It’s a long article, but this near the end sticks out:

It would also be negligent to omit what seemed plain to Australians, but could be less easy to measure in empirical terms. After the death and serious injury of 54 people at Port Arthur, facilitated by firearms then openly marketed by licensed gun dealers as “assault weapons”, a national upwelling of grief and revulsion saw pollsters reporting 90–95% public approval for stringent new gun laws. Resistance to gun control was roundly condemned in virtually all news media, and governments’ 12 days of resolve deprived the firearm lobby of crucial delay time. Announcing the law changes, Prime Minister John Howard invoked the majority will of Australians when he said “This represents an enormous shift in the culture of this country towards the possession, the use and the ownership of guns. It is an historic agreement. It means that this country, through its governments, has decided not to go down the American path … Ours is not a gun culture, ours is a culture of peaceful cooperation.” Later opinion polling ranked Howard’s new gun laws as by far the most popular decision in the first year of his conservative government. In the opinion of the authors, the 1996 sea change in Australian attitudes—and perhaps also a significant component of the public health benefits of lower rates of firearm-related mass shootings, suicide and homicide reported here—is best described as a national change of attitude to gun owners and their firearms.
http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/12/6/365.full