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Is there anything we can do as individuals to help stop this kind of thing happening or is it a fact of life that we have to live with it?

As long as we have guns and people are treated like objects on the media... yes we will... sorry

No, i'm afraid this can't be stopped, you can only hope this doesn't happen to any of your loved ones.

<font color="#66cc99">I thought guns were illegal in Australia. I remember reading a bunch of hoopla about it.

Perhaps another law againse murder would help?</font>

You can stop it by shooting back!!If you are armed and some nut job busts into where you are and starts shooting up the place you can prevent people from being hurt by killing the afore mentioned gun toteing nut job. If you dissaprove of useing guns then at the very least you can tackle the man with the gun like the people in the article did. To my knowledgethere is no way to stop people from commiting acts of violence upon one another. People have been killing each other since the first caveman realized how to pick up a rock.You can either let it happen and be one of the victims, or you can make the attacker curse the day he was born. Personaly I choose the second option because I would rather live than get shot in the back as I ran away.

Since considerably earlier than that, since before we were human.

It may be possible to cut down the numner of incidents with better education and all that crap, but at the end of the day the only protection you have is yourself and your friends. If your lucky.

Better education? The shootings took place at a university! Protection is your friends? What? We use meat shields now?
Sorry dude, but that aint gonna happen. I was praying that this nonsense wouldnt get to Australia. Now it has and its hit us in a bad way. I mean I was actually intending to go to Monash University..
This is way bad shit.

Consider the story of Cain and Abel. No, violence is endemic to the human kind. We are aggressive animals, and the imperfectly societalized oneswill break out in violence occasioally. Sorry that it has to be that way, though. :(

I only just heard about it, but I'm almost willing to be that this is gang-related - maybe a Triad payback or something.

Police have commended students for risking their lives to tackle this nutter - otherwise other lives may have been lost (unless the targets were specific).

Incidentally, here's a list of recent mass shootings in Australia. There aren't many - but even one is too much. :(

<font color="red">
August 9, 1987 - Julian Knight opened fire at random on Hoddle Street in inner Melbourne, killing seven people. He was jailed for life.

December 8, 1987 - Frank Vitkovic shot dead eight people and injured four more at the Australia Post building in Queen Street, Melbourne. He then threw himself out of the 11th floor window.

August 30, 1990 - Unemployed Paul Anthony Evers, 35, killed five people with a 12-gauge shotgun in the inner-Sydney Surry Hills, after one of his neighbours called him a "dole bludger".

August 17, 1991 - Wade Frankum fatally shot six people with a semi-automatic rifle and hacked a 15-year-old girl to death with a knife, at the Strathfield Shopping Mall in western Sydney. He then shot himself.

April 28, 1996 - In one of the world's worst mass shootings, Martin Bryant shot dead 35 people at Port Arthur in Tasmania. He was jailed for life.

October 21, 2002 - Two people shot dead and five injured in shooting during a tutorial at the Clayton campus of Melbourne's Monash University. Man arrested. </font>

Most guns are illegal for most people MagiK. This came into effect largely after the Port Arthur Massacre - http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial/bryant/

Of course illegal (imported or stolen) are still readily available. Apparently it has made it alot harder for people to just grab a gun and start shooting, but not impossible.

This type of incident unfortunately, is not new, but is painfully highlighted by recent tragic events. Back when my wife was in high school some maniac killed her friends sister with a machette as she was sitting in a mall he shot and killed a number of others too. This was around 8 years ago and there have been many incidents before and since.

I think many Australians are feeling highly insecure as we seem to be faced with escalating violence of both domestic and terrorist kinds, yet have little history or infastructure for dealing with and preventing these kinds of crimes.

Personally I don't feel like the dangers are much higher than they have been. They have always been around and the nature of the crimes - that the perpetrator has no concern for their own safety when commiting it, even prepared to die for it - means that we can't do a hell of a lot differently.

I guess that the blinkers have come off for a lot of Aussies now though, and they are realising that one day these incidents they read about in the papers and see on tv could be in their own backyard so to speak.