Three decades ago, almost 650,000 firearms − about one-third of all privately owned guns in Australia – were surrendered, loaded into trucks and destroyed. In exchange for these firearms, part of a mandatory gun buyback program, the government paid out $200 million. Gun-related murder and suicide rates plummeted.
Now, a Dec. 14 mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, which left 15 people dead as well as one of the two suspects, has raised fresh questions about whether Australia’s gun laws, already among the world’s toughest, remain fit to prevent further bloodshed.
Speaking to reporters on Dec. 15, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that his government would be urgently examining “the need for tougher gun laws” and that “if there is any action required in terms of legislative response, we will certainly have it.”
Australia’s gun buyback and amnesty program was enacted in the immediate wake of a 1996 shooting at a popular tourist destination in Port Arthur, Tasmania, when a young man with a troubled past walked into a cafe and opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle, killing 35 people and injuring 23 more. The incident was widely regarded at the time as the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in modern history.
Australia’s National Firearms Agreement was backed by all of the nation’s major political parties and all six of its states and three mainland territories. It imposed a flat-out ban on automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns. It also sharply restricted legal ownership of firearms, established a gun ownership registry and required a permit and a reason for all new firearm purchases. Self-defense did not count.
Gun experts say that studies show the tightened legislation has largely worked and that Australia’s gun ownership system can be credited with helping to engineer one of the world’s lowest gun homicide rates, per capita.
The annual rate of total gun deaths in Australia fell from 2.9 per 100,000 people in 1996 to just 0.88 per 100,000 in 2018, according to the Australian Gun Safety Alliance, a bipartisan organization that advocates for strong gun safety laws. That rate is about 12 times lower than the U.S. rate of 10.6 total gun deaths per 100,000, according to the alliance’s data, though more recent data from the Pew Research Center puts the U.S. figures higher, at 13.7 gun deaths per 100,000 in 2023, below a peak of 16.3 per 100,000 in 1974.
Philip Alpers, a professor at the University of Sydney who specializes in firearm injury prevention, provided data that show Australia suffered 12 mass shootings before the revision of its gun laws but only four in the 29 years since. “This is a success unparalleled in any other country,” he said.
But Alpers noted that even though Australia’s gun laws have been successful, in the majority of cases − in Australia, also around the world − the victims in mass shootings are shot with weapons owned by a licensed gun owner. In Australia, he said, 56% of victims in mass shootings are shot by licensed firearms owners.
And that is the case with one of the Bondi suspects, named locally as Sajid Akram, 50. According to police, he had a firearms license for recreational hunting and owned six registered weapons. Akram, who was shot dead at the scene by police, and his son, Naveed, 24, who was taken into custody in a critical condition, used what police described as “long-range firearms” to shoot Jewish festivalgoers at Bondi Beach.
Tim Quinn, president of Gun Control Australia, which advocates for tighter gun laws, wrote in a blog post that the Bondi attack feels “unimaginable here, which is a testament to the strength of our gun laws.”
Quinn added in his post: “It is essential that we ask careful, evidence-based questions about how this attack occurred, including how any weapons were obtained and whether our current laws and enforcement mechanisms are keeping pace with changing risks and technologies.”
Some holes already appear evident.
After chairing a meeting of his national cabinet, Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, said the country’s firearms register still needs to merge records nationwide. He also acknowledged that “people’s circumstances change, people can be radicalized over a period of time. Licenses should not be in perpetuity.” He said that Australia’s intelligence agencies may need to be more involved with firearms licensing.
While Sajid Akram had a firearms license for recreational hunting, was a member of a gun club and was not on any watchlist, his son briefly came to authorities’ attention in 2019 when he was examined over his close ties to a Sydney-based cell of the Islamic State group before it was concluded he posed no threat.
Some experts in Australia say there are other factors to consider.
Recent statistics have shown that the number of legal guns in Australia has been steadily rising for two decades and now exceeds the number of licensed firearms owned by Australians before the 1996 crackdown.
Andrew Hemming, an expert in criminal law at the University of Southern Queensland, said Australia’s gun laws have “weakened” since the Port Arthur incident and not only has the number of licensed firearms increased, to about 4 million, but so has the concentration of ownership, to about four guns per person.
Hemming said gun ownership is rising in urban areas. It’s also not always clear how thorough background checks really are or whether checks are made to see if a licensed weapon has been modified.
Hemming said it’s his understanding that the deceased suspect held a license for six years “with no issues.” He said it is “very difficult to stop an incident of this kind when apparently there were no red flags.”