After Terrorist Attack, Australia Learns All the Wrong Lessons, Again

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4 months ago

Amy Swearer @AmySwearer

Amy Swearer is a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.

A father and son duo opened fire on a crowd of mostly Jewish victims on Dec. 14. They were at a large Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Australia; 15 people were killed and dozens more were wounded in an antisemitic terrorist attack.

Using a legally owned bolt-action shotgun and bolt-action rifle, the gunmen fired more than 80 rounds during a roughly 11-minute reign of terror before police fatally shot the father and critically injured the son.

This horrific attack should be a wake-up call for the Australian government, especially after failing to heed years of warnings about the well-documented rise of antisemitism in the country.

Instead, it has taken it as a green light for a grotesque social experiment in national disarmament. It’s precisely the wrong lesson for Australia to learn—or, in this case, to relearn.

Australia already has one of the most restrictive gun control frameworks in the world. After a devastating 1996 mass public shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, the government implemented far-reaching legal changes, passing sweeping legislation known collectively as the National Firearms Act.

The NFA effectively banned civilian possession of virtually all semiautomatic firearms and most pump-action shotguns. It subjected Australians, who lawfully owned these guns, to a “compulsory buy-back” program.

Within two years, roughly 650,000 firearms were turned in under this compensated confiscation measure, reducing the nation’s civilian gun stock by about a third.

Currently, Australia’s strict gun licensure system requires first-time gun owners to have a “genuine reason” for gun ownership. Self-defense, mind you, is explicitly discounted.

Civilians must then pass comprehensive background checks proving they’re “fit and proper” to be trusted with the privilege of owning guns. They also must participate in a multi-day gun safety course and wait a minimum of 28 days for a mandatory “cooling off period.”

Even then, Australians remain incredibly limited in the selection of guns they can legally possess. Most “general purpose” civilian firearms are capped at a magazine capacity of either five or 10 rounds.