Posted on 12/19/2025 2:13:58 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
It was a Sunday afternoon in April 1996 when a lone gunman armed with semi-automatic rifles killed 35 people in the Australian tourist town of Port Arthur.
The massacre almost 30 years ago, which ushered in some of the strictest gun laws in the world, feels like a bygone age for many Australians.
But the Bondi Beach attack on Sunday, which left 15 dead, rekindled memories of the Tasmanian tragedy - none more so than for leading gun control advocate Roland Browne.
As the country's deadliest modern-day mass shooting was unfolding an hour's drive away, Mr Browne was meeting fellow gun control advocates at his home, ahead of a government meeting, to lobby for a ban on the exact type of firearm the Port Arthur gunman was using.
Mr Browne, 66, was again at home in Hobart on Sunday when he received news of the shooting at Bondi, targeting a Jewish event celebrating the first night of Hanukkah.
"There's just a lot of similarities," Mr Browne, who spent childhood summers in Bondi and still has family there, told the BBC.
"They're both very public places frequented by tourists from around the nation and around the world."
"It's sickening and I'm bitterly disappointed in our political system whereby the voices for tighter gun laws and public health aren't listened to until there's a major event like this," he added.
For decades, Australia has stood as a beacon on the world stage for its strict gun laws, he says, taking a similar path to the UK which experienced its own mass shooting in Dunblane, just one month before Port Arthur.
Even now, Mr Browne remains friends with relatives of some of the 17 victims - mostly children aged five and six - killed at a primary school in Scotland.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
The USA does not want to follow the idiocy of Socialist Australia.
Australia has become a world leader in illustrating the folly of “gun control”.
Laws mean nothing to criminals
> Laws mean nothing to criminals <
That was clearly shown during America’s experiment with Prohibition in the 1920s. But such evidence means nothing to liberals.
Bring in people who want to murder Australians and then disarm the Australians. It’s brilliant!
FU BBC you God Damned terror apologists.
Gun control NEVER works, it only creates defenseless victims.
The guns are not the problem.
“Gun Control” starts and ends here:
A gun can only be controlled by a human. Without a human, a gun is a paperweight.
Bad enough,all that Commie BS,now with the Hate Speech,as I read earlier...
It must be fun to be the leader, until it is obviously not working.
Then it becomes a struggle to enforce.
Which is why the prog loves such things.
They get to scream at people about non-problems and fantasy “fixes,” all designed to assign “guilt” to deep pockets, thus creating cash flow to the communist progs.
A real KMA situation, which infuriates the little proggies to insanity.
.
Yeah a world leader in government oppression because they gave up their guns. Australia is a police state like the UK and the government is using this to crack down on the political opposition. Another failed shithole.
Gun grabbers are murderers.
Australia was awesome 30 years ago and then they blew it following the Port Arthur massacre on April 28, 1996, when 35 people were killed. They gave their sovereignty up. Now it’s a leftist run shxthole much like Britain and where America is headed.
They need a serious revolution as do we to rid us of immigrants and liberals.
It was a very decent place for hunters and sport shooters, and it took a madman who had no business roaming the streets freely, let alone being granted a firearms licence, to give John Howard the excuse to impose his very petty and ignorant views on firearms and firearms ownership.
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