Days after the most horrifying event occurred in Sydney, at Christmas time no less. Two gunmen picked off and murdered a number of Jewish people at a Hanukkah celebration event at Bondi Beach. 15 People dead at the time of writing and the whole country is left reeling.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to Australia? We had Port Arthur and our gun laws were tightened.

This is a wake-up call that we are no longer immune to radical terrorism or mass shootings fueled by religious zealotry or otherwise. Perhaps there is a bit of complacency that this barely ever occurs and that we are geographically isolated, have a functioning government. For the most part though, this is true. It has been 29 years since the last large scale (10+ deaths) mass shooting.

It didn’t take long for this awful event to become used a pawn in politicized polemic. It wasn’t so much from an Australian angle to begin with. Some folks put the blame on the Albanese government for its tacit support for Palestinian statehood (2 state system). Others put the blame more broadly on the ALP for not recognizing the growing discord of anti-Jewish sentiment and doing something about it. Allowing rallies for one thing, and paraded across our most well known icon, the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In and of itself, I don’t see an issue with this, given the time and context in which those actions occured.

The bulk of the criticism came from the good old United States. Almost with saliva still dripping they reveled in the disaster to shallowly prove that Australian gun laws don’t work. The rhetoric was as simple as it was absurd. “The Australian people weren’t able to defend themselves”. Mocking Jim Jefferies for noting in an old post that Australia has had no mass casualties since the gun amnesty. Misconstruing events to make out that the Australian police were cowardly. Not to play tit-for-tat politics too much, but there seems to be a collective amnesia as to the events of Uvalde Texas – which I won’t dwell too much on. Suffice to say it was a bleak.

The response from the government was a swift look into the current gun control legislation and finding loopholes and inadequacies. It was noted that gun permits are issued on application without any follow-up re-assessment. It seems quite reasonable to allow gun owners to go through a periodic refresh of their permits to assess suitability. If you have to do this to operate heavy machinery, then surely owning a gun would be sufficient grounds! Allowing gun ownership for Australian citizens is also another good way to curtail gun ownership from any “undesirables” who may have found their way into Australia and choose to abuse this goodwill. Not that this is fool-proof. The younger gunman at Bondi was an Australian citizen by virtue of being born in this country.

The response from over the pond was similarly disappointing. “It’s not the weapon, it’s the individual. Why don’t you restrict cars, they can be driven into crowds”. There’s a grain of truth in some of these statements. You cannot control every facet, but what you can control is the availability. Making guns as difficult as possible to obtain reduces the casual ease at which these terrifying events will occur. Will it stop the determined individual? Absolutely not!

Looking at the mass shooting statistics between Australia and America is stark. Since the Port Arthur gun recall, we have had 10 mass shootings, but only 2 where the victim wasn’t known to the assailant.

According to mass shooting tracker, USA has had 467 mass shootings in 2025 alone. Compare this to Australia which has had 10 in 29 years. Only two major being this and Port Arthur.

I’ll let the statistics speak for themselves.

Lastly, just touching on some semi random topics. The hate for Albo is unjustified. I get it though. In a tragedy like this people either like to have a scapegoat or a figure to look up to. Anthony Albanese is not responsible for the methods, actions and motives of a radicalized individual with free agency. Australian security organisations do their best to keep a pulse on such events and have done an exemplary job ASIO anticipates spikes in violence . It’s a “game” where only 1 slip-up can have fatal consequences. During a time of grief people want some to pin the blame. This isn’t helpful.

Within one week we have strengthened our gun laws and this will sit with parliament to be ratified. While it won’t stop the absolutely determined, it will make it ever so much harder and add friction to anyone who may contemplate these sorts of things. Make the “barrier to entry” as high as possible. The highest rung on the high jump.

This is a good and sensible approach and I’m all for it.