Doomed to Fail - Ep 107 - Australia's Gun Horror: The Port Arthur Massacre

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

Today, we take a look at Australia's gun laws, specifically the laws passed after the Port Arthur Massacre in 1996. Martin Bryant was a young man who had many, many issues and about a million dollars to his name when he went on a rampage, killing 35 people. Post this event, the Australian government upped their gun laws and did an extensive buy-back program.We talk about the horrors of the event but also the extent to which the new laws changed Australia and their effect on mass shooting statistics.You won't be surprised to know that the more guns, the more gun deaths.  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Orenthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can. And we are back, Taylor. How has your week been so far? I'm trying to find a way to take a picture of these pretty glass bottles to so people know what I was talking about last episode.

Yeah. I particularly like the one that looks like Bristol. I know. Is it pretty? From, what is it, Trader Joe's? Yeah, from Trader Joe's, yeah. It's just like a white wine and, yeah, it's beautiful. Little DIY home good tips from Taylor.

Another tip that I have is you can buy, like, those, you know, those poorer things that, like, they have a bars on liquor bottles, like the silver things, like they put on top of them. Yeah. You can buy those and put them on the bottle and make your olive oil bottle. That's brilliant. It's really pretty. I have, like, a really pretty tequila bottle of my olive oil bottle. I bet if you just started doing DIY projects

I mean the thing you did to that garage that you turn into Juan's office is incredible like y'all really do DIY stuff thank you so yeah well let's go ahead and Taylor had a great story for us

we're getting into like some pretty interesting stuff I mean I like to think that's always interesting but like you know I think you're going to be interested in this topic, which it's a topic that's constantly around in the U.S., and so I'm going to be discussing the Port Arthur

Massacre. Do you know what that is? I don't, not right away, but I feel like I will when we start talking about it. Also, can you enter the show? Oh. Welcome to Dune to Fail. This is a twice-weekly podcast where me and Taylor cover topics that we just find interesting, and then we banter about it, which some of you all don't like, and some of you do, and then we

move on and continue with different topics that we released twice a week. Was that good? Tell your friends. We're learning a lot of stuff. We're learning a lot of stuff. I learned a lot on this one because well basically I'll give you the TLDR right now. So this was the mass shooting events that occurred in

Australia that triggered all kinds of gun reforms in Australia. Oh, okay yeah, yeah. And so I was really curious to learn about what was going on with guns in Australia before, what was going on the guns with Australia after? How did that relate compared to other countries

and the United States, so on and so forth? And here's the spoiler alert is I reached no conclusions, except that obviously banning guns results in less gun and violence. But there's some other... Who would have guessed? Who would have thought?

Who would have thought? But there's a lot of thing into it. And this is one that I really want to hear your perspective on. So like, listen closely because I do have a lot of open-ended questions on this one and could use your perspective. So the event we're talking about, it occurred in the Australian state of Tasmania on April 28, 1996. So we're going back about 28 years at this point to explore this.

So I'm going to cover this in several sections. What is what happened to what was going on with Australia before this happened? We're going to talk about the perpetrator. The person actually did it. We're going to talk about the crime itself. And then we're going to talk about Australia after this happened. So it's kind of the four sections that I broke this into. So before Port Arthur happened, each state in Australia was responsible for their own gun laws.

So there was no federal gun regulations. It was all dictated and determined by those individual states. The event here, like I said, took place in Tasmania. So I was looking at gun laws there in particular. And it was pretty, it was laxed. Like it was a pretty laxed state when it came to gun laws. That in Queensland, those two. seemed to be like the Texas and Arkansas of Australia for the most part.

And so at that time, there was no, thank you. But I get it. I get, I get what you mean. So at that time, Tasmania actually didn't require registering of firearms. It was kind of a free for all. You can do whatever you want. So I use the U.S. as a benchmark to kind of understand where the world is and was at that time. so just for comparison sake

the US is a good benchmark because everybody knows where our relationship to guns is and right now for example we have a 32% personal gun ownership is that what I'm looking for basically 32% of individuals in the US own guns and in addition of that they own more than

one gun so the last that I looked at from 2017 said that there was a per capital number of 120 guns per 100 people in the U.S. Wow. So some people have a shit ton of guns. Yeah. Is what the math means? Well, yeah, because if 32% a gun ownership rate,

would that equals out to a 68% of the people don't own guns, but you have 120 to 100 guns. So. Right. So someone else a lot of guns. Some people have like arsenals at home. My only hope is that I hope I always think of, remember tremors, that movie? Oh, yeah, beautiful, great movie.

With Reba McIntyre, her and her husband have that arsenal. That's the only one I've ever found charming. Yeah, well, she can pull it off too. So at the time of this event, Australia had a gun ownership rate of 8.1%. So it wasn't like crazy riddled with guns, but it wasn't like, crazy riddled with guns. but it wasn't like nobody had guns. A. Point one is still in the global total relatively high. What's a global total right now?

I don't have a global total. I do have a listing of what it is right now in terms of where Australia and the U.S. and some other countries rank in terms of gun ownership. I think it was Australia's like 51 or something. U.S. is number one by a super wide margin. it's not even close it's like the per capita is like 100 i forgot what it was exactly it was like 120 to 100 and then the next country is like 60 to 100 it like drops dramatically yeah yeah but that's kind of the condition of what's going on australia before

this event happens let's get into the perpetrator real quick and and then get into the event itself so the perpetrator his name is martin and if you look him up there's some pictures of him where he looks kind of like a surfer guy and there's one picture of him where he looks particularly crazy that I later found out was all kind of media done they basically made his eyes glow and he looks absolutely terrifying in it um but that's the guy if you look him up it was his name again can you tell me it again mart martin bryant so at the time of the event he was 29 years old and i'm how i had a hard time kind of of coming up with a good description form he strikes me the combo that i hit was that he was

as mentally ill as at adam launza the sandy hook guy but also like innately evil like the columbine guys like i feel like those two are like an interesting cross section of like the worst humanity he was always odd like to the point where this was documented extensively way before this event by his parents, by teachers, by social workers, by acquaintances that he grew up with. He left school at around 16 or 17 years old. And part of the reason was basically just an inability or an unwillingness to learn or engage with school or students or the curriculum. He would be evaluated for mental illness at this time. The reason being is that he essentially, at 16, 17 years old, fell back onto a disability pension.

So he was using disability benefits, and they had to do an evaluation of him to decide whether he was fit and suited for this kind of benefit. And when they did their psyche valve, they established that he was borderline mentally disabled. So they clocked an IQ score of somewhere around 66, which is like, I think in the U.S. under 75 is considered disabled, but maybe Australia. and especially back then they had a different standard but he was like he was really low like I mean 75 is like

he was very very low and in addition to everything else he was also completely illiterate he didn't know how to read he didn't know how to write he never learned those skills from reading his parents account they seemed to recognize pretty quickly there was something going on with him

there was something wrong with him his parents were decent parents by all accounts like they weren't you know horrible people so like there's no assumption there's any sort of abuse in his background other than the fact that he was mercilessly bullied at school he was not getting abused at home that is at minimum he have did not going did he have any siblings i don't know i don't look that up yeah uh it is pretty clear assuming assuming at this point he never made friends at school and he was prone to torturing

animals. So weird. He'd also mess with people in like very strange but also kind of pass progressive ways. One one report I read was that he would cut down his neighbor's trees without telling that he just Can you imagine doing a chore that annoying for the fun of annoying somebody else? Oh my God. Yeah. Later in life he would be diagnosed with Asperger's in ADD

earlier when he was going for a psyche valve for his disability benefits. It was assumed he might be schizophrenic or like on the cusp of developing schizophrenia. Later on, after everything that we're going to discuss here, happened, and he did a full course of psych evaluations. It was clear that he was not schizophrenic. So that part of mental illness did not hit him.

Martin would never make friends with anybody his own age. He did, however, develop a weirdly, really weird relationship with a wealthy older woman when he was 19 and she was 54. Her name was Helen, Mary, Elizabeth Harvey, and you're going to hate this sailor. She was what was called a tatter sales heir. And I looked this up. So this is a thing in Australia where there was this one company called Tatter Sale

that was startling to 1800s by this guy who really wanted his employees to have an ownership interest in the business. And so unlike our situation where we work for, companies who give us the option to buy stock that's not how this works this is basically employee owned so he when he died all interests in the business went into this trust that was all divvied up amongst their employees so that when the company goes public they all get rich and so there's this group of people who when this company went public ended up making a shitload of money this woman mary elizabeth or helen mary elizabeth harvey this 58 54 year old woman that martin meets her great, great, great grandfather was some worker at this company in like the 1800s,

and she still inherited like a boatload of money. That's awesome. I do hate that because that I'm jealous, but fuck is cool. I know. I hate it in the exact same way. Helen lived in a rundown mansion with her mother, Hilsa, and Martin was trying to launch a lawnmowing. Yeah, right. It sounds like what was that movie?

Gray Gardens. Thank you. It sounds just like Ray Gardens. So Martin was apparently trying to launch a lawn milling business. So he came knocking on her door. Helen hired Martin and some sort of our friendship developed at this point. It was clear from what I read that they had been living in isolation for about 30 years. So Helen and her mom were just living in this mansion, isolated, not talking to anybody.

And the house sounds like an episode of hoarders. Like I read that they were sleeping on trash. Like, there was a dozen dogs or something in the house. There was like 40 cats in the house. It sounded like an absolute vision from hell. It sounds exactly like great gardens. Yeah. Yeah, they had like those raccoons in the attic and stuff.

Yeah. So Helen and Martin developed a friendship with Martin would swear up and down wasn't sexual. And at one point, apparently some anonymous person, God bless them, submitted like a welfare check for this mom and daughter duo. and authorities visited the house and they're like you can't live here nobody can live here like this is not a living situation and they also

discovered that Helen had been living with an infected ulcer for like presumably at least two years which I don't know what that feels like but it's got to be horrible I don't know how you just live your life that way yeah and I think I've been watching a lot of hoarders so yes

it sounds like I feel like quarters Have you seen that one woman who who shits in the bucket and she carries a bucket out and splashes it on the ground and it goes all over her feet i mean i'd have also it's also so many who just shit in plastic bags and leave them piled up in the bathroom yeah yeah that's that movie uh is depressing or that shows depressing i don't know why i watch it so much i should help my stuff but also it gets me to throw stuff away so like pause it and throw like a ton of stuff away that's literally the logic

i use when i watch my 600 pound life i'm like i watched them and i'm like i'm like I'm just going to not order that pizza now. I want to have a salad. Let's go for a walk. Yeah. So at this point, the authorities discovered that Helen has this infected ulcer and that her mom, Hilsa, had a broken hip. She'd been living with a broken hip this whole time.

And they weren't doing anything with it. She probably wasn't even, like, getting up at all, right? Probably not. Probably not. They found it on a pile of trash. So they were, legitimately. It was legitimately on a pile of trash. I'm sorry, I laugh.

But you're like, yeah, Taylor. I'm like, okay, I get it. So they were both taken away for treatment and somehow Martin is tasked with getting this house in order to be up for code. I'm assuming they just offered them a ton of money or something. I don't know. By the time the cleanup was complete, Hilsa, the mom had just died in the hospital from her injuries. And so Helen asked Martin to come and stay with her and he did. as part of the cleanup the authorities made helen give up all her animals to the humane society

because like that's not any way for a human or the animals to live and that also happens a lot on horace yeah some of the ones where they find like the cat that went missing like 12 years ago and it's just like so many so many flattened cats it's so disgusting yeah but apparently the authorities forbid her from ever keeping animals again so she did like the only rational thing you would do in that situation when you have a ton of money and no sense she ended up buying a 72 acre farm for her and martin to go live on which they did so in a little bit of a twist of events for helen so in 1992 helen martin and her two newly acquired dogs were in a car that Helen was driving when it apparently veered into oncoming traffic and resulted in her

death as well as the death of the dogs prior to this Helen had recounted to people that sometimes when she's driving Martin who will be in the pastoral seat will just reach over and grab the steering room and start jerking it so apparently Helen had had three accidents before this when they killed her where Martin literally did this thing and so it was a that this wasn't some accidental death that he had done this to her. Would he drive?

We're going to get to that. We're going to get to that. Yeah. Good question. So what ends up happening is that Helen the only person that was consistent in Helen's life was Martin. And so he ends of inheriting everything from her, including

$550,000 in cash. his parents upon learning this they're like hey he can't manage this money he's literally mentally handicapped and so they decided to give guardianship of martin and his money over to a trust so that was the way to kind of the reason the reason i'm bringing that up is because you wonder yourself how did this guy not just blow through all this money and like but like he couldn't he couldn't blow through the money he was dispersed money on a regular basis by this trust so Martin's father ended up moving onto the farm with Martin and he also inherited the farm from Helen

and about two months after he moved in he was found dead having drowned in the dam. It's assumed that he killed himself. Some things are later on they would think okay he probably also, I mean we feel good that he killed Helen and he probably killed his dad too. But the reason why they think that maybe he didn't was because it was noted that his dad suffered from depression and that several months before

any of this ended up happening before Helen dying and all that stuff, he'd actually transferred all of his personal assets. Like he removed him or any personal assets that he had that were not accessible by his wife, Martin's mom, he allowed her to have that access. There was some assumption that he like was thinking he's going to kill himself anyways. he was found dead in a dam like having drowned

and had a weight vest over his head and so okay well weird way to kill yourself really gruesome to fucking throw yourself into a deep dam

and just vote to the bottom of the ocean why would you do it that way but it works all sorts of different ways for no reason at all so yeah

fair not no reason at all but like you know what I mean like small things that you wouldn't think were the thing they are

Totally. Totally. So Martin in this situation ends up inheriting a quarter million dollar pension from the father as well. And then he decides that he wants to sell the farm and move back to that dumpy original house that he first found Helen in. And so he ends up selling the farm. And for whatever reason, he ends up netting only $145,000. But one thing that's interesting here that made me think it was like at this point, he's about 24 years old. he's a mentally disabled recluse who is known for just walking around shooting dogs while also trying to befriend them and he now has a net worth of just under a million dollars in the 1990s like sometimes life just happens and yeah he kind of like fell into all of that yeah I don't want to say he has a charmed life but like so yeah so at this point so he moves back into this house at this point he's lost hell and his only friend he's

ever had in his life he loses his dad and he spent his days mostly just drinking going to the local restaurant and he also make very frequent plane trips not because he was like an avid traveler but because it was the only way to have a captive audience who was forced to listen to him talk because he would be on the plane and he had to start talking the guy next to him you have to listen to him she's sitting terrible what a nightmare yeah and there's no you know um air pods so you have to actually focus on what he's saying. Remember in an airplane when this is terrible and an outdated joke, but when the person is talking and then the person ends up hanging themselves on the plane

because they don't want to talk to them anymore. I mean, I know that that movie is not acceptable anymore, but it was a good movie. But so obviously all this isolation, the loneliness, the drinking, the lack of social skills, they all made him very, very depressed. And he started having ideations that he would vocalize some people around hurting people for not liking him again this was a guy who would shoot at dogs while he was trying

to make friends with them like he he's clearly he doesn't understand yeah so oh yeah i forgot to mention this part when he was on the farm with helen there was apparently like a apple sand there and they would like sell apples to it and he would also walk around shooting his airsoft guns at customers while he hiding in the bushes he's he would be even 25 years old yeah this time so yeah that's our perpetrator or antagonist whatever you want to call them the event itself chronologically what happened like these stories are all kind of the same it's like where did you go and then what did you do the connoit joe thing but it's it's it's it's all the same as everything else right they go somewhere they start blasting i'm just going to this is going to read pretty

pretty easy but chronologically what ended up happening was apparently martin was infatuated with this one piece of property in a bed and breakfast. I almost called an Airbnb. It's a bed and breakfast in Tasmania called Seescape. I looked it up. I mapped it. It is right on the water. It is gorgeous.

It is lush. It is green. It is beautiful. And he apparently wanted to buy this piece of property, which the owners, David and Nolene, Martin, did not want to sell to him. So what is it happened on April 28th, 1996, is Martin goes to this. part of Tasmania where Seescape is and he murders the couple

who own the bed and breakfast he we don't know exactly but he murdered them so the actual events happened around noonish on April 28th he was

he killed them somewhere in a 12 hour window before then so we don't know exactly when but it was somewhere around a 12 hour window before then so presumably he was at the house he was stayed at the house he killed them. He stayed there for a while with their bodies before he ends of leaving. What he ends up leaving with is

he's in his car. He's got a yellow Volvo and he takes the keys to ski scape with him along with the weapons that this couple owned. So they did own guns. They owned guns. Okay. So he hops in his

car and he ends up driving up a little bit to if you look at this part of Tasmania it's like a sea resort type of... I'm always just surprised that the word Tasmania is real because it just like sounds so silly. That's where the devil's come from.

No, I get it. But like, whenever I hear it, I'm like, that can't be real. But it's very cute. Yeah. So it is, so he ends up driving a short trip over to this place called Broad Arrow Cafe. And he took the rifle with him. And it's just like every other shooting.

He walks in, he sits down, apparently nobody cares or notices this rifle. He sees this couple visiting from Malaysia. on his right. They're called Mo Yi-Iing and Sue Lang Chung, and he just starts shooting them. He shots, shoots them both, kills them both. He then shoots and wounds

this other guy and then kills his 21-year-old girlfriend. It sounds like even by this point, we're up to like four shots being taken. Nobody really knows what's going on. It made me think of like this wasn't a, this is not a common thing. And

when you hear the gunshots, it's easy to just not know that they're gunshots or to not understand what's happening, you know? 100%. And even here, I feel like that would happen. You'd be like, this can't be real, you know? Like, remember we hear gunshots when we were in North Carolina? Yeah, I mean, I hear gunshots here.

I mean, it's not that unusual of a thing. But also, this is a Sunday. This is a Sunday early afternoon. It is a beautiful day, a spring day. most people who are here are visiting like I said that that one couple was visiting from Malaysia they all took a ferry in to town so they can be at this one cafe being this one part of Tasmania to take in the ocean sites and in the lushing the lush green rolling hills so you look at that environment you don't assume that there's murders happening around

you right it's like like yeah like I feel like your brain isn't meant for that you know and like even I was telling I was telling I was telling someone not in America about how, like, the kids have drills for an active shooter, where they, like, go into this little, like, corner of their classroom and, like, hide behind desks. And it's just like, how's that real? I mean, I had that thought last week, Taylor, because I went to a comedy show in town. And, yeah, they, they swipe you and everything. But I was like, I mean, people or things happen, right? Like, now when I'm in a crowd, I think about this stuff.

And I don't think that was our reality when we're kids. So he is where he ends up standing when he's basically just standing shooting openly into the cafe is at the entrance slash exit. So people are understanding what's happening. They're ducking for cover. What we know is that in 15 seconds, he killed 12 people and injured 10 others. 15 seconds. Standing at this entrance. at the other end of the entrance of the cafe is the cafe's gift shop because again tourist spot

and he starts walking back that way firing on people who are hiding under their tables and making his way into the back end where the gift shop is and kills another eight people there he then moves the parking lot where he kills four more people again to a spot most of people were exiting off of buses. They were like tour buses. And so they were trapped. Like they were basically just like they have nowhere to go and he just walks onto a bus and most people are off with somebody's still on and he just shoots them. Oh my God.

He then got in his car and he drove up to the toll booth area where he encountered a woman who was fleeing with her three and six year old daughters. And she slowed down because she thought that there were someone there to help. And then he opens the door. tells her to get on the ground and he she does and she shoots her in the head no i know and she he also kills the daughters it's terrible i hate this he then came upon a bm.w that was blocking the exit and it had four people in it and driver and three passengers and he killed all of them and then he took all the weapons out of that out of his car and put him in the bmw and then drove off with it

he was driving back to the seascape when he came across a Toyota and just cut directly in front of it and in it was this guy named Glenn Pierce along with his girlfriend named Zoe Hall Martin apparently got out with his rifle and he reached into the car and grabbed Zoe's head and tried to rip her out of the car he was trying to kidnap her essentially and and then Glenn decides he's going to try and protect her he gets up and Martin points the gun at him and says get in the back of the BMW so he opens the back of the BMW of the trunk and gets Glenn to go inside

there. In the middle of all this, Zoe is trying to climb over into the driver's seat to try and get away and Martin just shoots her and tells her. So he was just looking for a hostage. I'm so glad that this, I know we're talking about potentially doing video for our show, but like if we do do it, like I need to work on my face because my face

is just a horror horrid face right now. Yeah, yeah. This is, I mean, there's just this is the most this is terrible it's very grotesque um police obviously found him very quickly given the fact that he was at seascape shooting at cars we're just driving by like again it's this weird mix of evil mixed with severe mental illness like i don't even know what this actually is he was really just taking pot shots at people while they were like driving by and so

police figured out it was where he was pretty quickly what ends up happening is that he goes inside the house with Glenn. He takes Glenn out of the trunk of the BMW. He handcuffs Glenn to the staircase. And then he kind of just goes upstairs and disappears and is doing his own thing for God knows how long. In the weird hoarder house still? No, no. He's at the seascape. He's at the place of the first. Oh, wait, right, right. During this time, apparently police are like, hey, we don't know how to take care of this. And so we're going to reach out to Melbourne, which is the closest this is a big city in Australia and get their SWAT team to come over and help us figure this out. Apparently 18 hours had passed while they were trying to negotiate with him. They'd call

a cell phone and they were not a cell phone. They called the phone to the seascape and we're talking to him through there and he wasn't giving himself up. Some way somehow in the middle of waiting for the SWAT team to show up, Martin sets fire to the house and he comes out like covered in flames and he like tries to make an escape, which is an odd thing to do when you've done this. Apparently he was trying to, he set the fire to like confuse police and then maybe make an escape.

You're going to be seen. I don't know how you think you're not going to get caught on this. But that was the game plan. So he's on fire. He's on fire? Yeah, he was on fire. He was on fire. So he runs out.

Police put him out. They send him over to a hospital to get treatment. They put the fire. fire out. They go inside. They find Glenn was always handcuffed. He was never released from his handcuffs, but he did have a bullet hole in his, um, in his head. So he shot, he shot and killed him too. Oh. Ultimately, Martin would plea guilty and receive 35 life sentences plus 1,652 years in prison without the possibility of parole. He's, I think 57, 58, somewhere around there right now. He was initially for a very long time. I think it was somewhere around eight years.

seven years kept in complete isolation. He was kept in complete confinement because everybody wanted to kill him. Everybody wanted to kill him. And eventually he made it into a slightly more lax environment where he was living in the mental ward and he was immediately attacked.

And he's kind of been in that situation ever since. He's in maximum security jail now. He left the mental board and he's been trying to commit suicide for the past 15 years, give or take, and hasn't succeeded yet. So that's what his current condition is. And you look at pictures of him, you can tell that he is not doing good in there. So I wanted to talk on what happened after this occurred.

So what happened was Australia responded really, really swiftly. They had attempted to nationally regulate. I mean, the same way here we do in the U.S. they tried to nationally regulate firearms before and again tasmania and queenland were the holdouts saying you know the same stuff you would hear government overreach freedom of rights all that stuff right so once this event happened the the public demand overrode any of that stuff and the prime minister of the time was able to pass a law called the national firearms agreement which mandated licensing in all states of firearms as well as

outlawed outlying completely certain types of firearms. So things like semi-automatic guns, rifles, shotguns, all those were completely banned and outlawed. In addition of that, they spent somewhere around $340 million on a gun buyback program where they were able to buy 640,000 weapons and bring them off the street entirely.

So this is right got a little bit in the weeds on what is it before and after progress. So it has been 28 years now since Port Arthur, since this shooting happened. From that date onward, there have been 24 mass shootings in Australia with 58 deaths and 71 injuries. In the preceding 28 years before Port Arthur, there was 172 deaths and 115 injuries from mass shootings in Australia. So they have it. They have it. So it doesn't solve the problem.

it mitigates it But here's Here's thing As of right now Australia has 3 million registered firearms And Rough approximations Put it at 260,000 unregistered

guns Right So like I said at the beginning of this Right now Australia's Per capita rate of Gun ownership Is there 51st in the world Which equates to

About 14 guns per 100 people So I think that we have this perception that Australia just banned guns. They didn't. They're still guns. They're not zero. They're not zero. So the reason I raised this comparison is because of one argument that anti-gun control advocates make,

which if you ban guns, then the only people with guns are criminals. Right. So that's the part where I really want to, like, get your spin and not your spin, but your perspective on it. So I pulled some numbers here. So in 2022, Australia had two. 218 homicides, including one mass shooting. So that's 22.

That's it? 218. That's like Chicago in June. Guess how many Mexico had that year? Oh, 100,000. 32,22323 homicides. Okay. And Mexico has a lower per capita gun ownership rate than Australia does.

even if you would count for the fact that Australia is 6x smaller in population than Mexico is if you would have multiplied that by six their homicide rate it would still be 4% of what Mexico's murder rate actually is and the other thing that's worth noting is to your earlier question Martin couldn't drive he didn't have a license to drive a car

he also he also had no license to own a firearm right but he did he did he doesn't yeah and so and so that's kind of like where i i don't i don't have a conclusion for this other than banning guns i think or not sorry not banning guns because again that's not what australia did regulating them more heavily i think would have the outcome of less accidental deaths via firearms like the story that you hear the most that is not really not talked about a reporter very much is a lot of the deaths that happen in the U.S. from firearms, kids find their dad's gun and shoot their buddy in the face. I think that's reported on a lot.

Gun violence is the number one cause of death for children in America. Yeah. And that includes that like accidental picking up a gun, dad's cleaning his gun in the living room, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like it's, that's very, very real and very, very scary. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I don't know what the answer.

is but it's um it's pretty compelling i was shocked to learn that they that australia had so many mass shootings since this happened because again yeah hold that they don't have guns and it's like well they've had 24 mass shooting they almost had one mass shooting a year every year since this happened in a country of 26 million people like yeah those not zero but i think so i think i mean i've seen like the videos of them like melting down like the air 15s or whatever like the semi-automatic rifles and like I think like the buzzword right is common sense gun law gun reform you know like the person who the woman who just shot I don't think she killed anybody but she shot in Joel Olstein's mega church in Texas she bought an AR 15 and she had been previously

hospitalized her mental illness and her family was like trying to get her um put back into a hospital because they were worried about her and all that was happening is she was able to purchase an AR-15 See, those are the arguments that I will never understand from the pro-gun people of like, you know, there's some, here's a thing, here's a situation that I've thought of before in the past of like when you know somebody isn't all there and they're in a dark place and they're in a depressive state and they also happen to be a gun owner and you're like, there is no situation where this person having a gun is going to make their life or anybody, anybody's life better. somebody there should be a very very quick swift immediate response to look we have to take this thing away for now we will give it back to you after whatever happens right i don't in in some states have that right they're called red flag laws where you can throw up a red flag and say hey this person's not but a but a it's not every state it's not federal it's a state by state thing and it requires you to go to the one source that you never want to put somebody that you might care about in which

is calling the cops. Yes. You don't, you don't, you think to yourself, like, I don't want to be responsible with this person

having a record. I don't want them to be responsible for having to sit in like, for a minute in like the back of a cop car or handcuffs on or whatever. Like the cops going,

getting trigger happy and killing them? Yeah. Yeah. That's like a real, a real scary as well. Especially if like they're already unstable. And so.

Well, I mean, I think, well, I think that also ties back to mental health. It ties back. to having a community of people around you.

Like Abraham Lincoln, his friends took away his knives because he was so depressed. Yeah. And like, they were like, dude, you're going to hurt yourself. So we're going to take this way from you and we'll give them back to you when you feel better. You know, like your friends should, you should have a community that can do things like that for you. You know, if you want to have like, you know, a bunch of guns for whatever reason, like they should be kept somewhere unbelievably safe. you know like you should have to take classes like you have to take classes to drive a car you know you have to take classes by a gun i think that the rewheeling willingness of how or just like

the way we talk about guns in the u.s like it's our right it's this that's it it has the ability to remove the gravitas of what the device actually is and makes you treat it definitely that you probably should and yeah and yeah I'm this isn't like I'm you know if you want to own a gun on a gun I mean I literally thought 50 times sailor while living here I need to get a gun because like everybody has a gun like I should get a gun because everybody has a gun if somebody wants to break in my house the null a night and god willing if my dog doesn't kill them immediately then if they have a gun they can have whatever they want right Luna is not going to kill someone immediately when they get into your house, so.

Then I'm going to get them. Then I'm going to say that. That is a bad plan A because that's not going to happen. Then I need to get a gun. Yeah. So anyways, that's the story again. Like, I don't know. There's no answers.

There's no solutions and none of that. But it's more of like just, hey, like, here's this horrible thing that happened. It is horrible. When you read about it's really grotesque, we need to hear about this guy's life and you like try to put yourself in that psychology, how can someone possibly do this? Then you realize that this happens in the U.S., like every other week. week is terrifying. And I don't, I don't, I mean, I think like the best, I mean, the argument for

the only bad guys will have guns, like, it's still less guns, you know, like the, and like you said in the very beginning, the more you have, the more problems that people, how people get killed. I remember, I think it was Colbert was talking to a congressman or something, like years ago, and they got down to it and the congressman was like, yeah, you know, like, if there's more pools where people will drown. And Colbert was like, exactly. I remember that bit. Yeah, literally exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's exactly what I'm saying. You know, if there's more guns, we're going to get shot. And then like the whole constitution thing,

the well regulated militia, yeah, Christian needed a gun in 1770 fucking six because the British for attacking and also you were trying to move west and there were bears. Like, sure, you need a gun to eat, you know? I threw out a stat earlier and I just want to confirm because I didn't actually give the numbers. I'd mentioned that on a per capita basis for legal firearms, Australia has more than Mexico. And just confirming it was 51 on the list with 14.5 for Australia. It's 60 for Mexico at 12.9 per 100 capita.

So I'm wondering if that's because of like, well, the economic uncertainty in Australia versus Mexico. you know if things are like better for your people I feel like that also makes things safer Mexico is not better I know it's what I'm saying I feel like that's why Mexico would have more gun violence than Australia

well well yes yes for sure yes that but the reason I'm bringing it up is because the number of legal firearms is not the problem in this dynamic right right That's what I'm saying. So, like, what is the problem? Unregistered firearms.

That is, that is a result of an economy that is forcing people into the black market and the black market trades to support themselves. So it is, you are, you are correct. You are correct. But it's just like the, I'm just pointing out that the registration piece of it and the license piece of it and the volume of it isn't, it doesn't answer every question essentially. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think this is

It's so scary because it is another thing It's like obviously small These mass shootings are a smaller scale than like A nuclear war But I think similarly, like the thread between our two stories this week It's like it's indiscriminate You can't control your fate When it's in someone else's hands

Totally Totally. And the fact that we have to like legitimately think When we go into a crowd like Something can happen yeah totally i have like a plan to like get my kids to fuck out of walmart as fast as possible i know where all the exits are you know if something happens yeah you should get us out as fast as we can like stuff like that and that's a real a real threat and very very scary so uh some uplifting stories for you all this week i hope you enjoy them i'm never going to sleep well again yeah

you and me you both um but any any final thoughts sailor I did, I just remember to tell you that I did get my membership card to the Satanic Temple and I got this cool candle because I wanted to give money to the Thotanic Temple because of the stuff that, this cool candle with a skeleton on it. That is very cool. How much does you give on it? I don't know. I think, well, there's a lot of fun things where you give them like $6.66 a month. They'll like put it towards X, Y, and Z. But they're doing some really cool things in in states like Iowa or Oklahoma and Utah where there's legislation on the table to put

like unregistered clergy people in schools as counselors. If they don't have to do background checks, they just like are in there to be counselors. And so the satanic temple will go and be like, we can't wait. We'd love to send some of our satanic ministers into these schools. And then those bills are not passing because those bills are very dangerous. I can't imagine sending someone with no background check into a school. I am that's one of the things I love about the Church of Satan is like it's the satanic temple the church of Satan is the not great the temple is the one we want really yeah church of

Satan is one like Anton LeVay they actually believe in Satan the satanic temple does not believe in the one that like goes around like basically roasting politics and that's the satanic temple got it okay okay yeah yeah and I love that work I love putting a statue of the devil in a courthouse. Yeah, there are attempts and our humor is unwavering. It's so, it's so great. The night candle is very cool. I'm disappointed it's not red, but it's very cool.

Yeah, thank you. That's fair. It's fair. But yeah, it's cool. So I'm excited to give them, give them some of my money to do keep up a good work because I hate that shit. If you want to go to religious school, go to religious school. Don't put it in my schools.

Yeah, especially with no back. I got out of here. That's kind of weird. Yeah, like it's always a youth pastor of BT-dubs, who is. criminal. So be on the lookout. Yes, I did that. That was exciting. Sweet. Well, anything else to say before we sign off? Nope. Please send us emails, doomed to fail pod at gmail.com. We are on socials at doom to fell pod. I'm putting some of our short videos on YouTube trying to get some attention there. So we're doing that. And then sometime this week, we should probably have doomed to fillopod.com

available um i'll definitely alert everybody when we do but it's i made it i just can't get it to link to the domain which is a tell as old's time an age old problem i'll figure it out we'll figure it out um cool um well thanks taylor and thanks everyone for listening and we'll join you all again next week yeah cool talk to later bye bye Thank you.