
Content warning: This post contains details some readers may find triggering.
It was the day before his 34th birthday. A Sunday morning like any other.
Walter Mikac kissed his two pyjama-clad little girls and wife goodbye before heading off to play golf.
He was hosting a local tournament on the sprawling greens of a course in Tasmania. His wife, Nanette, and young daughters, Alannah, six, and Madeline, three, decided to have a picnic at the local historic site of Port Arthur where Nanette often volunteered as a ghost tour guide. They planned to meet up later that day.

They never got to meet up. That morning farewell would be the last time he ever saw his family.
Speaking on Wednesday's episode of Anh Do's Brush With Fame, Walter, now 56, recalled what happened that afternoon on Australia's darkest days in history - the Port Arthur massacre -pinpointing the moment he realised his family had been ripped away from him in an unfathomable act of evil.
"We heard shots happening across the bay, because Port Arthur Historic Site was close by, and we were joking, we said, 'Oh, well, they must be having a re-enactment,' was the logical assumption," he told Anh Do.
"I mean, we're... it's not like you expect anything bad to happen in such a quiet peaceful place. So it wasn't really until after we finished, and we're sitting there maybe having some lunch, three o'clock in the afternoon, where these people rushed in saying, 'There's someone shooting at the historic site,' and there's people been killed.
Top Comments
Read Mikac's book "To Have and To Hold" years ago - I hope the pain of it has eased a little over the years, even while the determination to make a difference has not.
None of the law changes made in 1996 have made a scientifically proven difference to firearm homicide rates.
With more permissive laws, New Zealand went longer without mass shootings (Australia only went 6 years) and had an, on average, 10% lower non-suicide firearms death rate (I specifically quote that figure because no innocent member of the public is going to be killed by someone else suiciding with a firearm).
New Zealand's population is tiny in comparison to Australia - you're holding apples against oranges there.
Yet apparently the perfectly acceptable comparison is Australia and the USA, where the difference (or population ratio), is far more pronounced.
Given we are talking about rates here, not absolute numbers, I fail to see the difference.
New Zealand is a very suitable comparison, similar geographical region, similar origins in modern settlement, similar cultures that have a history of strong compatibility. It also has (had) a higher per capita firearm ownership rate.