A survivor of the Port Arthur massacre and a man whose family was murdered at the shooting have slammed the idea of allowing people to carry guns for self-defence following the Martin Place siege.
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Walter Mikac, whose wife and two daughters died at the 1996 mass shooting, and John Fidler, who escaped with his wife, Gaye, have labelled calls by libertarian Senator David Leyonhjelm for reform nonsensical and "ridiculous".
Mr Mikac and Mr Fidler, along with several others, founded the Alannah and Madeline Foundation following the tragic events. Named after Mr Mikac's slain daughters, it has become a highly successful charity that combats violence against children.
Martin Bryant killed 35 people and injured 23 in a shooting spree at the Port Arthur prison colony in Tasmania, a popular travel destination.
What followed was a comprehensive and controversial crackdown on firearm ownership in Australia by then Prime Minister John Howard, including a mass buyback of over 600,000 guns.
Mr Mikac and Mr Fidler are now responding to calls from libertarian Senator David Leyonhjelm for a debate on Australia's gun restrictions following the siege in Sydney in which three people died, including the gunman.
"They should revisit the gun law debate and tighten them up, not loosen them. Not go the way the Americans have gone," Mr Fidler told Fairfax Media.
"These people that come up with these sorts of ideas obviously haven't been put into a situation like the one in Sydney, like we were put in in the cafe at Port Arthur. It's ridiculous."
Senator Leyonhjelm has claimed restrictions on weapons have turned Australia into a "nation of victims".
"What happened in that cafe would have been most unlikely to have occurred in Florida, Texas, or Vermont, or Alaska in America, or perhaps even Switzerland as well," Senator Leyonhjelm told ABC radio this week. "If Australians were allowed to carry concealed weapons like some Americans," he said, "that nutcase who held them all hostage wouldn't have known they were armed and bad guys don't like to be shot back at."
It was the Howard reforms that led to Senator Leyonhjelm to quit the Liberal Party.
Mr Mikac disagrees with the senator's suggestions: "It doesn't actually make sense what he's saying. Because we are actually living in a much safer place as a result of those gun laws that were introduced after Port Arthur.
"We don't want to be living in a society ruled by fear, like the US."
Since the mid-1990s, the firearm mortality rate has dropped from 2.6 per 100,000 people to just under 1 per 100,000, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This compares to the United States' more than 10 per 100,000, the US National Vital Statistics Report states. In the 18 years leading up to the Port Arthur massacre, there were 13 mass killings in Australia. There were zero in the following 18 years.
