outside the cafe, walter mikec's ex-wife nannette and their daughters, elana and madeleine, had beentte flagged down a car so they could escape. but in that car was the gunman himself. >> the local doctor said that nannette and the children -- the girls are both, they're all dead. i just remember this primal scream. you know, i really wanted to be with them. at that point in time, i would rather have been dead than alive. >> in all, 35 people were killed before bryant was captured by the police. >> the overwhelming feeling was, this is terrible. we had to do something about it. >> prime minister john howard had been elected just weeks before the massacre. other mass shootings in australia had provoked outrage, but with so many victims from different parts of the country, the port arthur shooting shocked this small nation of 18 million to its core. >> in politics, you are the political capital for a good cause or you watch it waste away. and i felt that i had to use the authority of my office to change things. >> a dramatic reduction in the number of automatic and semi-automatic weapo