"Put another way, there is better than a 99 in 100 chance that Australia's gun buyback helped avert mass shootings."

I agree. I agree with a "gun buy back" I do NOT agree with the more stringent gun laws. In the time it took you to write this, more people died of TB in PNG then were "saved" by controlling whether others purchased guns. So why is saving the most lives not more important to you ? Why not advicte we pay for vaccinations for all of the citizens of PNG if you're concerned with saving lives ? I suspect concern has nothing to do with it and it's a cloak under which gun law advocates hide.

I put it to you the deaths are the theatre to distract people, for three main reasons:

1. guns scare some people, mostly city folk who are scared at their own shadow. I don't have any empathy for being scared when there is no threat. Grow up, you're not a child.

2. by using this theatre people are distracted from the very real issue of mental illness which is swept under the table. In this I think you are complicit in making mental health issues worse.

3. sociopaths love being a control freaks, whether that's at the end of a gun or at the end of piece legislation where they outsource the bullying of some citizens to others.

Imagine; for "owning" an unlicensed gun you are put in gaol... Not hurting anyone, not damaging anyones property but to have armed "thugs" invade your house, put cuffs on you and take away your freedom ? To advocate that action is justified, to do such a thing to a fellow citizen, repugnant and shame on you.

In part answer to mox, an arrogant and feckless Australian media ensured that the police investigation of Port Arthur and trial of Bryant were frustrated and contaminated. As is only to be expected, the media acted disgracefully to publish unflattering photos of the alleged offender as well as other details that could result in a mistrial.

It is the same media selfishness and lack of concern for the public that continue to exhume such dreadful events to further sensationalise, causing untold suffering to surviving families, and to buff the notoriety of offenders, which gold-plates the dreadful deeds as a serious consideration for any disaffected, angry person who is alienated against society and would like similar public notoriety for himself.

I will leave that alone because I do believe that the offender is in gaol and should remain there forgotten until fungus grows over him.

My interest is in laws being based on evidence and that government demonstrates that value for taxpayers' money is always being obtained, which requires transparency through independent comprehensive audits. That is not being done on 'gun control'. It is not being done in several other areas of government that soak up millions of taxpayers' $$ annually for scant returns and indigenous affairs is one such.

Glib politicians who cynically pursue populism and cannot be frank, candid and practical with the public might 'win' in the short term and sometimes in the longer term too, but how do they sleep at night?

Onthebeach, there are a number of things that indicate Martin Bryant was not the main Port Arthur gunman. I seems that there was more than one person who fired shots but maybe only one responsible for killings. A couple of important points are that Martin Bryant had previously been a left handed obviously very amateurish shooter. Could not have suddenly transformed into a right handed crack shot. Also, several witnesses who police did not want statements from said the gunman was probably aged around 20 and had a heavily pock marked face. Martin Bryant was obviously in late 20's and had a smooth complexion. It seems the real gunman was a young bloke from South Australia who committed suicide six months later. His father, who had apparently been a police officer in the past was at Port Arthur when the massacre occurred and almost certainly had some involvement.

What is needed is a proper trial for Martin Bryant, who almost certainly should be acquitted and pardoned. Then it needs a proper investigation as to who were the REAL CRIMINALS arranging and covering up this atrocity. Obviously includes some senior politicians and police. Including John Howard who has claimed that getting his gun laws through was his greatest achievement. Wonder what his comments will be if he faces charges of accessory after the fact of murders and perverting the course of justice for his helping with the coverup.

Among all the recent shootings in the USA recently, it seems some of those to alleged to be done on the initiative of deranged lone individuals have been planned by anti gun psychopaths to generate propaganda. Needs proper investigations into incidents that appear suspect. Including the widely publicised Sandy Hook and Columbine incidents. Evidence which the mainstream is not inclined to publish can now be readily circulated via the Internet and anyone interested can often readily locate it using Google searches.

Re the compulsory so called gun "buyback" in Australia: This cost around %500 million and was financed by a surcharge on the Medicare levy. "What did it achieve to promote public health and safety though? Bureau of Statistics figures and academic studies I have seen indicate it had no significant effects at reducing deaths from gunshots. Even if it had, as claimed by spin from anti gun activists, would have still been very inefficient use of public money. Think of the lives that could have been saved if instead, for example, 500 hospitals had been each given an extra million dollars in funding.

Martin Bryant had a measured IQ of 66 and had been granted a state disability pension for that reason. Laughed at and bullied at school, socially inadequate and unable to make friends, he was desperately lonely and nursed deep feelings of anger at his rejection.

As expected from such a young man with low social self esteem, he become obsessed with firearms and violent video's. His favourite saying was "Don't fuckk with the Chuck!", an expression used by the psychopathic doll in the movie 'Child's Play", the same movie thought to influence 11 year old James Bulger to murder a 4 year old boy in England.

One by one, the people who had maintained his mental equilibrium died or left. The last was a young girl with whom he had had a brief relationship. For Bryant, there was nothing left but his feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, rejection and anger.

People like Bryant, or Wade Frankum, or Julain Knight, or any of the other people who go on shooting sprees, had always existed in society. But never before had it gotten into their befuddled heads to commit massacres, even though self loading hunting rifles had existed since 1887. But today's violent movies where heroes shoot down the people they despise all over the place (including the police in the "Rambo" FIRST BLOOD movie), provided a script for men like Bryant at how a Real Man reacted to people or communities who persecuted or humiliated them. For Bryant, it meant more than life itself for him to be seen as a person who should be respected and admired, instead of a weak and stupid one to be laughed at and shunned.

To produce movies which show mass killers who kill for personnel reasons as strong and powerful heroes to be admired by the public, instead of what they really are, weak and stupid, is to sow the seeds of infamy on fertile ground.

It is wrong to cast these murdering mongrels as victims of society or their upbringing. They are mean, vicious, jealous, envious, lazy, evil SOBs who chose to murder. Death is too good for them. They should spend long lives in a cell somewhere, forgotten.

Mass murderers always existed. Their methods vary and bombs, fire and other means can be choices. We shudder at the thought of a poisoned water supply, or petrol down a drain in a crowded area.

Maybe the narcissists are presently more likely to choose a modern automatic gun because of the media regards guns as 'sexy' and media will give them the notoriety they seek. Guns are noisy, limited and result in arrest. The cowardly offender must assure himself too that it is unlikely that a victim might have the means to send some lead back.

The cynical, feckless media build the image of increasing numbers of mass murders with guns, 'spates of gun homicides', for the same reason that the media stereotypes everything else - easy to build the story line and it is instantly re-usable. The truth is very likely that the incidence of mass murder (and mass murderers of course), hasn't increased at all and might even have decreased. However fact and truth don't sell an audience for advertisers.

However 'gun control' was never about stopping crime or even stopping mass murderers. 'Gun control' is about disarming the law-abiding public, the citizens. Why is something that needs to be asked of such people as the shadowy foreign billionaires and their buddies (?!) the international socialist 'Progressives', the self described 'wolves in sheep's clothing' who presume to always know what is best for us (or so they say) and are re-engineering our society and interfering in domestic politics.

to be continued..