This book was written for two main groups of readers. Foremost in my mind were Australians who were appalled by the Port Arthur gun massacre which killed 35 people and who want to understand more about the struggle to secure the historic reform of gun laws in the months after the incident. For millions, the massacre and the long overdue need for reform of gun laws became a major topic of conversation among family, friends and workmates. Tens of thousands of you demonstrated in support of the new laws, wrote letters to politicians and expressed yourselves in public media such as letters to newspapers and calls to radio stations. The wisdom and timing of many of these contributions were enormously powerful in advancing the debate and convincing politicians of the huge community support for gun control, and that further excuses for inaction were unacceptable. I wanted to pay a sort of homage to this support, which more than one commentator pointed out was a wonderful example of non-violent ‘people power’ influencing law reform.

I have also written the book for people working to promote gun control in other countries. As will become apparent, I believe that it was not by mere serendipity that a massacre translated into major law reform. There are many lessons for others in how such tragedies can be catalysts for radical change. Yet law reform following massacres is not inevitable; rather, it requires the planned, strategic use of media and other forms of advocacy to convert anger and outrage into action. A prerequisite for this change would appear to be a sustained period of 10public advocacy for gun law reform that keys up communities to define soft gun laws as a blight on political courage and an affront to a safe community. Gun massacres force politicians to confront an electorate outraged at political spinelessness in an area which demands nothing less than strong leadership. Much of this book is an attempt to distil some lessons out of the chaos that became the day to day of the lives of those pushing for gun law reform in the months after Port Arthur.

Along with Rebecca Peters (NSW), Roland Browne (Tasmania), Helen Gadsen (Queensland), Tim Costello (Victoria) and Charles Watson (NSW) I have been a spokesperson for the Coalition for Gun Control, a coalition of associations and individuals committed to tightening the regulation of guns in order to reduce gun violence in our community. The CGC became incorporated in 1995 in NSW and became a national group (thereafter, the National Coalition for Gun Control or NCGC) on 15 June 1996, when Rebecca was appointed national coordinator. Over 300 organisations from the fields of public health, medicine, law, domestic violence advocacy, women’s, religious, ethnic and community groups have supported NCGC lobbying activities. While no longer active in the NCGC, between 1992 and 1996 I was one of its main members.

Despite this huge support and the overwhelming weight of public opinion in favour of gun control, the NCGC today remains an organisation run on the goodwill and dedication of volunteers, on the financial shoe-strings provided by public donations and on the occasional largesse of supportive organisations. Gun control has always been an immensely politicised issue. Despite an average of some 560 people who are killed by guns in Australia in each of the last six years, there has so far been no government with the courage or foresight to support the NCGC with little but pats on the back in times of mutual agreement. At one stage word was passed from the NSW Labor government that we would not be receiving funding because it was plain some of us were connected with the Liberal Party. We got the same news from the Federal (Liberal Coalition) government, being told that it was obvious the same people were Labor supporters. Frequently during the post–Port Arthur debate, 11people would contact us and make comments that implied we were a huge organisation with a fully equipped office, salaried staff and a lot of money in the bank. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

We were very honoured that the National Coalition for the Gun Control was awarded the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission community award for 1996 (shared with ECPAT, the group working to end child prostitution in Asian tourism). Rebecca Peters shared the individual award, the 1996 Human Rights Medal, with Rob Riley, long-time Western Australian campaigner for Aboriginal rights who died during the year.

At the height of the debate and well after it peaked, Rebecca often worked 16 hours a day, seven days a week. She was supported by dozens of volunteers who helped in many invaluable ways. Roland Browne fitted gun control advocacy around his work as a lawyer, and my sabbatical leave plans were turned upside down. Julia Tsalis worked as the NCGC’s Sydney office secretary from May until December 1996, and was supported by dozens of volunteers who helped in many invaluable ways.

There are countless people who should be thanked for their support throughout the months when the new gun laws were being secured. Here, I want to give special thanks to several people who assisted me in writing this book. The first draft of the book was written between August and Christmas 1996. Philip Alpers from New Zealand was invaluable in his support. His encyclopedic knowledge of shooting incidents and his expertise in technical matters about guns and the gun lobby was always just a phone call away. As drafts of chapters were finished, I sent them off to Rebecca and Philip for comment. My original hope was for Rebecca to co-author the book, but her concern to give all her amazing energy to the implementation of the new laws, to forging links with gun control groups in other nations, to the visit of three Dunblane fathers in April 1997 and taking up a research position in the United States took precedence. I am certain that the book would have been far better with her further contribution. But I’m also certain that support for gun 12control has advanced still further by her decision to put advocacy for gun control before writing about it.

Roland Browne, Michael Dudley, Richard Harding, Satyanshu Mukherjee and Philip Alpers read and commented on early drafts. Roland helped out with Tasmanian material. The Advocacy Institute in Washington DC provided quiet space for me to write in July and August 1996. Thanks go to Michelle Scollo who clipped all gun stories from the Melbourne Age for me over five months. And thanks go especially to the cartoonists – Michael Leunig, Bruce Petty, Cathy Wilcox, Ron Tandberg and Alan Moir – who have allowed their work to be used in the book. Finally, I thank Penny O’Donnell, Tony Moore and Sean Kidney at Pluto for their calm steerage of the book through many months of unexpected difficulties.

Because I live in Sydney, the book reflects a perspective very much constrained by my experience of the events following Port Arthur, particularly as it unfolded through Sydney’s mass media and political system. I make no pretence that this book is in any way a formal history of all that happened throughout Australia. Such a book would need to be massive. My main interest in writing the book was to capture the nature of the public discourse on gun control that the Port Arthur killings unleashed and which framed the way that the issue came to be defined by ordinary people throughout the country and by the politicians who were now forced to act. As all will recall, in 1996 gun control was to suddenly become one of the most discussed public issues in Australia’s mass media. The 10,000 watt lights of the mass media turned on a situation focus the minds of politicians very quickly. This book is largely an attempt to peer into those lights and review the sort of light that they cast on gun control as a public issue.

I had only occasional contact with staff in the political offices of those politicians working to pass and implement the new gun laws. Their roles, particularly that of the Office of Law Enforcement Coordination (or as it was known during the Port Arthur Period, the Commonwealth Law Enforcement Board) in Canberra whose staff played a critical role in drafting the legislation and in briefing politicians, are unsung in this 13book. The behind-the-scenes work of those government officers and politicians’ staff who worked to ensure the laws had the best chance of passing deserves the highest praise.

All royalties from the sale of this book will go to support an international internet-based network that is allowing the rapid communication of information and strategy among gun control advocates from many nations.

Simon Chapman

Department of Public Health and Community Medicine

University of Sydney

May 1998 14