Last month in America, the gun manufacturer Remington reached a legal settlement with the families of those who lost their lives in the 2012 Sandy Hook Massacre. $73 million will be shared equally amongst the families who took Remington to court, hoping to establish their legal culpability for the massacre. This settlement is not, of course, adequate compensation for what these families have lost. A share of $73 million does not return a child and will likely not alleviate the devastation and trauma these families have experienced.

This settlement is, however, a landmark event in the US, representing the endpoint in the long legal journey for reaching some legislative change in the aftermath of the tragedy. Initially, the victim’s sought changes to gun control laws. This endeavour flagged for the same reasons gun control laws has scarcely changed in the aftermath of every other US mass shooting: the nefarious political and economic influence of the National Rifle Association and a deep-seated cultural tradition of gun ownership. This settlement, however, and the subsequent financial burden Remington will be forced to wear, while not being the substantial legislative change the families sought initially, has a suite of implications. The families’ lawsuit was based on Remington’s aggressive marketing for the weapon used in the Sandy Hook Massacre significantly increased the likelihood of such an event occurring. Advertisements included the slogans “Consider your man card reissued” and “Forces of opposition, Bow Down”, targeting young men through social media platforms. Though the lawsuit ended in a settlement rather than in a jury’s decision beyond a reasonable doubt, a gateway has been opened in American society through the possibility of future gun manufacturers being held to account for murders they may contribute to.

For the majority of Australia’s post-invasion history, gun ownership was commonplace. This was a nation whose economy depended on farming and livestock cultivation, and firearms played a crucial role in moving the native and introduced species that posed threats to these industries. Furthermore, in Australia’s early colonial history, firearms played a central role in the frontier conflicts between First Nations Australians and Europeans who sought to establish dwellings and farms. The traditional owners of the land know full well the centrality of firearms in colonial history.

When thinking about Australia’s firearm culture today, however, a common tendency has been to bifurcate Australia’s history into two discrete eras: before Port Arthur and after Port Arthur. Between the 28^th and 29^th of April 1996, a lone gunman murdered 35 people using semiautomatic firearms. Most of the victims were killed at the Broad Arrow Café at the Port Arthur Historic site. It is, to this day, Australia’s most deadly shooting and one of the most fatal mass shootings to have taken place anywhere in the world. This event was undeniably a turning point in Australia’s legislative history of firearm use. John Howard enacted swift gun reform measures using the strong majority he’d recently won at the 1996 Federal Election. Through the firearm buyback program, people were able to trade in their unregistered firearms without facing legal repercussions. Although the Howard response to the Port Arthur massacre is almost universally admired today, at the time, it was a political risk. Swathes of the country thought the reforms went too far. People felt they were being disavowed of their sovereign right to own a firearm, a familiar complaint, though often voiced with an American twang. Rather than mollify the more conservative branch of his party and opt for less radical firearm reforms, Howard took advantage of the mandate the Australian people had afforded him and changed the legislative fabric of Australia for the better. However you may feel about the rest of the Howard premiership, this act is to be admired. Significantly, an oft-quoted statistic is that thirteen mass shootings were perpetrated on Australian soil eighteen years before the Port Arthur Massacre. In the twenty-six years since, there have been none. This statistic often isn’t quoted in a self-congratulatory manner by Australian pundits or supporters of the Howard government. Rather, turn on CNN or NBC following an American mass shooting, and you will, almost without fail, find an American commentator citing the success of Australia’s firearm reforms in their Sisyphean debate on gun control measures.

At the end of 2021, the movie Nitram, directed by Justin Kurzel, was released in Australian cinemas. Nitram is, essentially, a biopic about the perpetrator of the Port Arthur Massacre. This film was the source of significant controversy even before it had begun to be made. Tasmanians didn’t want a film about one of the darkest periods of their state’s history being shot in and around locations where people were still grieving the loss of family members and friends. Furthermore, some were understandably dubious of the film’s intentions: why make a film that could potentially call upon the audience to sympathise with a monster? Nitram was, however, made, though not shown in Tasmanian cinemas. The film is gripping in the most gut-wrenching way, not least because of the Delphic inevitability of what you’re watching transpire. However, two particularly chilling moments change the film from being a straightforward biopic to a pertinent comment on Australia’s firearm culture. The first of these moments is when the massacre perpetrator purchases the weapons and ammunition with which he will murder thirty-five people. He does not require a firearm license, nor is he required to register his new weapons. Buying these weapons is as simple as if he was buying a watch or a piece of jewellery. The second moment is a sequence of text following the film’s conclusion, during which we are informed that as of 2021, there were more civilian firearms in circulation than there were in 1996. Persistent though the narrative that Australia is a post-firearm nation may be, this fact presents as a clear refutation.

The gun control debate in Australia is by no means dormant, but it receives scant media attention. Kumanjayi Walker was a Walpiri man killed by a police officer in 2019. The police officer was charged with murder but found not guilty by a jury comprising twelve non-Indigenous Australians. Kumanjayi Walker’s community wants police officers to stop carrying firearms. They see the possession of firearms by law enforcement personnel as resulting in needless deaths and continuing the colonial violence communities like theirs have been subject to for centuries. These calls have been rejected. There has not been the governmental interest or swift action seen in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre. The gun control continuum often imagined, with Remington taking commercial pseudo-responsibility for dangerous advertising at one end and Howard era reforms at the other, means Kumanjayi Walker’s story is not easily placed. The discourse of a “post-Port Arthur moment” is not commensurable with the avoidable death of this young man. Australia’s gun culture is more complicated than such simple binaries, which need to be recognised.