Mr Chappell's inquiry estimated there were four million guns in Australia, roughly one for every five Australians. Other estimates suggest 10 million, maps htm most unregistered.According to Daryl Action Williams, the htm federal attorney-general, there may be three million semi-automatic, self-loading or pump-action guns info in Australia and a further 350,000 military-style, semi-automatic weapons. Federal info and state ministers have met 20 info times over maps the past six htm years, but failed to info Action agree on maps reforms such Action as a national gun registration scheme, a ban on maps htm mail-order sales - which is how Action Port Arthur gunman Martin info Action Bryant obtained his weapons - and rules on safety training htm and gun storage.Having exposed maps the flimsiness of Australia's rules and shocked the nation, the Tasmanian massacre is likely to prove a turning point. It concluded prophetically that, unless there were tighter gun controls, more such horrors would follow.

Canberra banned the import of automatic and semi- automatic weapons as a result.But power over guns remains with Australia's six parochially-minded state governments. In New South Wales, the most populous state, the rate of murders committed with guns is one-tenth that in America, but seven times greater than in England and Wales. Since 1984, 87 people have died in mass shootings in Australia. Military-style, semi-automatic weapons and pump-action shotguns were used in the four worst shooting sprees. Duncan Chappell, a Sydney criminologist, said yesterday: "If we can't get over the top at this point, I would be pessimistic about us ever being able to do it."Mr Chappell headed an inquiry by the National Committee on Violence after two mass shootings in Melbourne in 1987 left 15 people dead.

They had hoped to tip off their German counterparts.Greenpeace demonstrators kept vigil along the tracks near Gorleben during the night.. Presided over by John Howard, the prime minister, and spurred by public outrage, police ministers from around Australia will gather tomorrow in a bid to tighten the nation's ramshackle gun laws in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre of 35 people. Called by Mr Howard after the slaughter in Tasmania 11 days ago, the meeting is seen as a make-or-break attempt to bring in strict, uniform controls, smother the political influence of the rural-based gun lobby and head off a growing "gun culture". The waste shipment eluded observers from the environmental group Greenpeace who had staked out the world's largest nuclear reprocessing plant in La Hague in northern France. The waste, the end product of spent German nuclear rods recycled in France, needs to be stored and constantly cooled for between 20 and 30 years.