A Shortcut to Australia's Civilian Disarmament?

[Drizzt]

This is an interesting article I found on FreeRepublic. I tried to find it on the Guns & Ammo site as well, but there was nothing listed for this article.
I don't know, maybe it's tin-foil hat time.....



A Shortcut to Australia's Civilian Disarmament?

Crime/Corruption News Keywords: DISARMING AUSTRALIA
Source: Guns & Ammo
Published: May 2001 Author: DR. Joanne Eisen, Dr. Paul Gallant, Andrew S. MacGregor
Posted on 04/16/2001 12:34:33 PDT by Aurelius
"We are going to see a mass shooting in Tasmania...unless we get national gun control laws." ----Roland Brown, Chairman of the Coalition for Gun Control, uttered on "A Current Affair with Ray Martin," March 1996

On Sunday afternoon, April 28, 1996 - just a few weeks later - "lone-nut assassin" Martin Bryant opened fire on tourists at the Broad Arrow Cafe in Port Arthur, Tasmania.

Before Bryant left the Broad Arrow ninety seconds later, 20 people lay dead and 13 others lay injured. Nineteen of the twenty deaths were the result of a gunshot wound to the head. By the time Bryant was finally apprehended, 35 lay dead, and 18 were seriously wounded.

Twelve days after Bryant's shooting spree, massive new restrictions were imposed on the civilian possession and use of firearms - restrictions specifically designed to reduce the number of lawfully owned guns in the hands of Australians.

It was a scenario all too familiar to American gun-owners. A high profile shooting occurs and new laws are demanded - laws designed to render civilian firearms possession all the more difficult. With Port Arthur, however, many Australians suspect that firearms-prohibitionists weren't willing to leave anything to chance.

Fueling the fires of suspicion, major dscrepancies in the official accounts of the Port Arthur massacre in the years that followed andcharges of cover-up and conspiracy were leveled at the Australian government. Even if the exact details may never be known with certainty, some light may be shed by examining whether Martin Bryant was capable of acting alone.

Twenty eight year old Martin Bryant had an IQ of 66 and was considered incompetent by the state at the time of the shootings. In February 1984, a psychriatic assessment determined that Bryant was eligible for a Dept. of Social Security Invalid pension. It was granted because of Bryant's mental deficiencies, that he had been unable to hold a job and was incapable of managing his own affairs. In addition to his pension he had been left a legacy of over one million dollars.

I Bryant had co-conspirators who made themselves scarce after his actions, then might not their motive be facilitation of a political agenda? Sufficient evidence now exists in the public record to strongly suggest that Bryant could not have acted alone, either in planning or in execution of the massacre. Charges of a conspiracy designed to stampede Australians into surrendering their guns becomes all the more credible.

A DIVERSIONARY PHONE CALL

Bryant departed at 9:47 a.m. for Port Arthur after spending four days with his girlfriend. He made several stops along the way, purchasing a cigarette lighter, a bottle of tomato juice, and approximately 220 litres of gasoline.

He had lunch upon arrival at the Broad Arrow Cafe. About an hour before the shooting commenced, an anonymous telephone call was made to the police. The unidentified caller reported a large quantity of heroin stashed at a coal mine situated near Saltwater River at the extreme west end of the Tasman Peninsula. The only two policemen on the Tasman Peninsula were sent to investigate. One was dispatched from Nubeena, the closest police station to the Port Arthur site, 11 kilometers away. The other officer was dispatched from Dunalley, a small town to the north with the "swing bridge" capable of isolating the Tasman Peninsula from the rest of Tasmania. On their arrival at Saltwater River, the police found only jars filled with soap powder. Within minutes of the officers' reporting their position at the coal mines, the shooting commenced at the Broad Arrow Cafe.

Was that anonymous phone call just mere coincidence? Was it simple oversight that, in all of the government documentation, there is only a single reference to this phone call, and of the dispatching of the only police officers to the far away Salt River?

There was neither any further interest nor any follow-up investigation of the origins of that anonymous phone call.

Wendy Scurr was the first one to call in the report of the shootings to the police and is a senior instructor at St. Johns Ambulance. In her spare time, she worked as a volunteer with the Tasmanian Ambulance Service in the Port Arthur area. About the anonymous phone call, Scurr said, "I became aware that the only two police were dispatched to Saltwater River. I was chatting to the Nubeena policeman and he told me where he was when the shooting began. His name is Paul Hyland. The other policeman was stationed in Dunalley. He would back up Hyland as they were told heroin (soap powder) was found at Saltwater River."

"This meant that the only two local police were at least 25 minutes away from Port Arthur. Very convenient. I don't know when, where or who rang and alerted the police to this so-called heroin haul..."

"I know it should have been on tape. But I went to Hobart about a week after the shooting to a meeting of the ambulance service. A comment was made to me that the tape recordings of the days events had been accidentally wiped. The chap who told me was a senior ambulaance officer. I traveled with him to the meeting, and it was during this journey that I was given this information."

In addition, according to free lance journalist, Joe Vialls, closing the swing bridge to Dunalley "would also prevent anyone from leaving the Peninsula, including those involved in executing the massacre at Port Arthur." But because the Dualley-based officer was called away, "the bridge remained open to traffic after the massacre, and several people are known to have left and escaped across the swing bridge..."

If Martin Bryant was too incompetent to plan and execute this complicated this complicated scenario alone, then there was at least one other person who helped Bryant by diverting the police from the Cafe and providing Bryant more time. Who was that person? Did he use the swing bridge at Dunalley to make good his escape?

BRYANT'S EXIT TO SEASCAPE

What is known about the events following the carnage at the Broad Arrow Cafe, is that Bryant, upon leaving the cafe, switched from the .223 Colt AR-15 semi-automatic rifle used inside the cafe to his other rifle, a .308 Fabrique Nationale FAL semi-automatic, and fired several shots.

He then drove 100 yards to the toll booth at the Port Arthur historic site, shot four people inside a gold BMW, and exchanged vehicles. He drove another 200 yards to a service station, blocked off a Toyota Corolla driven by Glen Pears, and took Pears hostage at gunpoint, forcing into the trunk of the BMW. As Pears' female companion Zoe Hall attempted to get into the driver's seat and make her escape, Bryant shot her.

Bryant drove the BMW five kilometers to the Seascape Cottage, a holiday accomodation with he back of the property facing the ocean at Long Bay. Bryant set fire to the BMW and took Pears into the main building.

A state of siege ensued upon the arrival of the police. Police superintendents Barry Bennett and Bob Fielding discussed the Seascape siege in the March 1997 issue of the Association of South Australia Police Journal. They noted:"There was some suggestion that there may be two suspects. It appeared at one stage that two gunmen or some people or hostages at Seascape were exchanging gunfire with the gunman as there appeared to be shots coming from two separate buildings..."(emphasis ours)

According to autopsy reports, two of the hostages - the elderly couple who owned and operated Seascape, David and Sally Martin - were killed early on Sunday morning, before Bryant had even driven into the Port Arthur area. According to the official Court transcripts, the burned corpse of the third hostage, Glen Pears, was recovered with his hands secured behind his body with a pair of handcuffs.

It is highly unlikely that Martin Bryant alone, could have been shooting from several buildings at once, while spending the time he did on the phone with the hostage negotiators.

With all three of Bryant's hostages accounted for, and no one else found in the buildings at Seascape besides Bryant, who was the othe gunman?

By early the next morning, smoke was seen billowing from the building, forcing Bryant out, his back on fire and into police custody

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3adb49495710.htm

[CIDGRAD87]

That seems verbatim from May G and Ammo.

[moa]

There where at least two known witnesses to the shooting in the cafe who where not injured. They are an American couple. Their story is interesting. When the shooter entered the cafe and opened fire, the American couple immediately dove for cover and remained unhurt. Amazingly, most everybody else just froze in their chairs and the shooter casually picked them off one-by-one. I think he even stopped at one time to reload. If I remember correctly, most of the dead where Australians.

You will note in the report that 19 of the 20 dead in the cafe died of gunshot wound to the head.

[Dangus]

I've shown this to my Aussie girlfriend and started quite a fight. Hopefully she'll get over the fight at least. Seems every time I mention that people over-react to things like, I suddenly am an uncaring monster

[Navy joe]

No, no agent of the gov. would ever bomb one of their own bldgs. to pass some domestic anti-terrorism law. Say it ain't so! OH OOPS, wrong topic?