Doomed to Fail - Re-Release: Absolutely no way to stop mass shootings - The Port Arthur Massacre
Episode Date: October 13, 2025In 1996, Australian weirdo Martin Bryant killed 35 people in the deadliest shooting in Australian history. He's the worst, annoying and rude, he killed his landlords and tourists, going on a spree tha...t shocked the nation. Australia followed up with a mass gun buyback program that has made Australia safer from gun violence, but it still has all those bugs. 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: doomedtofailpod@gmail.com
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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 know, 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.
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.
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 in 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'd 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
you're sitting there's terrible what a nightmare
yeah and there's no you know
AirPods so you had to actually focus on
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's clearly not.
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 an apple stand 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 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 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 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 when is it happened on April 28, 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 noon-ish 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 stayed at the house, he killed them, he stayed there,
for a while with their bodies before he ends up 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.
I'm 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 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 the.
their 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, 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 someone not in America about how like the kids have drills for an actor 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 think that was our that wasn't our
reality when we're kids so 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.
He's 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 to the parking lot
where he kills four more people.
people, again, tour spot.
Most of these people were exiting off of buses.
They were like tour buses.
And so they were trapped.
They were basically just like, they have nowhere to go.
And he just walks onto a bus.
And most people were 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 she does, and she shoots her in the head.
No.
I know.
And he also kills the daughters.
It's terrible.
I hate this.
He then came upon a BMW 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 Pears
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 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 of 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 and
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 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 them.
They'd call the cell phone and they were not a cell phone.
They called the phone to the C-scape 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
he's wilds he he runs out police put him out they send him over to a hospital to get treatment
they put the fire out they go inside they find glen was always handcuffed he was never released from
was 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
1652 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
a 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 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 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 outlaw 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 where I got a little bit in the weeds on what
is it before and after progress. So it has been 28 years now since Port Archer, since the shooting
happened. From that date onward, there have been 20,
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 they have 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 did it. Right. They're still
guns. Not zero. They're not zero. So
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 218 homicides, including one mass shooting.
So that's 22.
That's it?
That's like Chicago in June
Guess how many Mexico had that year?
Oh
100,000
32,223 homicides
Okay
And Mexico has a lower per capita gun ownership rate
Than Australia does
Even if you account for the fact that Australia
Is 6x smaller in population
than Mexico is,
if you would have multiplied that
by six, their, 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 did,
yeah. And so,
and so that's kind of like where
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 a
pointed out 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
shock to learn that they that
Australia had so many mass shootings since
this happened because again we told
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 you remember this
she bought an air 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 air 15 you know those those are the arguments that i 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 weird 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'd never
want to put somebody that you might care about in which is calling the cops yes you 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.
Or 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 three-wheeling 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 a, it has the ability to remove the gravitas of what the device actually is and makes you treat it differently than 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've 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 gonna yeah I'm gonna 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, 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 is terrifying.
It's just like, absolutely.
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, and like you said in the very beginning, the more you have, the more problems that 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, more people will drown.
And Colbert was like, exactly.
I remember that bit.
Yeah, he's 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 question you did 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 i threw out a stat earlier and i just want to confirm because i didn't actually give the
numbers i 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.
That's what I'm saying.
That's, I feel like that's why Mexico would have more gun violence than Australia.
Well, well, no, the reason, 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.
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 is like, it's indiscriminate.
You can't, you can't control your fate when it's in someone else's hands.
Totally.
You know?
Totally.
And the fact that we have to like legitimately think when we go into a crowd, like,
where's exit.
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 some uplifting stories for you all this week.
I hope you enjoyed them.
I'm never going to sleep well again.
Yeah, you and me, you and me both.
But any final thoughts, Taylor?
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 Thetanic Temple because of the stuff that's cool candle with a skeleton.
on it. That is very cool. How much did 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 Catholic Temple is the one we want.
Really?
Yeah, Church of Satan is the one that, like, Anton LeVay, they actually believe in Satan.
The Satanic Temple does not believe in Satan.
The one that, like, goes around, like, basically roeval.
hosting politics and like that's the satanic temple got it okay okay yeah yeah um and i love that work
i love putting a statue of the devil in a courthouse there there yeah there attempts and our humor is
unwavering it's so it's so great 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 um but yeah it's cool so i'm excited to give them give them some
some of my money to do keep up a good work because i hate that shit keep your 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 Dubbs who is the 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, DoomfellPod at gmail.com.
We are on socials at Doomdeafelpod.
feld pod i'm putting some of our like short videos on youtube trying to get some attention there um so i'm doing
that and then sometime this week we should probably have doomed to philopod.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 it 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.
