[imagesource: Madman Entertainment]

Yesterday was yet another reminder that America has a serious mass shooting problem.

Robert “Bobby” E. Crimo III has now been identified as a ‘person of interest’ in the Chicago Fourth of July shooting that has claimed six lives and wounded 38 other people.

It appears he left a long trail of tributes to mass shootings and public killings across various social media platforms.

You don’t often see Australia in the news for mass shootings and there’s a reason for that. On April 28, 1996, 28-year-old Martin Bryant entered a café at the site of a historic penal colony at Port Arthur, Tasmania. He ate his lunch, and then whipped out a semi-automatic rifle and began to shoot.

Finally apprehended the next morning, his attack claimed the lives of 35 people, as well as leaving 23 injured. In the wake of the tragedy, the country immediately sprung into action, introducing legislation outlawing automatic and semi-automatic rifles, as well as pump-action shotguns.

A government gun buyback scheme also saw in excess of 640 000 weapons turned in to authorities and then Prime Minister John Howard refused to back down in the face of lobbying against gun reform.

Martin’s story is now the focus of a feature-length film, Nitram, which scored a five-star review from The Telegraph last week:

 In pricklingly intense detail, it explores the psychological descent of the gunman, Martin Bryant, towards a point of no return.

In deference to a victims’ rights policy in Australia, Bryant is never specifically named here. Nitram – Martin backwards – is the nickname that has stuck to the character ever since school…

There have been some hammily exploitative portraits of real-life sociopaths of late, but this isn’t among them. It’s told from a cool, analytical remove, and clings with painstaking sobriety to its point of view.

Caleb Landry Jones plays the role of Martin and is lauded for his performance, capturing “a doomed psyche breaking apart with eerie conviction”.

Praise is also given to director Justin Kurzel for showing “blazing moral integrity” in how he approached what is still a very raw subject with the people of Tasmania, and Port Arthur in particular.

The film was released in Australia last year. At the time, The Guardian also awarded it five stars:

Presented in a tucked-in aspect ratio, which has a psychologically condensing effect, Nitram has the kind of lived-in aesthetic we’ve come to expect from Kurzel: worn, used, affected by time.

Caleb Landry Jones’ wastoid energy ensconces the protagonist in a thick fog of peculiar untrustworthiness and his performance is darkly captivating throughout; like the film, Jones has a drifting intensity and a haunting ebb and flow.

While Australia did take action in the wake of the shooting, the film points out that there are now more firearms owned in Australia than there were in 1996.

[sources:telegraph&guardian]