Don’t take us back there:

IWAS badly affected for the long term by the Port Arthur massacre. was Director of Surgery at the Royal Hobart Hospital at that time.

I ran the surgical response for the hospital.

I saw every living victim arrive at the hospital, including the perpetrator.

I fronted the media on behalf of the hospital many times over the subsequent week.

These experiences, the heavy responsibilities at the time, and keeping up medical and leadership duties not knowing whether my family members would arrive as victims, still haunt me.

Yet my experiences are nothing compared to those who dealt with the disaster at the site. In fact all Tasmanians have been affected and challenged by this horrific Tasmanian experience.

The one positive thing Tasmanians can cling to out of this disaster is the landmark, world-class gun control that resulted for Australia, legislation that is the envy of most of the world, including schoolchildren in the US, who have no hope of ever achieving anything like it in their country despite their mass protests.

Maybe we should acknowledge the sort of world to which the young aspire.

I am asking Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman to reconsider the ethics of loosening gun controls in Tasmania and, as a result of more consideration, not only dropping the proposed changes but making it a mark of his person and leadership to commit to never allowing these laws to be weakened while he is in power.

Here is how I see the ethics of why Mr Hodgman should change to such a position.

The strongest ethical argument against loosening gun control in Tasmania is the Utilitarian argument, based on consequences, reasoned by Bentham and Mill in the 1800s: choices should be guided by achieving the greatest good for the greatest number.

We are better off as a society when the choices we make maximise human flourishing. What effects on human flourishing would result from loosening gun control in Tasmania?

Australian gun control was achieved at a cost of great suffering by Tasmanians.

Reversing part of that legislation may offer a marginal benefit to a small group, but would not be a game changer for them — it might potentially make some situations a little easier to manage.

But the cost of a slight benefit to a small group would be a major psychological trauma to those who directly suffered, and would negatively impact all Tasmanians who can at least, now, hold up the best gun control laws in the world as a hard-won positive achievement out of adversity.

Further, it would be the thin edge of the wedge for unpicking the legislation in other jurisdictions.

Inevitably the “rotting” of this world-leading legislation would be sheeted back to the very state out of which gun control was spurred at great cost. It would shame Tasmania, and psychologically and ethically harm us.

To achieve a non-essential minor improvement for a few, the one thing we can all be proud of and call some sort of recompense, will be trashed.

I ask you to carry out an ethical analysis of your proposal to weaken gun control in Tasmania, and as a result not only drop it, but commit to the opposite — never allowing it to ever be weakened.

The one positive thing we can cling to out of this disaster is the landmark, world-class gun control