The Port Arthur Massacre in Australia

[mrmeval]

In fact, the point of the .223 is to wound as opposed to kill. And then we have Martin Bryant. Mr. Bryant was judged mentally ill, no one has spoken to Mr. Bryant about this since.

That has never been the case with any rifle ammo the US military has had made. Military 5.56 can be more damaging because seperation at the channelure on impact which causes more severe wounding that would normally be the case with FMJ. We were accused of making ammo against the Geneva convention but ours was outside the listed parameters.

 

[mrmeval]

All I can offer Australians is send all your women here so we can protect them.

 

[Radagast]

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18637891-2,00.html

AUSTRALIANS are more likely than people in any other developed nation to find themselves the victim of a serious crime, including those of a sexual nature, a major international report has found.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in its annual report comparing the group's members on a range of issues, found Australia had the highest rate of victimisation.

Between 1990 and the latest available figures, the number of victims of crime increased in Australia.

Australia had the highest proportion of victims of assaults, threats and crimes of a sexual nature of the OECD's member nations, the second highest proportion of burglaries, and high rates of robberies, car thefts and thefts from cars.

New Zealand had the second highest number of victims. The United States, which recorded a fall in victimisation rates, was mid-range.

-------------------

We are obviously a lot safer now!

 

[Radagast]

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/driveby-shooting-number-nine/2006/03/24/1143083939654.html

The running total . . . NSW drive-by shootings since January:

- Mar 24: Man injured when several shots fired at an Auburn supermarket.

- Mar 23: Man shot in shoulder in front of home in Auburn.

- Mar 21: Elderly couple escape injury after drive-by shooting in West Dubbo.

- Mar 20: Shandele Macey dies following a drive-by shooting in Rutherford, near Maitland.

- Feb 27: Couple and three children escape injury after shots fired at their Heckenberg home.

- Feb 25: Man, 80, shot in foot as he slept in his house in Guildford.

- Feb 17: Mother and two children uninjured after shots fired at home in Arncliffe.

- Jan 17: Shots fired from a white Mitsubishi Lancer at a house in Fairfield West.

- Jan 3: Shots fired into a home in Smithfield.

- with AAP


Aussie gun laws obviously work.

 

[Mr.V.]

Aussie gun laws obviously work.

clearly they aren't strict enough...

 

[LAR-15]

Correct me if I am wrong but I would like clarification on several things about Martin Bryant and the Port Arthur Massacre:

1) Was Tasmania the only place one could own semi automatic rifles?

2) What kind of ammo did he use? FMJ? AP? Soft point?

3) Where did he learn to shoot like a pro?

 

[Cortez]

For Mr V

clearly they aren't strict enough...

I suppose that's true, if you assume that all of these shootings and other gun related crime is being carried out by licensed gun owners. Is that what you are saying? If not, then how can more legislation stop people from acquuiring guns illegally and using them illegally?

If you know the answer to that one why don't you let all authorities world wide in on the secret because they don't seem to know.


FOR LAR-15

No, at the time of the Port Arthur massacre, you could get semi automatic rifles anywhere in Australia.

In Queensland, where I live, you didn't even need a licence - you just went into a shop and bought what ever you wanted. We never had massacres up here.

Bryant is supposed to have used FMJ ammo.

3) Where did he learn to shoot like a pro?

Ah, you noticed that too. A lot of other people have asked that question and been howled down for it here in Australia.

It's curious. I'm ex- regular army and have done a lot of shooting with a wide variety of firearms including the M16. I was considered to be a very good shot but I have to tell you something. IF THE DESCRIPTION OF THE SHOOTINGS ARE TRUE AS THEY ARE DESCRIBED IN THE COURT TRANSCRIPTS - then I for one could never have emulated that sort of marksmanship. (I have a copy of the court transcripts)

The transcripts state that in 90 seconds, Bryant fired 29 shots from a fully loaded 30 round magazine and managed to kill 20 people and wounded a further 12 inside the cafe. Yes you read rightly - 32 people hit with 29 rounds. He then changed to a fresh magazine and exited the cafe. It is worth noting, in case you missed it, that he changed his magazine just one shot short of running out of ammo from that magazine. No doubt a lucky coincidence.

But the really eye popping fact about the cafe shootings is this - every person killed had been shot in the head or the neck and the majority of the wounded also suffered from head or neck wounds. What is even more amazing is that Bryant is alleged to have shot all of these people by shooting from the hip according to the official ballistics report, which I happen to have a copy of.

If the court transcripts are to be accepted, then one has to accept that Bryant achieved a degree of marksmanship unprecedented in group shootings. I for one could never have achieved such a degree of accuracy and I was a very good shot with the M16. By his own admission, Bryant had NOT practised for the event and had not done much live firing with either the AR15 (which he used in the cafe) or the FN-FAL which he used in the car park. Add to this the fact that after the first couple of people had been killed, the vicitms were ducking and weaving around trying to save themselves, then you have to wonder even more how he managed to shoot so many people unerringly in the head and neck.

Give an M16 to any person and ask them to shoot at a number of close in targets, without telling them what to aim for and virtually ALL of them will shoot for the centre of mass ie the body, because that is the surest way of achieviing a hit. You might ponder on that for a while.

Anyway, what can I say? The court transcripts HAVE to be true, don't they?

Martin Bryant, in the cafe, achieved a kill ratio and accuracy unmatched anywhere in the world in mass shootings, without practice, shooting from the hip in 90 seconds, using 29 rounds and killing 20 and wounding a further 12, all with neck and head shots. He then went into the car park and changed his AR15 for a 7.62mm FN FAL rifle and shot and killed a further 15 people and wounded 8 more at ranges varying from point blank to moving targets at a distance of around 150 metres.

For these acts, every Australian legal firearm owner was made collectively responsible by the PM, John Howard, who instituted a ban on all semi automatic rifles in the interests, the PM said, of making the community safer.

Having done this the PM, then had the gall to say, a few weeks later, whilst speaking to a group of angry gun owners, at a rally at Sale in Victoria:

"Now I don’t pretend for a moment ladies and gentlemen that the decision that we have taken is going to guarantee that in the future there won’t be other mass murders. I don’t pretend that for a moment."
PM John Howard Sale Rally 16/6/96

If he really believed that then what were the bans about?

Incidentally, at the time that he addressed this rally, he was wearing a buillet proof vest under his suit jacket. Licensed shooters have never forgiven him for that.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, soon after the massacre, the government approved a recommendation banning the possession of firearms for the purpose of self defence!!! SIGH. You really have to wonder, don't you?


In the meantime, this year's pogrom against legal gun owners has started already, no doubt because this is the 10th anniversary of the massacre. There was a major item on the news this morning about it and the Bulletin, one of our leading business magazines has a lengthy series of articles on it in its latest issue. If you want to read some of it, the URL is:

http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/site/articleIDs/1A8DDF5680E127F3CA25713800167476

American readers who manage to wade through the lawyer interviews with Bryant will be struck by the fact that at no time was Bryant ever given a warning that anything he might say could be used in evidence against him and his own lawyer refused to permit Bryant making a plea of Not Guilty.


A monstrous evil took place at Port Arthur in Tasmania, Australia on 28 April 1996 - and it wasn't just the killing of 35 people and the wounding of a further 20. However, I doubt if the truth will ever be known about that massacre. What I do know for sure is that licensed gun owners in this country will continue to be vilified and demonised as they are currently, by anti-gun groups, politicians of all persuasions and the media and that as time goes on, further restrictions on legal gun ownership and use will be implemented "to make the community safer" - and gun crime with illegally owned firearms will contiunue to escalate.

Yep, someone profited greatly from the Port Arthur Massacre and it wasn't legal gun owners. But then, I'm just being a paranoid gun nut, aren't I?

 

[Carl N. Brown]

I would think you were paranoid, until I learned
that the official report on the Dublane massacre
in UK will be sealed under the Official Secrets Act
for 100 years.

Why?

The killer was a known mental case and police informant/
A set up?

 

[sterling180]

You are only half-Correct Carl

As I have said on other threads, Thomas Watt Hamilton-the guy responsible for the 1996 Dunblane Massacre, in Scotland- was able to obtain his license, despite the fact that he was mentally-unsound,(Actually stated in a 1991 report to the Cheif, into his background by a CID Detective-Sergent.) because some officers were into child-pornography and struck a deal with him, that if he supplied material, then he would get his license renewed.

The Cheif Constable counter-signed his license and he was able to buy four handguns-Two Browning Hi-power 9mms and two Smith and Wesson 586 .357s. He was also allowed to purchase 741 rounds of ammunition in total.

Check out my other posts, if you want some more detailed information on Dunblane, because I have repeated this so many times.

As for the 100 year closure-act, well I have some good news for shooters because in the February 2006 Issue of gunmart -three shooters: Mike Wells, Richard Malbon(Editor of Gunmart) and William Scott (Sportsmans Association.) all went to Edinburgh in Scotland to get access to 10,000 pages of files from the Lord-Cullen enquiry. Previously they were denied, even by the BBC and by Sky news from obtaining certain footage and paperwork.

THIS NERD WASN'T AN INFORMANT, HE WAS THE COPS ERRAND BOY(IN OTHER WORDS A 43 YEAR OLD SLIGHTLY-OVERWEIGHT BALDING CREEP, WHO HAD HIS USES- IN EXCHANGE FOR BEING ARRESTED FOR SEXUAL ABUSE AND ILLEGAL PORN.

HE WAS ALSO A FREE-MASON, AS ARE ALOT OF COPS AND PROBABLY MET ALOT THROUGH FREE-MASONRY EVENTS.

 

[R-Tex12]

Kager wrote:

Duck and Quail hunting was recently "Banned" in QLD.

Kager, can you (or any of our Aussie members) give us a little more info on this? Was it done "overnight" or was there some debate? Did Beattie do this on his own or was there some type of legislation?

Queensland certainly has changed since I lived on the Sunshine Coast in the early seventies.

Thanks & have a Four X for me!

Rick

 

[The Viking]

In Queensland, where I live, you didn't even need a licence - you just went into a shop and bought what ever you wanted. We never had massacres up here.

Is there any figures on how many rifles that were sold, and how many that were turned in after the ban?
How long did it take to get the ban in place after the massacre? Were there an increase in the numbers of rifles sold during that time? Did the stores run out of ammo?
Also, I read somewhere that Bryant had a semi-automatic or maybe fully automatic shotgun in his trunk? Any info on this? What did the law say about shotguns?
Is it true that Bryant is lefthanded, but alledgedly shot from the right hip? (or the other way around). Also a bit strange if so...

 

[Cortez]

FOR R-TEX12

Duck hunting was banned in Qld as 1 Sep 2005, with virtually no debate and certainly no consultation with shooter orgs here. The Environment Minister, Ms Desley Boyle said, amongst other things:

But overwhelmingly most people concentrated on the cruelty, describing duck and quail shooting as this unnecessary barbaric pastime

Heavily involved in lobbying for this decision was the Animal Liberation Queensland organisation which waged a most effective and long term campaign to ensure that the sport was killed. One of their postings in support of the the bans included the following which I, personally, had never heard of before:

Studies into ‘clean’ kill
A mathematical analysis carried out by Dr G. Russell showed that shooters with a shots per bagged bird ratio of between 4 and 10, will wound approximately 50-150 birds for every 100 birds bagged.

This was also highlighted in a particularly gruesome laboratory experiment conducted by Winchester, (a company that manufactures both arms and ammunition) which indicates the percentage of ducks injured. The researchers tied live ducks to sleds, which moved along at constant speed. A shotgun was fixed to a stand and set up to fire automatically as a sled attached to a live duck moved past. Shooting was therefore conducted under 'ideal conditions' as the gun was completely steady, perfectly aimed and the sled with the ducks moved across the line of fire at a constant speed. Findings reveal:
• When the ducks were 30 metres from the gun, the wounding rate was low
• However at 40 metres, 8% of the birds were not injured badly enough to be classed as 'bagged' (eg they were injured but probably would have got away from the shooter)
• By 50 metres, 50 birds were injured but not 'bagged' for every 100 birds 'bagged'.
So between 40 and 50 metres the injury rate increases sharply with shooters less likely to be able to retrieve ('bag') the injured ducks.

Taking into account this information and understanding that shooters would not possibly be within the 'perfect range' for a definite kill, shows how many ducks are really left injured or left to suffer a slow agonising death.

In my opinion, people who object to hunting should be forced to visit cattle, pig, sheep and poultry abattoirs before being permitted to make criticism of hunting as a "cruel" sport, particularly if they are meat and poultry eaters.


FOR UNARMED SHOOTER

Exact figures are difficult to come by but it is estimated that there were sales of some 3 to 4 million semi automatic rifles in Australia (and the figure could be even hgher) long before the bans came into effect.

During the "buyback" around 650,000 firearms were handed in. There are still a large number of semi autos being held by once legitimate owners who refused to be railroaded by the Federal Governments bans. These people are now "criminals" according to the firearms acts.

As far as I am aware there was no "buy up" of ammo or guns before the bans. The bans were brought into force almost immediately following the massacre, without consultation, (I believe within a fortnight of the massacre) and it was clear that the legislation had been drafted well in advance.

Re Bryant - yes he had a semi automatic Daewoo 12 guage shotgun with him but didn't use it, because, during the police interview, he revealed that this particular gun "frightened" him and he didn't like shooting it!!!

During the police interviews Bryant was asked several times whether he was left or right handed and he maintained vehemently that he was left handed. The DPP case, witness statements and the Ballistics report indicate that the shooter fired the rifles from the right hip. These reports also indicate that the shooter was very calm and controlled during the shooting spree and very methodical in all of his actions.

During the police interviews, Bryant denied he visited Port Arthur that day, not once but many times.

I could go on forever with inconsistencies in the official version of events but as soon as one does this, one is accused of making up "conspiracy theories".

Well I have no such theories other than, that if what happened at Port Arthur that day was exactly as described in the court transcripts and the ballistics report, then either Martin Bryant was a highly trained, highly self-controlled shooter, who also happened to be "mentally retarded and very excitable" OR the Court transcripts and Ballistics report were produced in such a way as to give a particular impression about how events unfolded that day.

I have no other personal views on the matter, except that I, as a highly trained professional soldier, could not have done what Bryant was claimed to have done, in the manner and time in which it was described in the Court transcript. Clearly, Bryant was far better trained than I had ever been, if the court transcipts are to be believed.

 

[DKSuddeth]

He then changed to a fresh magazine and exited the cafe. It is worth noting, in case you missed it, that he changed his magazine just one shot short of running out of ammo from that magazine. No doubt a lucky coincidence.

This caught my eye. This guy was a professional. In the USMC, we were taught to only load 29 rounds in to the mag so we wouldn't wear the spring out and cause misfeeds in the magazines later life.

 

[sterling180]

Hmmm interesting very interesting

Iv'e fired an assault rifle-the H&k/Enfield SA80 assault rifle, as part of basic training and like many firearms requires alot of practice and concentration.I have also fired the FAL SLR,on certain occasions and this gun is quite heavy has has quite a heavy recoil-only this is my opinion,so others might share a different opinion.You also have to have a level of concentration, when firing a gun.

This guy Bryant, managed to change magazines in the Broad Arrow Cafe, despite being borderline-retarded and having an IQ of 66,-34 points below the average persons intelligence. How does this comprehend logically? he was apparently uncoordinated,when asked about driving, apparently he couldn't drive because he couldn't pass both theory and practical tests.He didn't know his weapons properly either and kept stuttering, rambling incoherantly during his interview with the police.

Can anyone tell me if they think this was a set-up, by the state?

Now in 1987 we had our very own version of Martin Bryant, in the form of Micheal Robert Ryan, who was an unemployed labourer, he was 27 years old,had no girlfriend and lived at home with his mother in their house in the now-infamous market town of Hungerford, Berkshire. He was regarded by many people-including women as socially inadequate and a mummys or momma's boy.

This guy Micheal Ryan was roughly the same age as Martin Bryant in 1987, but was more intelligent.He had a full-manual car license, a Vauxhall Astra(that his mother had bought him.) and a huge collection of guns that mainly consisted of:riot-shotguns, pistols,sub-machine guns-both UK-legal and illegal, a couple of assault rifles and a few pistols.He also had two fragmentation-grenades with him as back-up.

He also made homemade pipe-bombs, that he called:Ryan's specials and apparently brought some to work with him and gave a demonstration to collegues-in the hope that they would buy them off him. His boss caught him with his Beretta at work, tucked into his trouser waistband.When asked what it was doing
at work, Mike replied :"It's for my protection". His boss told him he was an idiot and told him to take it home and never bring it to work again.


On the 19th August 1987, Micheal Ryan,dressed in military fatigues and carrying an AK-47,An M1-Carbine and a Beretta M92FS pistol-that was holstered-went on a Rambo-style killing-spree in his hometown and wasted most people that got in his way.He wore green face-paint and carried his hand-grenades and had pipe-bombs as well-possibly to use against Thames Vally's Swat teams.

He ended up killing 17 people and seriously injured 30 or more others in the killing-spree at Hungerford.He kicked in doors of local residents and attacked them-one being a disabled old-lady in a wheel-chair-whom he shot 15 times with his Beretta and used his AK-47 to waste her husband.

He ended up killing himself with his Beretta and luckly not using any of his explosives against the Swat teams surrounding his former highschool-where he took refuge from the cops and their helicopter.

Now this guy was nuts, but was intelligent-far more][intelligent than Bryant in terms of individual IQ levels and coordination. Plus Ryan practised as many times as possible, with all of his guns, whereas Bryant disliked his Shotgun, rather odd behaviour for a mass-murderer, considering most people thought Bryant was a total invalid/space cadet, whereas with Ryan, people thought he was a Rambo-style freak and shunned him as often asthey could.

The truth is out there somewhere and answers might become available if John Howard opens up. But that won't happen or will it?

 

[LAR-15]

Cortez,

Thanks for the info.

One other question:

I thought Bryant had recently bought his guns and had never shot anything other an an air (pellet) rifle?

Is this true?

 

[R-Tex12]

Thanks for the info, Cortez. My condolences on the events in Queensland. Things certainly have changed: when I lived there, one couldn't buy a copy of "Playboy" as Bjelke-Peterson's government had banned it. We could get "Pix", though.

I still remember the road sign on the Pacific Highway north of Rockhampton stating, "Next 19 Miles Paved"!

We were last in Queensland in 2005 - it is still a truly beautiful place with extraordinarily hospitable people.

Cheers,

Rick

 

[Radagast]

I don't have links for any of this as I'm going off memory of news reports at the time:

Bryant inherited a load of money from a lotteries heiress who died in a single vehicle car accident with him in the car, IIRC he was driving.

Bryants woke up his parents one morning. He had doused them and their bed with petrol and was holding a lighter.

Bryant was seen to be cleaning up his family property and told neighbours his father had died so he was preparing it for sale. His father was alive. Shortly after his father was found dead in a dam with lead weights on the body.

Bryant was a ward of the state due to his psychiatric record, dating back to being a young child.

His shrink was one Cunningham Dax, a Victorian. I'd be curious to know wether any of the other mass shooters we have had were also his patients or patients of his associates.

Anyone who has seen the movie 'Chopper' about an Australian serial killer might be interested to know he was institutionalised as a child in Victoria, and several other multiple victim shootings have occurred there, each time the media stating the shooter was a product of the mental health system.

Correllation is not causation, but any cop knows to start looking where the links are.

 

[Cortez]

FOR LAR 15

No - according to Bryant's statement to the police, he had owned the 7.62mm FN for about 7 years and had bought the AR 15, 5 months before the massacre.

He claims to have shot no more than 20 rounds through either rifle.

He also states that he had used an air rifle as a child.

Bryant's interview with the police is a long rambling affair with a lot of contradictions in it, but he was most adamant about his firearms, and the amount of shooting he had done.

He also repeatedly claimed, emphatically, that he did not go to Port Arthur the day of the massacre. Make of that what you will.

For Sterling 180

I don't subscribe to the theory that the federal or state governments had anything to do with the massacre - although I suppose anything is possible. I do have a view, however, that one of the gun control organisations, which had a somewhat notorious female as its head, and was backed by a very powerful media organisation, had something to do with arranging the massacre. Why? Because that organisation had been giving warning for months and weeks before the massacre that a massacre of that type using that type of gun would happen in Tasmania "soon".

One of its spokesmen even appeared on TV a week or so before the massacre, wielding a semi automatic SKS carbine, predicting, again, that a massacre would occur using a gun similar to the one he was holding.

This "forecast" even appeared in the newspapers but no one in authority seemed to follow it up.

In addition, one has to ask who would "benefit" from such a massacre. Judging by the concerted campaign waged by this Tasmanian gun control group it is clear to me that the aiim of having semi automatic firearms banned Australia wide, was their major and oft stated goal and this was achieved.

Clearly the gun control organisation made a lucky guess and the fact that the massacre occurred as described was pure coincidence I don't know if I mentioned it before but I'm really the Virgin Mary, too.

For R-TEX12

Yes Queensland used to be really great and still is in some ways and not so good in others. I was born here and lived a lot of my life here, so I know about how things have changed.

Incidentally, an amusing aspect of the "Playboy" ban was that whilst I was serving in Vietnam, in 1968/69, sales of "Playboy" through the Australian PX were forbidden because it was thought to have it available would be "bad for morale"(!!) and "unfair" to those back home in Australia who couldn't get it.
Our invitation to those Australians who thought they would be unfairly treated, to join us in Vietnam was never answered. Strange that.

Anyway, we used to get copies through the US PXs plus every other type of pornography you could lay your hands on. Morale, by the way, was never better

 

[LAR-15]

Thanks

20 rounds through three guns sounds awful fishy for such good shooting

 

[Cortez]

FOR LAR-15

20 rounds through three guns sounds awful fishy for such good shooting

Oh, according to the gun control organisations here "anyone" could do what Bryant did. That's why they were determined to have all semi automatics banned - because they couldn't trust ANY shooter not to go off the rails and commit a massacre.

Some interesting stats re deaths in Australia:

1. It is so rare for a licensed gun owner to commit ANY sort of crime with his firearms that statistics on this simply aren't available. It would be less than one perhaps in every 3 years or more. More restrictions on legal owneership are desperately needed.

2. Meantime, legal drivers kill around 1600 people every year on our roads and maim thousands more - jolly good sport, eh?

3. According to Federal Government statistics, around 18,000 people are killed each year by doctors and nurses in Australian hospitals through carelessness, negligence, incorrect procedure and inappropriate "care". Moral - try NOT to get sick in Australia.


Cleary the problem in Australia, in terms of community safety, is with legal gun owners whose dangerous urges need to be kept rigorously in check at all times.
:banghead:

 

[The Viking]

Cortez, thanks for the info.
Also read that Bryant had been into a gunstore just days before the shooting took place, cuz he had some trouble with unloading the AR15...more things that don't match.
BTW, what was the laws in Tasmania regarding longarms?
I wont ask about your status as an owner of a semi-automatic rifle
Oh, and you got the tools for a radical change of politics, should the need arise...keep on to them

 

[Cortez]

THis weekend, several of our major newspapers ran long articles (the Weekend Australian Magazine artilces was 7 pages long) about the Port Arthur Massacre. I imagine the pace and amount of copy will increase as April 28 approaches, this being the 10th anniversary of the massacre.

The articles concentrated mainly on Bryant himself. Some interesting information was revealed.

He originally pleaded Not Guilty to all the charges and maintained that plea for two months. He was given a different lawyer, who, together with his mother, persuaded him to change his plea to guilty. In fact his new lawyer would not entertain the idea of permitting Bryant to plead Not Guilty. (could this ever happen in the US?)

The following excerpts are enlightening:

In a rare interview before the anniversary of the April 28, 1996 killings,
Bryant's mother Carleen says her son won't speak to her.

"Martin is like a zombie," she told The Bulletin magazine. Mrs Bryant, who
lives in southern Tasmania, says one of her deepest regrets is agreeing to
persuade her son to plead guilty.

"My poor Martin," she says. "He couldn't have shot all those people down at
Port Arthur. He didn't have the brains to do it."

Forensic psychologist Ian Joblin examined Bryant after the massacre and
concluded he was borderline intellectually disabled, his IQ equivalent to an
11-year-old.

He also found Bryant was sane at the time of the massacre - a conclusion he
now doubts.

"I now have serious doubts about whether he was sane, but I'm probably the
only one in the world who thinks this," Mr Joblin says.

The Prison psychiatrist who also examined Bryant, confirmed the findings that his IQ was equivalent to an 11 year old, but also noted that he had the emotional development of a 2 year old.

Persoanlly, I don't know if Bryant committed the massacre or not. All I know is that for a person who was of such limited intelligence and even more limited emotional development, he displayed, during the massacre, according to eye witnesses a "cool, unhurried and deliberate manner as he shot his vicitms". If all of this is true, it makes Bryant unique amongst all of the mass murderers the world has ever known.

The is a rotten stench about this whole affair. I wonder if the truth will ever be known?

 

[Mr.V.]

cortez...sure it could happen here.
Texas has executed several mentally retarded people for murder. It sends the message to the mentally retarded community that they should think long and hard about murder before they commit it.

However, about what you said. The whole thing sounds creepy. You would have thought there would be more wounded. Forget about the caliber, that many dead:wounded means the guy who did it was a great shot. While some autistics may have the ability to carry out such a massacre, having worked with several developmentally disabled individuals, I find it hard to believe that the amount of planning required for such an event could be carried out by one.

So I agree...something's wrong if he really is mentally retarded. Maybe a cop gone bad? or someone in the mob who paid off the right people?

 

[Spiphel Rike]

"I wonder if the truth will ever be known?"

I suspect it will be known whenever the gag is released/the documents unsealed. Recently the paper had an article about the black market of weapons in queensland, with statements from the police that it "didn't exist" and various prices ($2300 for a glock 19).

At the end they had a few lines for the SSAA (sporting shooters association of australia) to say "laws only effect good people, they're useless". Of course this might just be some crazy campaign, get people to question the laws then do a big sob story on the 10th anniversary of the massacre. That would of course cement the whole argument into people's minds, sadly.

Mr Bryant being able to shoot lots of head and neck shots with his weak hand from the hip is highly questionable.

 

[Bluey]

I can safely say the gun laws worked.
I got offered a new in box ruger .22 pistol with 15 round mag for AU$500 a couple of months ago. Dunno how much that works out to in USD, but I suspect it's not terribly much considering.