Over our dead bodies: Port Arthur and Australia's fight for gun control

Simon Chapman Pluto Press, $A24.95, pp 218 ISBN 1 86403 037 2 Rating: ![Graphic][1] ![Graphic][2] ![Graphic][3] On Sunday 28 April 1996, 23 year old Martin Bryant entered a tourist complex 100 km south of Hobart, Tasmania, and shot dead 35 people, wounding 18 others. The media described it as “the worst massacre by a single gunman in Australian history,” although Chapman points out on page 1 that the wholesale slaughter of aborigines in the 19th century often involved far higher individual tallies. Before this watershed tragedy, Australia's eight states and … [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif [2]: /embed/inline-graphic-2.gif [3]: /embed/inline-graphic-3.gif