The National Firearms Agreement (NFA), also sometimes called the National Agreement on Firearms, the National Firearms Agreement and Buyback Program, or the Nationwide Agreement on Firearms, was an agreement concerning firearm control made by Australasian Police Ministers' Council (APMC) in 1996, in response to the Port Arthur massacre that killed 35 people. Four days after the killings, the Australian Prime Minister John Howard told the parliament “We need to achieve a total prohibition on the ownership, possession, sale and importation of all automatic and semi-automatic weapons. That will be the essence of the proposal that will be put by the Commonwealth government at the meeting on Friday…". The laws to give effect to the Agreement were passed by Australian State governments only 12 days after the Port Arthur massacre.