DR. BEHIND PORT ARTHUR GUN CONTROL NOW IN MARYLAND
by Stewart Beattie - author of A Gunsmith's Notebook on Port Arthur, 2002
© S. Beattie Oct. 2002
The DR. Behind Port Arthur Gun Control Now In Maryland …
Recent news reports from out of America's East Coast of a "sniper" shooting unarmed people in Maryland and Virginia caused me to take a second look at part of an article I'd written earlier in 2000, about a "star" of the gun control network, Doctor Rebecca Peters, who coincidentally went to Baltimore as soon as her task "down under" was done.
In Australia the "gun control" compact deployed as a network of NGOs, but also they were strategically grafted into our Administration in the Attorney General and Justice Departments. Duncan Kerr (Labour) was the Minister responsible for the Department of Justice who over saw the appointment of one Daryl Smeaton, charged with the drafting of new gun laws, for the States and Territories to enact - as early as November 1995.
The National Coalition for Gun Control (NCGC) was based in Sydney, but had an important branch in Hobart, Tasmania, headed up there by lawyer Roland Browne, while in Melbourne a "sister" organisation, the Coalition for Gun Control (CGC) was run by John Bruce Crook. Prior to 1996, Crook was involved in a defamation action in Melbourne, and in that trial it was reported that none other than Daryl Smeaton presented the Court with a supportive character reference for Crook. 1
But it was in Sydney where Rebecca Peters rose to prominence, arriving in 1981, 'with a man she met travelling,' and apparently lived in Cairo prior to her arrival. While Peters says "she decided" to settle Down Under and become an "Australian citizen," I'm caused to remember those famous words, 'In politics nothing happens by chance. If it happens, it was meant to happen that way'. Apparently Rebecca was from a young age, bent on saving the world.
Born in 1962, Peters grew up as a teenager in Costa Rica, the second of six children in an American family. As her father worked for the American Government there, 'half jokingly,' she suggested in an interview in Australia he "probably worked for the CIA." At age 15 years while attending an "alternative school" in Costa Rica, Peters was educated by itinerant "young hippies". It was during this new-age education she became "obsessed with changing the world."
In Sydney, Peters enrolled in a university in the faculty of Engineering (possibly Macquarie), being just one of only two females in the course, but in 1983 she dropped out. For a time Rebecca took a job as a researcher and reporter with ABC Radio (known locally as the "Gay-BC"), worked with Andrew Olle, but soon found the nature of journalism, 'too disposable'.
In 1991 with a not-so-subtle agenda, Peters returned to university, enrolled as a law student gaining her law degree, at the end of which, she produced a thesis on 'tighter gun control'. This was the "centrepiece" of an enormous folio of material she collected and wrote for her campaign to remove loop-holes in existing gun laws in Australia. She promoted herself as a 'multilingual middle-class lawyer' who was fanatical about "gun control". 2
By `91 Peters was running the NCGC, rising fast to the position of "chair", almost as quickly as the death rate climbed with each incident of that new phenomenon to Australasia, the gun massacre. Undoubtedly her success in this new global calling was to the delight of her best friend the feminist activist Eva Cox and Peters' mentor Charles Watson, Professor of Public Health at Wollongong University, who admired her for her 'intellectual thoroughness.'
In a remarkably short time she quite brilliantly bull-dozed aside the entire weak, (some treacherous), and fragmented firearm owner, sporting shooters' groups, and almost surely was surprised by her success with the shooting massacres producing a 'win-win sound-bite' for the minds and meek support of the gullible Mums and Dads of Australia. Dunblane massacre occurred on 13 March `96 and Port Arthur followed 46 days later. Then all the pieces fell into place for Federal Attorney General, Daryl Williams, to implement the gun-ban laws prepared and ready in November of 1995 by Daryl Smeaton. Job done, it was off to the "Big Apple" for Peters.
But a point to remember, while Rebecca Peters was "down-under", 6 shooting massacres occurred in Australia and New Zealand resulting in 76 deaths and 53 wounded people. In "gun control" here, Peters was no doubt - numro uno. Curiously though since Peters left, the shooting massacres have ceased! None in the last six years. And private firearms still abound…
In New York, Rebecca Peters hit the pavement 'running' and is immediately associated with Desmond Riley of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence - part of the NAACP crowd involved in 'crafting a gun control strategy' for "curing gun ownership" - their words.
Shortly it was announced that Peters was awarded (if you believe their own news releases - or if logic is your guide, rewarded may be the more appropriate word) - with a Senior Fellowship in March 1997 by the Soros Foundation's Open Institute funded Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Merryland. So the good citizens there should perhaps keep her Australasian achievements in mind.
In making application for her fellowship, Rebecca had to 'submit a budget' for her envisioned work … forgive me from chuckling. Can you imagine her difficult task here? Think of a big digit add lots of zeros and voila … a budget!
You may wish to drop a line to the Doctor so here is her working address: The Center on Crime, Community and Culture, 400 West 59th Street, New York, NY10019. Or perhaps you may wish to forward a congratulatory e-mail to <
rpeters@sorosny.org >. Rebecca's doctorate included a stipend incidentally of US$32,500 p.a., plus various expenses covered in her 'budgeted' expenses, the lot bankrolled by the tax-exempt Soros Foundation.
Her citizenry disarmament program is far flung, and includes Australia, New Zealand, the sub-continent, South America, Great Britain and Europe: she's a true-blue "globalist". First on the list after jetting out of Australia though, was her close involvement in organisation of the 'Million Mom March' and in reports of this event, her trademark outlandish unsubstantiated claims regarding crimes, firearms and related deaths appeared on cue. Easily destroyed later by reputable writers, but once the lie is said, truth inevitably is the casualty. Before leaving Australia though, her name was noted alongside that of her NCGC Hobart colleague (now chair of NCGC), Roland Browne on a University Paper entitled, Australia's New Gun Control Philosophy: Public Health is Paramount. 3
But I find it remarkable, that even although in Australia she'd been granted citizenship, Peters' American roots were emphasised. Now in America, Dr Peters is always reported as being 'an Australian gun control expert' … a weird twist don't you think.
In America, the Million Mom March staged on Monday 15 May 1996, on the Mall in Washington, was in Australia lauded 'a raging success'. But even with wall-to-wall major media publicity, numbers were in fact a long way short of the hoped-for million. Hillary and Bill Clinton were of course on tap for the regulation photo-shoot, not surprising really. As it was reported that the rally was 'conceived by Donna Dees-Thomases', supposedly just a concerned 'New Jersey housewife'. However it was reported that in fact Dees-Thomases was a 'high-powered CBS publicist who at one point worked for CBS anchor Dan Rather'. Even of more interest in this same report was the claim that the lady 'is the sister-in-law of Susan Thomases', who was lawyer, political advisor and confidant of Hillary Clinton, the then First Lady. 4
For Rebecca Peters, her 1996 schedule was quite hectic. It was crunch year and on 13 March at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland, 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton, shot dead 16, wounded 13 and then shot himself. Fifteen of the sixteen dead, and ten of the thirteen wounded were all children. Energetically publicised by their chums in the Media, Dunblane was in the scheme of disarmament, the precursor to Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania, Australia. At Port Arthur on 28 April 1996, 35 people died and 20 were wounded in the first convoluted terrorist shooting massacre in this nation. In the massacre, the murder of Nanette Mikac and her two daughters was said by the CNN's John Raedler in the EMA papers to be the classic ‘win-win’ sound bite. Raedler scurried down to Tasmania from Sydney to capture that ‘win-win’ sound bite. I'm caused then to wonder how would uncivilized people evaluate Dunblane?
However, in relation to both massacres it should be remembered it was Rebecca Peters' colleague, Roland Browne, now chair of NCGC, who predicted a shooting massacre in Tasmania in November of 1995, and quite remarkably again made a repeated prediction on the "A Current Affair" TV show, straight after Scotland's Dunblane Massacre. But then anti-gun proponents in Australia seem to have this remarkable psychic skill. For in Tasmania's capitol city Hobart after a Special Premier’s Conference in relation to Gun Control held in December of 1987, NSW's then Premier, Barry "No-gunsworth" Unsworth stated bluntly: "There will never be uniform gun laws in Australia until we see a massacre in Tasmania."
