The Port Arthur massacre was a mass shooting that occurred on 28 April 1996 at Port Arthur, a tourist town in the Australian state of Tasmania. The perpetrator, Martin Bryant, killed 35 people and wounded 23 others, the worst massacre in modern Australian history. The attack led to fundamental changes in Australia's gun laws.
Two of Bryant's victims were known to him personally and were killed at Seascape, a bed and breakfast property. The majority of his victims were killed in a shooting spree at the Port Arthur Historic Site, a popular tourist destination. Using two semi-automatic rifles, he began his attack at a small café before moving into a nearby gift shop, killing twenty people indiscriminately in a short amount of time. Many others were killed at the site's car park, including several children. After killing its four occupants, Bryant stole a vehicle at the site's tollbooth and drove to a nearby service station, where he killed a woman and abducted her partner. He continued to fire at passing vehicles before finally returning to Seascape with his hostage, who was then killed. He set fire to the property but was captured the following morning.
Bryant pleaded guilty to the killings and received 35 life sentences without parole; his motives have been subject to debate. The massacre led to a reassessment of Australia's gun laws by the newly elected Howard government. The National Firearms Agreement between state and federal governments was announced within two weeks of the massacre, establishing heavy restrictions on the use of automatic and semi-automatic weapons and creating a gun buyback program, a national gun registry and a waiting period for firearm sales.
Background
Location
The main location of the incident was the historic Port Arthur former prison colony, a popular tourist site in south-eastern Tasmania, Australia.
Perpetrator
In 1992, Martin Bryant—then 25—was bequeathed about $570,000 in property and assets by a friend, Helen Harvey, who left her estate to him following her death in a car crash. He used part of this money to go on many trips around the world from 1993 onwards.
Bryant's father had tried to purchase a bed and breakfast property called Seascape, but Noelene (also known as Sally) and David Martin bought this property before his father could ready his finances, much to the disappointment of Bryant's father, who often complained to his son of the "double dealing" the Martins had done to secure the purchase. Bryant's father offered to buy another property from the Martins at Palmers Lookout Road, but they declined the offer. Bryant apparently believed the Martins had deliberately bought the property to hurt his family and believed this event to be responsible for the depression that led to his father's 1993 suicide. Bryant later described the Martins as "very mean people" and as "the worse people in my life."
In late 1995, Bryant became suicidal after deciding he had "had enough". He stated, "I just felt more people were against me. When I tried to be friendly toward them, they just walked away". Although he had previously been little more than a social drinker, his alcohol consumption increased and, although he had not consumed any alcohol on the day of the massacre, had especially escalated in the six months prior.
According to Bryant, he thought the plan for Port Arthur might have first occurred to him four to twelve weeks before the event.
Motivation
Bryant's suspected motivations for the massacre were the refusal of the sale of Seascape by owners David and Noelene Martin and to become notorious, as revealed by his lawyer, on the Channel 7 program Sunday Night, air date Sunday, 6 March 2016. From the moment he was captured, he continually wanted to know how many people he had killed and seemed impressed by the number. Bryant is allowed to listen only to music on a radio outside his cell and is denied access to any news reports of his massacre. Photographers who took pictures of him in his prison cell were forced to destroy the film in his presence when the Governor found out.
Gun laws in Australia before the Port Arthur massacre
After storming out of a national gun summit in 1987, eight years before the massacre and following two mass shootings in Melbourne earlier in the year, Premier of New South Wales Barrie Unsworth said: "it will take a massacre in Tasmania before we get gun reform in Australia", referencing Tasmania's resistance to gun law changes. A redesign of the laws for all states and territories of Australia had been prepared by officers and presented at a meeting of police ministers in Launceston in 1995. It had been rejected by Tasmania.