Many gun owners were angry with John Howard, but he pressed ahead with his gun laws anyway. Source: News Limited
ONE of the key anti-gun reform protesters at a controversial 1996 rally attended by a bullet proof vest-clad John Howard insists he still opposes the changes.
Gary Howard, 59, of Sale in Victoria, yesterday said the then prime minister's crackdown on weapons after the Port Arthur Massacre - cited around the world this week as an example America could follow in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy - had not made Australia any safer.
No similar Australian gun massacres have followed Port Arthur since the Howard government's controversial decision.
US Republicans consider gun control, Obama backs bill on assault rifles
Wearing body armour, John Howard faces a hostile pro-gun crowd in Sale in 1996. Picture: Ray Strange
"Sixteen years later, do you feel safer in this country because of what they did with our guns?" he said yesterday, adding he voted informal out of protest at the 1998 federal election before returning to his conservative ways.
"We had bigger issues than this. I was worried when my two boys were in university just walking down the street and getting belted by someone."
John Howard addresses the rally at Sale in 1996. Picture: Norm Oorloff
He said shooters had since suffered bad recoil from the guns that were allowed to remain legal.
According to the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia website, membership has grown almost 5 per cent annually since 2000.
They now have just under 150,000 members Australia-wide and are seeing increased interest from women and younger Australians.
The 1996 intake was their largest influx year, with a massive jump in membership caused by shooters signing up to hold on to their guns after the introduction of John Howard's gun reforms.
About 760,000 Australians are registered gun owners.
There were around 660,000 automatic and semi-automatic rifles handed in under the 1996 national buyback scheme, many shooters replacing their semi-automatics.
Meanwhile, Customs yesterday revealed no one had tried to import the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle behind the weekend's US school massacre into Australia since data was recorded in 2008.
But commercial importation of firearms had risen 153 per cent between 2005-06 and 2011-12, according to the department's annual report.
This included a rise in imports from 39,389 to 99,809, with the biggest rises among rifles (152 per cent), hand guns (180 per cent) and air firearms (9148 per cent off 106 in 2005-06).
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