The Aramoana massacre was a mass murder that occurred on 13 November 1990 in the small seaside township of Aramoana, New Zealand. Resident David Gray, a 33-year-old unemployed man, began indiscriminately shooting people in the township with a scoped semi-automatic rifle, after a verbal dispute with his next-door neighbour. He shot neighbours and a family visiting the township, killing thirteen people, including local police Sergeant Stewart Guthrie, first responder to the reports of a shooting. After a careful house-by-house search the next day, police officers led by the Special Tactics Group located Gray and shot him dead as he came out of a house firing from the hip (media reporting at the time called the group by the pre-1990 name, the Anti Terrorist Squad). It is the deadliest criminal shooting in New Zealand history.

The massacre began on 13 November at 7.30 pm when Gray confronted neighbour Garry Holden about one of Holden's daughters wandering onto his property. After the confrontation, Gray went into his house, retrieved a Norinco 84S semi-automatic rifle, walked outside and shot Holden dead.

Aramoana, also known as "The Spit" to locals, is a small coastal settlement, 27 kilometres north of Dunedin city, in the South Island of New Zealand. The settlement's permanent population in 2001 Census was 261. Supplementing this are seasonal visitors from the city who occupy cribs. The name Aramoana is Maori for "pathway to the sea".

Originally founded by The Otago Harbour Board, established in the 1880s as an ideal pilot station for navigation around the mouth of the Otago Harbour, this area grew into a small farming village. In the 1950s the town became popular as a beach resort and a rural life village due to the construction of a mole, to inhibit the spread of tidal sands into the mouth of the Otago Harbour and was surveyed and amalgamated as a suburb of Port Chalmers borough.

It is the site of New Zealand's deadliest criminal shooting, which occurred on 13 and 14 November 1990.

The settlement is located on a sand dune Spit at the mouth of the Otago Harbour, opposite the end of the Otago Peninsula. The main channel of the harbour is kept clear by the Aramoana mole, an artificial breakwater which extends for 1200 metres from Aramoana. The mole was originally intended to extend another 600 meters into the ocean, however due to tidal patterns and the instability of the construction, no attempt to extend beyond the current length was thought to be possible.