 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
Shot
By Gail Bell
Picador $28.00
 Pharmacy student Gail Bell was shot in the back as she walked home to her parents' house in outer Sydney on 30 April 1968. The 17-year old student had missed her usual train from the city, then a lift from the station with her father.
Soon after 10pm, with a heavy bag-load of books, Bell heard a car being started in the darkness behind her.
"Boys gathered together for the purpose of rape," she thought. "I imagine them, passing around a bottle, inhibition boundaries met and crossed, stripped back to their most primitive manifestation by vodka and urgency."
Instead, she took a.22 bullet an inch to the left of her spine, hearing (but not seeing) the vehicle accelerate away.
"The body sensation was blunt. There was no perception of sharpness, nothing seemed to tear open," she recalls, then adopts the more technical voice she employed so convincingly in The Poison Principle, a study of dangerous substances and their illegal use.
"A low-velocity solid lead bullet tends to bore straight through whatever's in its path, losing energy as it moves along the wound track. As it travels, it crushes and tears tissue, creating a cone-shaped cavity that narrows down as the bullet slows.
"My bullet ground to a halt beneath a rib, like a runner who sprints the last yards to the boundary fence then leans on the barrier, done in."
Bell was taken to hospital and became a media star at a time when Sydney shootings were rare.
A recent discussion of the case with a detective provided confirmation that the investigation had been lacking.
"Gun nuts, the detective told me, are sad individuals whose whole lives are taken over by a relationship with a gun. 'My bet is a gun nut', he said."
Because police 'know the local weirdos - as solidly as any shepherd knows his flock,' the doors of possible suspects should have been knocked on as early as that night.
Bell views her experience from all angles, the psychological to the ballistic, then tracks down others who have been shot, whether by criminals or in wartime, as well as examining Australia's legal firearms culture - 750,000 registered owners possess two million guns.
She bangs off rounds at rifle clubs, interviews shooters and studies weaponry, assembling the whole with forensic skill to make a challenging contribution to a debate that merits greater prominence.
Well worth reading as a local adjunct to Bowling for Columbine.
- Thanks to Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.
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