{"id":123991,"date":"2020-03-22T14:16:06","date_gmt":"2020-03-22T18:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gunsamerica.com\/digest\/?p=123991"},"modified":"2020-03-22T14:16:06","modified_gmt":"2023-09-06T13:48:30","slug":"will-martin-bryant-and-the-port-arthur-massacre-the-homicidal-lunatic-that-disarmed-a-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/will-martin-bryant-and-the-port-arthur-massacre-the-homicidal-lunatic-that-disarmed-a-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Bryant and the Port Arthur Massacre: The Homicidal Lunatic That Disarmed a Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Martin
This is the face of a monster. Martin Bryant was the most prolific mass murderer in modern Australian history. His horrific crimes changed the fabric of the country. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Martin John Bryant was\nborn in May of 1967 in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, the oldest son of Maurice\nand Carleen Bryant. Martin consistently broke his toys and once yanked the\nsnorkel from another child while he was diving. He tortured animals, was\nobsessed with fire, and had an IQ of 66, about the equivalent of an\n11-year-old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Martin Bryant finally found a friend in the eccentric heiress Helen Harvey. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bryant was unsuccessful in school and was too socially awkward to maintain normal friendships. However, in early 1987 at age 19 he met a 54-year-old woman named Helen Mary Elizabeth Harvey. Ms. Harvey had inherited a share of the Tattersall\u2019s lottery fortune and was both eccentric and wealthy. Tattersall\u2019s is a conglomerate that has a functional monopoly on the lottery system in Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Martin Bryant encouraged Helen Harvey to spend large quantities of money. Martin was obsessed with bestiality and gory horror movies and frequently slept with his pet pig. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Harvey maintained 14 dogs\nand 30 cats in a run-down mansion owned by her ailing mother. She invited\nBryant to move in with her, and the two of them bought some thirty new cars\nover a three-year period. They traveled widely together and spent money with\nwanton abandon. Throughout it all Martin Bryant was persistently both strange\nand violent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Martin was nearly killed in a car wreck that took the life of his benefactor. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1992 Martin and Helen\nwere driving on a rural road when Helen swerved the car into oncoming traffic\nand was killed. Martin Bryant suffered a severe back injury and required seven\nmonths in hospital to recover. Previously Bryant had been known to lunge for\nthe steering wheel while a passenger in a car and had already precipitated\nthree automobile accidents. Helen Harvey left the entirety of her estate, some\n$550,000, to Martin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Maurice Bryant, shown here alongside his nutjob son Martin, was found drowned in a pond. This event precipitated a significant deterioration in Martin\u2019s demeanor and behavior. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Two months later Martin\u2019s father Maurice went missing. Divers eventually found him at the bottom of a pond with one of Martin\u2019s scuba weight belts wrapped around his neck. The police declared the death a suicide. With the death of his father, Martin acquired another quarter-million dollar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Martin Bryant planned his rampage weeks in advance. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Martin grew ever more despondent and began to drink heavily and daily. Soon after New Year in 1996, he began planning his bloody masterwork. He confided to a neighbor, \u201cI\u2019ll do something that will make everyone remember me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Crime<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Martin
Noelene and David Martin were Bryant\u2019s first known victims. They were targeted because Martin Bryant\u2019s father had become angry with them over a business deal. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Martin Bryant\u2019s father had\ncomplained incessantly that a local couple, David and Noelene Martin, had\nsomehow cheated the Bryant clan by buying a nearby bed and breakfast called\nSeascape. On April 28, 1996, Martin drove to David and Noelene\u2019s home and killed\nthem both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
The Port Arthur Historic Site is the best-preserved convict settlement in Australia and a popular tourist draw. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bryant then proceeded to\nthe Port Arthur Historic Site, a popular nearby tourist destination, interacting\nwith several people along the way. Some of these witnesses later described him\nas rude, while others said he was friendly. Bryant parked his car near a caf\u00e9\non the premises. He then entered the restaurant carrying a large black bag,\nbought lunch, and ate it in a leisurely fashion at an outdoor table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Bryant enjoyed a pleasant meal before he produced a rifle like this one and opened fire on his fellow diners. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

During his meal, Bryant made small talk with the other people in the cafe. He responsibly returned his tray and retrieved a Colt SP-1 AR-15 Carbine equipped with a 3x Colt scope and 30-round magazine from his bag. In the fifteen seconds that followed Martin Bryant fired seventeen rounds and killed twelve people, wounding another ten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
The attached gift shop was both congested and crowded. Bryant\u2019s victims had no place to run. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bryant then made his way\ninto the gift shop where he fired a dozen rounds, killing another eight people\nand wounded two more. His victims were hemmed in and helpless. Many of the dead\nwere shot at extremely close range. Bryant reloaded his rifle in the gift shop\nand left the empty magazine on the checkout counter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
This parking lot was the scene of a great deal of carnage. Martin Bryant targeted his victims randomly. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bryant then moved to the car park. He fired at Ashley Law, a site employee, at a range of about 75 meters but missed. After sowing mayhem throughout the car lot he returned to his vehicle and exchanged his AR-15 for an L1A1 SLR rifle. By the time he grew weary of the car park, he had killed another six people and wounded the same number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Bryant had inexplicably strapped a surfboard to the top of his Volvo the day of the massacre. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bryant then mounted his\ncar and headed down the drive away from the Historic Site. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Bryant shot this woman and her two young children randomly as he fled the scene of his crimes. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On the way, he encountered a young mother with two children aged 3 and 6. This stupid monster exited his car and shot the three of them at contact range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
When Bryant carjacked a new vehicle he abandoned his USAS-12 shotgun in his Volvo. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Once at the toll booth leading\ninto the facility Bryant stopped a BMW, killing its four occupants. He loaded\nhis weapons, a pair of handcuffs, and an extra fuel can from his own vehicle\ninto the BMW before speeding off. He left behind a Daewoo USAS-12 shotgun. By\nnow he had killed 33 and wounded 19.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
This guy\u2019s head is a bucket of snakes. It is impossible to establish any reason or order to his actions that fateful day. He claimed later not to remember any of it clearly. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bryant stopped at a nearby gas station and confronted a couple there. For reasons unknown, he forced the male half of the pair into the boot of his stolen BMW and killed the man\u2019s girlfriend. The service station attendant had a rifle, but Bryant was gone by the time he could retrieve ammunition and get it loaded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Seascape was a beautiful place before Martin Bryant murdered the owners and burned it to the ground. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bryant then returned to\nSeascape, shooting and injuring several bystanders along the way. Once back at\nthe bed and breakfast he handcuffed his prisoner to a stair railing and incinerated\nthe BMW. The following morning, having murdered his hostage and now surrounded\nby police, Martin Bryant set fire to the building. He taunted the cops to \u201ccome\nand get him.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Never one to fully consider the ramifications of his actions, Bryant set fire to the building he was cowering within. He incurred some fairly significant burns as a result. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The police let the\nbuilding burn around him. Bryant eventually fled the conflagration with his\nclothes alight. The cops found the remains of his two rifles in the burned out\nbuilding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Weapons<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Martin
The Colt AR-15 was produced in a semiautomatic civilian version alongside the Army-issue M16. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

ArmaLite designed the original 5.56mm AR-15 in the mid-1950s. \u201cAR\u201d stands for \u201cArmaLite Rifle,\u201d a designation that persists to the present. ArmaLite sold the manufacturing rights to the AR-15 to Colt\u2019s Manufacturing Company in 1959. Colt sold the first semiautomatic AR-15 rifles to the public in 1964.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
The Carbine version of the AR-15 rifle was shorter and handier. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Original AR-15 rifles\nfeatured a fixed polymer stock and a 20-inch barrel. Colt eventually offered a\ncarbine version of the weapon with a collapsible aluminum buttstock and 16-inch\nthin-profile barrel. The stubby little 3X Colt scope featured a fixed\nmagnification and built-in mechanical bullet drop compensator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
The SLR is a full-sized .30-caliber battle rifle. Martin Bryant had passed extensive background checks to purchase his weapons. Australian authorities never did quite determine how he pulled that off. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The SLR or \u201cSelf-Loading\nRifle\u201d was the British version of the Belgian-designed FN-FAL that saw military\nuse from 1954 to the present. The SLR was also known at the C1A1 in Canadian\nparlance or the \u201cInch Pattern\u201d FAL in the US. The FAL saw service with seventy\ndifferent militaries to include the Australian Army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
The FN FAL saw extensive service around the globe during the Cold War. Here we see a US Marine undergoing familiarization training during the first Gulf War. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The SLR is a 7.62x51mm semiautomatic\ngas-operated autoloader that features a tilting breechblock and feeds from a\ntwenty-round box magazine. The SLR is a large rifle at 45 inches long and 9.56\npounds empty. The SLR served in the British Army until it was replaced by the\nL85A1 in 1984. In 1989 the Australian military replaced the SLR with the F88\nAusteyr, an Australian-produced version of the Steyr AUG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fallout<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Martin
The shockingly brutal nature of Bryant\u2019s crimes shook the Australian psyche on a visceral level. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Port Arthur Massacre\nprecipitated a nationwide transformation in the Australian public\u2019s perceptions\nof firearms. Tasmania, where the massacre occurred, had previously been a\npredominantly rural bastion of gun ownership. Australian State governments\npassed laws to give effect to the sweeping National Firearms Agreement a mere\ntwelve days after the massacre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Australian NFA placed tight restrictions on the ownership of semi and fully automatic weapons. As a result of the act, the Australian government bought back and destroyed 643,000 firearms for a total cost of $350 million. The money for this program came from a temporary increase in the Australian Medicare levy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
The Australian government bought back and destroyed hundreds of thousands of previously legally owned firearms. There are 4,500 guns in this bin awaiting the smelter. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As a result of the NFA, there is currently a nationwide firearms registry as well as a 28-day waiting period on the purchase of firearms. The law stipulates storage requirements and demands a \u201cgenuine reason\u201d for ownership. Self-defense is not an acceptable justification. As of 2014, there were at least 260,000 unregistered illegal firearms in circulation in Australia. Scholarly works undertaken since then have been inconclusive regarding the law\u2019s effect on crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
The Australian NFA was a culture-shifting piece of legislation. The Australian soldiers with whom I served were sickened by it. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I was a soldier in 1997 and undertook a joint operation with the Australian Army soon after the NFA took effect. I recall passing Aussie gun shops that were boarded up and shuttered as a result of the legislation. The Australian soldiers with whom I worked, most of whom were politically conservative, deeply lamented the demise of their liberty. Today, some twenty-three years later, 85% of Australians feel that the NFA is either appropriate or too lenient. After two decades of acclimation, only 6% of citizens believe that the statutes are excessively restrictive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Observations<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"Martin
Martin Bryant was defective from the outset. His childhood and adolescence demonstrate textbook antisocial personality disorder. The Australian press was castigated for doctoring this photo to make Bryant look crazier than he was. Given the egregious nature of his real-life performance that seems superfluous to me. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Studying the dispassionate\nslaughter wrought by Martin Bryant was a tough read. His victims ranged in age\nfrom 72 down to 3. The most compelling aspect of the carnage to me, however,\nwas the sheer helplessness of the victims. His targets fought back with foul\nlanguage, profound bravery, and dinner trays, but they were all utterly\nhelpless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Gun ownership in America is on a whole different scale from that in Australia. If all firearms were outlawed in the US tomorrow criminals would still remain heavily armed a century from now. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There are nearly 400 million firearms in America. The Australian government bought back 643,000 guns after their NFA. At the apogee of the Obama Presidency, there were that many NICS checks in the US in nine days. An Australia-style gun buyback is a physical impossibility in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Martin Bryant will spend the rest of his natural life in solitary confinement inside this building. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Martin Bryant pled guilty\nand received 35 life sentences and 1,035 years in prison. He remains in\nsolitary confinement in Hobart\u2019s Risdon Prison today. The profound effects this\none psychopath had on Australian culture will never be undone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Martin
Today Martin Bryant is 52 years old and weighs 352 pounds. He has attempted suicide eight times and once broke a nurse\u2019s jaw in prison. With more than a millennium on his sentence, he will never again breathe free air. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Buy and Sell on GunsAmerica!<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martin Bryant pled guilty and received 35 life sentences and 1,035 years in prison. He remains in solitary confinement in Hobart\u2019s Risdon Prison today. The profound effects this one psychopath had on Australian culture will never be undone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":124016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_specdata_upc":"","_specdata_placement":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[772],"tags":[132,102,752,1965],"featured":[],"hunt365":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-123991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-will-dabbs","8":"tag-buzz","9":"tag-feature-articles","10":"tag-historical-guns","11":"tag-mass-shooting"},"yoast_head":"\nMartin Bryant and the Port Arthur Massacre: The Homicidal Lunatic That Disarmed a Nation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Martin Bryant and the Port Arthur Massacre: The Homicidal Lunatic That Disarmed a Nation - Will Dabbs\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/gunsamerica.com\/digest\/will-martin-bryant-and-the-port-arthur-massacre-the-homicidal-lunatic-that-disarmed-a-nation\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Martin Bryant and the Port Arthur Massacre: The Homicidal Lunatic That Disarmed a Nation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Martin Bryant pled guilty and received 35 life sentences and 1,035 years in prison. 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However, shooting guns and claiming it was work seemed like a pretty sweet hustle. As a result, Will serendipitously transformed an avocation into a vocation. Raised in the Mississippi Delta, Will flew UH1H, OH58A\\\/C, CH47D and AH1S helicopters operationally as an Army Aviator. He is SCUBA-qualified and has parachuted out of perfectly good airplanes at 3 o'clock in the morning. Will has summited Mount McKinley, Alaska, six times\u2026always at the controls of an Army helicopter, which is the only way sensible folk climb mountains. Will has delivered sixty babies and occasionally wrung human blood out of his socks. He is married to his high school sweetheart and has three awesome adult children. 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