Aramoana and the "American Disease" - Fear in The Land of The Brave

At around 7pm on Tuesday, 13 November 1990 the sound of gunfire echoed through the usually quiet hamlet of Aramoana on New Zealand’s south-east coast. By 6pm the next day, fourteen people were dead while three; a police officer and two children aged four and nine were in hospital. The fourteenth name on the list of the deceased provided by the Officer in Charge of the Criminal Investigation Branch to The Coroner at the time was David Malcolm Gray.

For reasons that remain unclear, Gray decided to murder twelve of his neighbours and one police officer from nearby Port Chalmers. The incident rocked The Shaky Isles in a way that hadn’t happened since the French blew up The Rainbow Warrior in 1985 and wasn’t matched until the Christchurch earthquakes of 2011.

I knew about the attack on Greenpeace because my mum made me watch the movie and my cousins house fell down in the shakes. No one had told me about Aramoana. I was seven when it happened and in my own country of Australia.

I can understand why I wasn’t informed at the time, but I think someone should have mentioned it when I was being diagnosed with depression in my twenties. I asked if there was any history of mental illness kicking around in the lineage. Not one person whose DNA I share bothered to inform me that my mothers cousin had murdered thirteen people in cold blood.

My mother describes Gray as ‘A lonely man who liked to collect guns’ and as far as anyone can tell, he didn’t plan his killing spree. Something clicked and he started shooting. The nine year old survivor described Gray as someone she saw most days but ‘would hardly talk to us’(children). Her father was Gray’s first victim and apparently the person Gray was most friendly with. Twenty-three hours after he started murdering people, he decided to suicide by cop; running from a neighbour’s house he’d appropriated as his base, shooting and allegedly ‘yelling “kill me, kill me”’. Police tried their hardest not to comply with his wishes but the gunshot wounds he sustained proved to be fatal and he died in an ambulance on the way to hospital. He was thirty-three years old.

The Aramoana Massacre as it became known was the last recorded ‘spree’ or ‘rampage’ mass shooting in New Zealand. Less than six years later, on the twenty eighth of April 1996 I watched as close to a live broadcast as you could get in Australia at that time to witness Martin Bryant beat David Gray’s body count record for the southern hemisphere by twenty-two.

By the end of that sunny Tasmanian autumn day, thirty-five people lay dead and Port Arthur became synonymous with gun violence in Australia. Unlike Gray, Bryant survived and pled guilty to all murders. He received consecutive life sentences for each of them. I, however, was still blissfully unaware that mum’s family had relinquished the Trans-Tasman Massacre Trophy. Not even my old man, a smart-arse from way back, bothered to drop a ‘your cousin didn’t get that many’ and if he did, it wasn’t within my earshot.

As with Aramoana in New Zealand, the massacre at Port Arthur was the last recorded on Australian soil. This tragedy served as the impetus for then Prime Minister John Howard to state that ‘we do not want the American Disease imported into Australia’. Probably not the nicest thing to say regarding your most important strategic ally, but, it worked for him. The vaccine he prescribed became known as the 1996 National Firearms Agreement and Buyback Program which is probably the greatest accomplishment of his political life and somewhat of a legislative coup.

Howard managed not only to convince his own conservative leaning and inappropriately named Liberal Party, he, with the assistance of his Deputy Tim Fischer, persuaded his coalition partners from the rural centric National Party to agree to it. But getting the Federal Government to pass firearms legislation counted for nothing unless the six states and two territories consented, as only they have the authority to regulate such measures in their jurisdictions. Similar to other federations and unions of the democratic world, Australian states and territories have a degree of autonomy when it comes to what they can and can’t legislate.

A Special Meeting of Australasian Police Ministers took place in May 1996 and agreed to the national plan. Commonwealth wide firearms restrictions had been considered as early as 1988 and as recently as 1995, only months before the massacre at Port Arthur. The slaughter proved to be the catalyst for consensus. A raft of legislation was introduced in all states and territories that restricted or banned ownership of semi-automatic longarms, pump action shotguns and handguns. Ammunition also was restricted, and all gun owners now require a licence to own any guns and an individual permit for each firearm.

The introduction of a ‘genuine reason’ clause when a person applies for a licence and that ‘personal protection’ would not be considered a ‘genuine reason’ was significant. It cemented what is now considered sane policy regarding gun ownership in Australia. Essentially, guns in the right hands are safe – the military and law enforcement need firearms to perform their duties and unless they turn them on the populace, as has happened elsewhere – only criminals tend to have a problem with this rule.

Professional shooters and Primary Producers can apply for a restricted weapons licence because they need certain weapons to control the rampant feral animal population that continue to devastate the continents unique flora and fauna. Australians generally do not feel threatened by a farmer with a rifle.

Mainly because, in most cases said farmer would have to drive hundreds of kilometres to any decent population centre if they wanted to inflict mass harm. The majority of deaths by firearm in the bush are usually domestic violence related, suicide or involve a disagreement with the authorities.

Australia is often held up as the shining light by gun control advocates in jurisdictions where gun violence is an issue, or a rampage shooting event has just taken place. Nation-wide registration; restrictions on the types of guns and ammunition available as well as licencing requirements such as attending safety courses and being subject to a background check that ensured the applicant does not have ‘reliable evidence of a mental or physical condition which would render the applicant unsuitable for owning, possessing or using a firearm’.

It is this line in the legislation that is often used by the gun lobby to argue that mental illness not access to firearms is the main contributor to rampage shootings. In more recent times this argument has largely been applied to white men who have no apparent political motive to commit mass murder. Allah help you if you are even slightly brown, you’ll be blamed for the encroachment of Radical Islam into The West.

I am, as far as I know, the only person related to David Gray who can bring themselves to admit publicly that mental illness permeates the blood line. Possibly because I am one of the few who have bothered to seek diagnosis and treatment. I have Asperger’s and have PTS, which explains the depression I’ve suffered for decades, yet I’ve never had the desire to kill thirteen of my neighbours in a suicide attempt.

It’s suicide that tends to group most rampage killers into a workable demographic. Very few are taken alive and if they don’t kill themselves, they try their hardest to get law enforcement to do it for them. Martin Bryant was captured, and Anders Breivik, who killed sixty-seven people in Norway in 2011 was another notable exception. Breivik was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic following his arrest, something he wasn’t too pleased with and demanded to be reassessed. The new diagnosis came back sane, so he went to trial and got himself twenty-one years in a comfortable Norwegian Prison, but could be out in ten. Pretty clever on his part, Scandinavian jails are notorious in their rehabilitation efforts, whereas if they call you crazy, you can be stuffed for life.

So, on the argument that Breivik is sane the issue comes back to the availability of firearms. Gray and Bryant were able to purchase their weapons legally in their respective countries due to the laws at the times of their massacres. Breivik, however had to travel throughout the European Union to acquire his arsenal. Porous borders enabled him to smuggle weapons that he was not permitted to possess in Norway.

The ability to cross borders, be they state or nation, allows rampage killers to acquire weapons and avoid restrictions in the jurisdiction they commit their murders. Australia and New Zealand being islands are better protected from this than countries in Europe and North America.

The differences between these jurisdictions is the ability of the New Zealand Parliament to legislate on issues such as gun control and have the rules applied to the whole nation, even if they have been piecemeal amendments and taken a long time to progress.

Australia, on the other hand, is more akin to the United States. If a state or territory relaxes their gun laws below the federally agreed levels, it is plausible that someone planning a rampage shooting could cross a border, acquire a firearm and use it for whatever means they deem appropriate, or, they may not even need to do that.

I once lived in a house that had seventeen longarms, a crossbow that didn’t work and a designated knife drawer. This was not a standard domestic knife drawer. Its contents ranged from homemade shivs to Bowie knives and Nepalese Kukris. I didn’t own any of the weapons and have never held a firearms licence. I did however, know the combination to the gun safe and was taught how to reload spent cartridges by weighing out the right amount of gunpowder, fitting the bullet and clamping it all together.

My housemates; one, a paranoid schizophrenic with a decade long crystal meth addiction and a habit of dropping a dozen odd prescription tablets every night to keep the voices away so he could sleep. The other was so obsessive compulsive that he alone could cook and do the dishes, which, in your early twenties is a pretty good housemate.

He owned seven rifles. The paranoid schizophrenic owned nine and a shotgun. I hadn’t been diagnosed with any mental condition at that point and I never desired to open the safe, load the guns and wander around my neighbourhood merrily executing my fellow humans. As far as I can tell, neither did my housemates. I feel justified in this assertion as neither of them have made headlines in the ten years since I moved out.

I am confident that David Gray did suffer from a mental illness and was not alone in the world, nor am I or my former housemates. But mental illness, according to the American Psychiatric Association in a 2016 report asserts that “Mass shootings by people with serious mental illness represent less than 1% of all yearly gun-related homicides. In contrast, deaths by suicide using firearms account for the majority of yearly gun-related deaths”.

According to the New Zealand Coroners report, Gray was referred once, in 1974, to the Department of Psychological Medicine at the Dunedin Hospital. Notes from this single consultation sixteen years before the massacre indicated that Gray was ‘inadequate at coping with life in general, introverted and a chain smoker’, and that was it. Out the door buddy, no treatment for you, go back home and buy a few guns.

He took the last piece of advice ten years later, when in 1984 he registered a .22 Stirling semi-automatic rifle. At the time, once you had yourself a licence, you could buy any weapon that was legally imported so over the years he increased his collection.

I have been to Aramoana twice and aside from people there really isn’t that much to shoot. Sure, you might find some rabbits and cats up in the hills behind the settlement, alternatively you can try taking down an albatross or penguin. The last two will get you an enjoyable stay behind bars so hunting around the hamlet isn’t that fruitful.

The second time I went to Aramoana was in my late twenties. The first time I was around five and have no recollection of. My mother however, has memories of myself and her, accompanied by Grays sister and my brother walking along the desolate and windswept beach as Gray stalked us through the dunes. Apparently, he was unarmed but it was still disturbing to be informed of it twenty-five odd years later, on my return visit to the site. Gray was well dead. But you could tell that the locals knew why we were there. Aramoana is not somewhere you just pass through. You have three options; go overland off road, turn around or test how well your car works when it comes to navigating the Pacific Ocean. It’s a lonely, desolate place with near constant arctic winds and the pervading cloud and drizzle that is the norm for the Dunedin area. In my opinion, if Gray hadn’t had an argument with his neighbour he wouldn’t have killed thirteen people that day, but sooner or later he would have turned one of his guns on himself.

So, what made Gray able to do what he did? His availability to guns certainly enabled him to commit his murders in the way that he did, but they didn’t necessarily cause the massacre. Gray was an avid reader, preferring books of a military nature and magazines such as Soldier of Fortune. It wouldn’t be too hard to argue that he was radicalised by the Military-Industrial Complex. You would be hounded to the ends of earth if you did, but it is an interesting point to note that a large percentage of rampage killers research and plan their attacks using what is essentially propaganda from gun manufacturers and technical guides of a military nature. Breivik did it, so did Adam Lanza who murdered twenty children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. The State Attorneys report into the shooting detailed his mental state emphasising his ‘preoccupation with violence’ and ‘an obsession with mass murders, in particular the April 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado’. Those boys planned it too, it’s not like they turned up to school one morning, saw each other carrying a gun and said, ‘Hey bro, you chose today as well?’

Across The Pond, in the small Scottish town of Dunblane on March 13, 1996, Thomas Hamilton cut the telephone lines to the surrounding area before walking into the local primary school to murder sixteen children and one teacher prior to killing himself. This massacre resulted in then UK Prime Minister John Major introducing the Firearms (Amendments) Act 1997 making most handguns illegal. A few years later when he was replaced by Tony Blair the rest were banned as well. The UK hasn’t had a major firearms incident since. But they have become a huge target for terrorist attacks, which only proves that you don’t need guns to kill people.

Anyone who can read a chemistry textbook can make a bomb. You don’t need a licence to drive a stolen truck into a crowded tourist hotspot. If you can find yourself a copy of Che Guevara’s Guerrilla Warfare, he helpfully explains how you can turn a shotgun into a mortar, and shotguns are still legal in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The point is, if you want to kill people you’ll find a way. The same applies if someone wants to commit suicide. Studies show that after firearms restrictions are legislated, suicide by firearms decreases markedly but overall suicide rates don’t decline. In Australia, suicide has become one of the most common ways for people under 35 to die, we just aren’t shooting ourselves as much as we used to.

Earlier, I mentioned suicide by cop, but in more cases than not the gunman (and they do tend to be men) turns the gun on themselves. Whether this is through regret, remorse or all they wanted to do was die but felt they needed to take others with them is something we shall never know. Your secrets don’t necessarily die with you, but your motivation certainly can. Mass murderers tend to differ from many murder-suicide cases, not just in the numbers, but the lack of a note. At least Breivik had the decency to send one thousand odd emails of his fifteen-hundred page manifesto 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, try it if Mein Kampf is your cup of tea.

Tea is what brings us to the crux of the matter. The purpose of this whole exercise is to discover what the “American Disease” really is and that brings us to Boston in 1771 where a gang of racists attempted to frame some First Nations People for wasting a bunch of tea by chucking it in cold salt water. I’m not a scholar on the history of The United States of America but I’m pretty confident that the “American Disease” first took hold in The War of Independence from the tyranny that is The British Empire.

The USA is unique in Britain’s Anglo-centric colonies in that it won its independence through sacrifice and war. Australia, New Zealand and Canada (which hasn’t had a rampage shooting event with more than ten victims since 1989), are all still under the yoke of the House of Windsor. The current Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull led an impotent attempt to cut the apron strings in the late nineties when he was busy earning his fortune. After turning to politics, he has done nothing about it since coming to power in 2015. He swore allegiance to The Queen of England when he first elected and has repeated the pledge on numerous occasions since. No one was really surprised, after all, a millionaire businessman turned politician can’t be high on anyone’s most trusted list. But that’s a tangent to be discussed at length later.

New Zealand and Canada have barely toyed with the idea of independence and even though the whites were always the minority in South Africa, the moment Britain decided they weren’t big fans of apartheid, white South Africa just upped and started calling themselves a Republic. Having been busy with wars of independence in most of their other colonies where the British were the minority, the desire to send The Redcoats in wasn’t particularly front of mind for the populace. A good percentage of the whites were Dutch anyway; therefore, no point in wasting young British lives, everyone had seen Zulu and figured the dyke builders could have it.

The USA didn’t have it so easy. When King George III decided he didn’t like the idea of tea being wasted and taxes not being paid, he figured it was time to set those damned colonials straight. That was where it started. Patient Zero as it were. If it weren’t for the American War of Independence there would not be an “American Disease” in the manner that Howard perceived it. Going to war for freedom instilled in, the original thirteen colonies, a sense of entitlement regarding the possession of military style weapons and the existence of armed civilian militias. The westward push enabled the perceived right to own a sidearm for ‘personal protection’ against those people who were busy defending the land they had been custodians of for thousands of years. The Civil War cemented the attitude in the southern states that private ownership of firearms is necessary because Lincoln and his Yankees might come back to free the slaves again. While the civil rights movement legitimised the rights of not only African-Americans but also every other immigrant group and The First Nations. This one caused a few problems; not only were the oppressed given roughly the same rights in most jurisdictions as the white settlers, the different arms of the military were desegregated. All of a sudden, there were good ole boys in the same platoon, at the same rank as their former property.

An armed uprising of the coloured class never eventuated and an incredible amount of lower socio-economic servicemen, of all races, who were well trained in the use of human killing firearms were sent back into the general community with little to no assistance. The American War in Viet Nam didn’t result in thousands of bug eyed drug addicts, trained in the art of murder and hardened in the humidity and heat of South East Asia return home to establish an African Nation on American soil, despite the best efforts of The Nation of Islam and The Black Panthers. Nor did The South rise up again or The First Peoples combine their newly acquired skills with knowledge of country to regain their independence. And in case you failed to notice the British Empire didn’t rock up when most of The Republics Military was distracted to reclaim what they had lost. But the infection had taken hold, the fear of communism resulted in fifty thousand plus American dead and no one was going to give up their guns because Ivan had The Bomb and Castro was but a swim from Miami.

The FBI classifies a mass shooting as four or more people killed in a single incident, the majority of these are not particularly relevant to this discussion as they can be attributed to domestic violence or other criminal activity. It is interesting to note however that mass shootings in those categories are quite clearly defined on racial lines with whites more likely to gun down their entire family before suiciding and non-whites engaging in criminal activity that results in them using firearms to perpetuate their crimes. Those statistics raise many questions regarding the racially-centered socio-economic divide that still exists in the USA, but once again, a tangent that can discussed in depth later. What we’re trying to accomplish here is figuring out why the “American Disease” exists and why is it just an epidemic rather than a pandemic.

Paranoia.

That’s if it you want it in one word.

The Fear does not exist outside the USA, at least, not in the same way. I could walk to my local police station today; apply for a gun licence, wait for them to figure out I don’t have a criminal history or any indication that I’d go nuts with a firearm and twenty-eight days later I could purchase myself a shooting stick. But, until the time I’m rich enough to buy myself some land up north I have no desire to own a firearm, I have no need for one.

In the meantime, if I ever feel like a shoot I can go to a public range, rent a weapon and shoot it. Or even better, contact anyone I know with a gun and access to a rural property. Not being restricted by range rules and using a rifle of the same calibre that David Gray used in Aramoana, I know I can empty a seven-round magazine of a bolt action rifle in less than a minute and hit all seven, cigarette packet sized targets set at a range of 30-40 metres. I could ensure the weapon was safe, hand it to my friend who would load it before failing to beat my score while I opened another beer to contemplate what we in The Antipodes occasionally contemplate about our independent cousins. How is it that we can be so alike and so different at the same time? My friend and I could discuss this question, we could discuss it at length while switching between alcohol and armaments. But we wouldn’t bother, because we’d agree.

Every Australian and all expat Americans I’ve spoken with while researching this article can’t provide a better explanation for the “American Disease” than Paranoia. We’re not scared of those in our neighbourhood, so no one wants a gun for personal protection. The fear of invasion is non-existent; everyone excepting New Zealand would have to invade from the North or West and The Kiwis don’t even have an Army anymore so that’s a moot point. We must also acknowledge that any force who manages to clear the croc infested waters of Northern Australia, will have to cross some of the most punishing deserts this world has to offer. Ask any German tourist who's taken a walk in The Outback. If you can find one that made it out alive.

Germany is an interesting case study. Since the end of the war against The Nazis, there have been three school shootings. The other rampage shootings have been politically or criminally motivated and as is becoming more popular globally, radicalised individuals are thinking outside the box when it comes to methods of murder. Most German citizens can obtain firearms if they so desire and being the current powerhouse of Europe. What then, of the flow on effect if the “American Disease” took hold in Western Europe?

Paranoia is rife across Europe. Refugees banging on border gates has allowed The Far Right to propagate fear and succeed to some degree. Breivik is a classic example of this symptom. The difference is that he didn’t snap, he planned his massacre with precision. His manifesto and fake police uniform are proof that he thought it through. Targeting a Labour Youth event was a politically motivated act. What is interesting is that Breivik is rarely referred to as a terrorist.

The Fear is kicking in.  Whether it be the refugees, Russia deciding to have another crack at taking over or crime in general. If people start to arm themselves, someone will flip one day and have access to a weapon. As mentioned earlier, it isn’t impossible to acquire firearms and ammunition without a permit or licence. So, if you were looking for a Petri Dish to test the ability of the “American Disease” to spread, Western Europe is my pick. The Agar is set, as it were, all that is required is for the lid to be removed. Given the right conditions The Euro Zone could experience a spate of rampage shootings.

The difference between Religious or Politically Motivated Terrorism and Rampage Shootings could very quickly become blurred. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Terrorism by definition, implies an act that terrorises. I’m certain those kids bleeding out in Aramoana felt terrorised, as did those who survived Port Arthur. Terror is a natural reaction to a horrendous situation. To survive a rampage shooting would take a special type of person to not experience some degree of Post Traumatic Stress. I remember being more terrorised in 2016 by someone throwing a petrol bomb onto a Brisbane Council bus, killing the driver and injuring several passengers. I was less terrorised when around the same time a young man in Sydney was charged with terrorism offences for stabbing one man whilst yelling ‘Allah-u akbar’. Granted, I live in Brisbane, but if I lived in Sydney I’d still catch public transport and be more concerned about a firebomb than getting stabbed by a Muslim bloke.

The “American Disease” is in danger of being absorbed into the general term of Terrorism. Murderers across the Western World are bringing up impressive tallies with new and innovative means. Mass Murder in peace time is no longer America’s specialty. The USA still consistently shoots more people in a single session than any other developed nation but the ability of any committed individual to take lives is not diminished in countries with stricter gun control measures. What I believe Prime Minister Howard was referring to as the “American Disease”, was the ability for someone who had no ‘genuine reason’ to possess an arsenal of military style firearms capable of causing mass carnage in a short space of time. Gun crime still exists in Australia, but is mostly restricted to the criminal class.

Which brings us back to Paranoia. If you live in a country where you’re more likely to die from sunburn than a gunshot and the biggest military threat involves some Yahoo in Pyong-Yang pushing a button, there isn’t much of an argument to justify owning a gun for protection. If an invasion was imminent, things might be different, but there isn’t. The Fear doesn’t exist in Australia because we prefer to use our words rather than our weapons most of the time. Most developed countries adopt this approach, but in the United States of America rampage shootings are treated in the same way as natural disasters. It’s as if they are expected seasonally, akin to a hurricane or wildfire.

The script is the same; The Mayor, Police Chief and Sherriff make a statement expressing surprise and shock that this happened in their community. The Governor turns up, maybe a Senator and a few members of Congress as well. If you voted the right way you might even get to see The President who will either pretend they can implement gun control legislation or blame the mental health of the shooter.

Gray had the “American Disease”. As do Bryant and Breivik. Lanza and Thompson were in the same boat. It is only in the USA where the “American Disease” takes hold and spreads. Political and Religiously motived attacks have increased globally but it is only the USA that continues to experience random shootings with no apparent motive except fear or anger.

What the USA requires is something lacking since Robert Kennedy was gunned down. Someone of decent moral character to tell the nation that; The Redcoats aren’t under the bed, a chap named Booth killed Lincoln, the original custodians have been subjugated, America won The Cold War and the best way to prevent Radical Islam is to stop having proxy wars in Muslim countries. Only when The USA stops being scared can it truly become ‘The Land of The Free and The Home of The Brave’.