Martin Bryant: Port Arthur Mass Killer

Martin Bryant also known as the Port Arthur mass killer, was born on the 7 th of May 1967 in Tasmania, Australia.

He was the first-born child to Carleen and Maurice Bryant.

When he was a young child his mother recalled him being “quite different and annoying compared to other children, he also used to break his toys”. Teachers also recalled his as being “distant from reality and unemotional”, other school reports showed that he was quite disruptive during classes and was bullied by other children in the school quite often. Bryant went through psychological assessment and during admitted that he had tortured animals. A year later he returned to school after displaying improved behaviour but continued to bully the young children of the school.

After graduation, Bryant received the disability pension but began doing handyman work around the house of a wealthy women named Helen Harvey. Bryant and Harvey became quite close while sharing her fortune until Harvey was involved in a car crash and died. When

Harvey died, she left her entire estate to Bryant, Bryant’s father took long service leave to assist him in the cleaning up of the house. Bryant’s father, Maurice was diagnosed with depression and later took his own life.

On April 28th, 1996, Bryant drove to seascape cottage and shot dead the owners, Sally and

David Martin. He drove to former Penal Colony that had been turned into a tourist attraction.

Bryant sat down at the café, ordered some food and when he was finished, he reached into his duffle bag, pulling out a semi-automatic rifle and began firing. Approximately 2 minutes later, 20 people were dead. Bryant continued shooting as he entered a vehicle to flee the scene. Bryant later killed 2 more people and stole their car, he then drove to a gas station, found a person to hold hostage and fatally shot another woman. Bryant drove back to the seascape cottage when police attempted to negotiate with him, it was an unsuccessful attempt

Martin

Bryant spent the first 8 months of his imprisonment in a special suicide prevention cell. On the 13 th November 2006, he was moved to a mental unit in Hobart's

Wilfred Lopes Centre. Bryant later attempted 2 suicides in the span of 3 days and has tried another 4 times since. Years later in 2015, Bryant was moved to a maximum security, Risdon

Prison. He is now described as a “grossly overweight loner pays other prisoners with chocolate bars for attention and has violently attacked several jail workers.” Whilst Martin

Bryant was in jail, he was diagnosed with multiple mental illness and disabilities, these include borderline intellectual functioning, Asperger syndrome and antisocial personality disorder. Martin Bryant was and still is Australia’s largest cold-blooded killer. He stopped the world that day, ruined families and changed Australia forever. Bryant single handedly transformed

Australia’s gun laws. After the massacre, Prime Minister, John Howard implemented the new, harsher gun laws right across Australia. The gun laws included uniform licensing to own a gun, this was also a very heavily restricted license and there was no longer the