an argument about whether or not the US government routinely breaches constitutional limits on its authority, suffice it to say that Australians in 1901 joined together and appointed a strong Federal Government to standardise and regulate a lot of our laws. Some things were left to the individual states but overall, it worked pretty well given the vast areas and limited funds that the states had to govern.
Laws about gun ownership were among the things specifically excluded from the Federal Government’s power. Since 1788, various state governments continually tried a variety of controls to stop criminals obtaining firearms, with generally ineffective results. But overall, crime was relatively low, and private firearms necessary to put food on the table and protect stock and crops so the population saw no need for draconian measures.
Australia contributed an untested force to help the Allies in WW1 (and later in WW2, Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East) and the men who fought quickly became renowned as tough, spirited and adaptable fighters who rejected “bullshit” – any form of useless authority or pomp displayed by officers (particularly the British officers). Useless regulation was also called “bullshit” – taking away time and effort from focussing on the important jobs. The Australian soldier fought hard and partied hard with his mates and didn’t take anything too seriously. Especially things that weren’t important.
The Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956 saw renewed interest in the sport of pistol shooting and laws from the 1920s banning handguns were relaxed as the original threat of Bolshevism had declined.
While fully-automatic arms were banned in most Australian states in the 1930s (a familiar experience to the USA), they were legal in Tasmania (that island at the bottom) right up until 1996. In the 66 years since America and Australia restricted full auto firearms, Tasmania experienced almost no gun crime at all, let alone a full-auto rampage predicted by gun grabbers everywhere.
Overall, Australia was similar in many ways to the Western US states in the 1800s and early 1900s. An independently minded, rugged people who used firearms as tools just like axes, saws and hammers. They hated official meddling and wanted to be left alone to farm, worship and raise a family in peace.
After World War II however, Australia rapidly urbanised with massive industrialisation bringing investment, factories, and workers of all kinds. Several waves of immigration from Europe, South America, South-East Asia and the Middle East brought millions of people into the cities, creating a housing and services boom that continues today.
Starting in 1984, there were several massacres using knives and firearms that brought media and political focus onto the gun crime issue. Two massacres in Melbourne and two in Sydney between 1984 and 1987 left a total of 31 dead and 58 wounded. One in Sydney was part of an ongoing war between crime gangs (similar to the St Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago), the other three were committed by mentally ill people. Coming from a historically low (almost zero) rate of gun crime for 150 years, this sharp rise of gun crime concerned many – particularly the city dwellers who did not have the safe experience with firearms that the earlier Australians had.
There has always been a belief that “if we make firearms harder to obtain legally, then criminals and the mentally ill will not be able to get them”. This was one of many beliefs pushed by an organisation called “Gun Control Australia”, started in 1981 as “Council to Control Gun Misuse” by John Crook. A lot could be written about Mr Crook, but this quote from Chris Allen will suffice: “Mr Crook has not recently fallen into mental illness; his ideas were always fantastical. In libraries across the country, a snowstorm of badly-photocopied booklets show his weird obsession that ordinary sportspeople are really killers, proven and convicted”. A paranoid distrust of his fellow citizens gained traction and media attention by dancing in the blood of crime victims.
Various Australian states started to tighten their gun laws, but there was no national approach. In December 1987, the Premier (roughly equivalent to the State Governor) of New South Wales – Barry Unsworth commented that “there will be no effective gun control in Australia until there is a massacre in Tasmania”. In perhaps an extremely unfortunate co-incidence, this statement was to become a prophecy.
In 1988, Gun Control Australia released a report of recommendations under the name “National Committee on Violence”. These proposals included a combination of licencing, registration and classification systems intended to make it more difficult for the mentally ill and criminal to obtain firearms. All “for the greater good”. No mention was made of civilians defending themselves against crime. But still, there was resistance from governments and law abiding people who saw no need to restrict the law abiding for the criminal actions of a few.
On the 20th April 1996, 35 people were killed and 23 wounded when a gunman opened fire at the Broad Arrow Café in Port Arthur, Tasmania. There are many questions about what happened, and most will never be answered. But these are some of the facts:
  • The only Police in the area were lured miles away from the area to investigate a drugs cache phoned in by an anonymous tip. The glass jars contained white powder but it was not drugs. The identity of the informant/trickster has never been revealed.
  • The shooter was chased into a suburban house, which after several hours of negotiation with Police caught fire. Running out the front door, the words uttered by Martin Bryant (a young man with an intellectual disability and learning problems) were “Don’t shoot, I’m the hostage”
  • While interviewed, Bryant identified the AR-15 recovered as belonging to him, saying “it’s a different color, it’s burnt” but when shown the FN SLR his words were “I’ve never seen that one before. Never, that’s not one of mine.”
  • Prime Minister John Howard blocked a Royal Commission (a federal investigation) into the events and sealed the records for 30 years. Subsequent demands for an inquest or investigation have been refused.
  • The Broad Arrow Café was demolished and the only memorial is a small plaque hidden away out of sight.
There are other facts, suspicions and theories swirling around and only the events of JFK’s assassination and September 11, 2001 exceed the amount of such discussion. A quick internet search will reveal many of these theories – some wild and unbelievable, but many others are quite serious and rational. The lack of a formal inquiry to review the actions of the police and thus provide training for future operations is one of those serious questions. Particularly so when the 2014 Lindt Café siege resulted in an immediate inquest that was quite critical of the police response. Would lessons learned from a Port Arthur Investigation have saved lives in 2014? Why did the Lindt Café siege have an immediate inquest when Port Arthur (with ten times the casualties) did not?