Guns, control and culture.

Americans criticising our gun laws is a bit fucking rich. :doh:

‘Disarmed and defenceless’: Americans blame Australia’s strict gun laws for mass shooting at Bondi Beach
Pro-gun Americans have seized on the horrific attack at Bondi to claim Australia’s strict gun laws don’t work.

https://www.news.com...52ac452fa4781e4

Samuel Clench

COMMENT

Pro-gun voices in the United States have seized on the mass shooting at Bondi Beach to express contempt for Australia’s gun laws, blaming our crackdown on civilian ownership after the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre for the horror that unfolded last night.

The death toll from Bondi has now risen to 15, with a 10-year-old girl among the victims. Police say the two attackers were a father and son, the former of whom is now dead. You can find the latest updates on the tragedy here.

There are two distinct threads of criticism, aimed at Australia, from overseas. One from Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has explicitly accused the Albanese Government of failing to crack down sufficiently on anti-Semitism. There’s a genuine, albeit fraught, conversation to be had there.

Less so with the critique from certain Americans. The sort who are perpetually insisting it’s inappropriate to talk about gun laws when the bullets are killing their own children, but are now eager to shout “I told you so”.

A small sample, here.

“Australia has among the toughest gun laws in the world, and ‘diversity is their strength’. Pray for the victims, and for wisdom to follow.”

“I was reliably told that Australia’s strict gun laws eliminated mass shootings from ever happening. I was reliably told that there were only upsides to mass migration.”

“Australians are disarmed and defenceless thanks to strict gun laws. This is what happens when only criminals have guns. Absolute madness.”

“Australia took away its citizens’ guns, but 10 people at Bondi Beach are dead anyway because terrorists don’t care about gun laws. The only thing the Australian government did was make sure its unarmed, law-abiding citizens are now sitting ducks unable to defend themselves.”

“If only Australia had strict gun laws ... oh wait ... IT’S NOT THE F***ING GUNS YOU DUMB F***S!”

The Americans do have such a way with words. And a way of missing the point.

Today police confirmed one of the alleged shooters, the father, was a licensed firearm holder, and owned six guns legally.

To which the swift and natural reaction, of most Australians, was why? Who in this country, in 2025, who doesn’t live on a farm, could possibly need six guns? How did he obtain them? Were red flags missed? Is there a loophole in the law that needs to be shut?

Those questions will dominate the aftermath, along with inquiries into how the culprits were radicalised, and how Australia has been handling anti-Semitism.

“We need to make sure the firearms legislation in New South Wales is fit for purpose,” NSW Premier Chris Minns said this afternoon.

“That does mean restricting firearms for the general public. You don’t need them on New South Wales streets. So we’ll be looking at change.

“You’re going to have to give me some time to get the legislation drafted so we can do it in an appropriate way, in a way that will make a difference.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, meanwhile, said he would put “tougher gun laws” on the agenda of the National Cabinet, “including limits on the number of guns that can be licensed” by one person.

“People can be radicalised over a period of time. Licences should not be in perpetuity.”

See how it works, in a functioning country?

When a mass shooting happens, our instinct is to figure out how to stop it from being repeated. We don’t limit ourselves to thoughts and prayers.

It’s important to stress that, if there was a failure in Australia’s gun laws here, it is not that they were too strict, and gun-toting Americans are the last people on Earth whose advice we should heed. The numbers to back that up are stark.

Bondi is the worst mass shooting Australia has suffered, by far, since 35 people were murdered at Port Arthur in 1996, prompting the Howard government’s crackdown. Before yesterday, we had seen nothing remotely like Port Arthur for 29 years.

During that same period, 23 major mass shootings happened in the United States. (I’m defining a “major” shooting as one that killed at least 10 people; by looser definitions there have been hundreds of mass shootings in America this year alone.)

The point is, every single one of these examples was on the same scale as Bondi. Some were even more horrifying, impossible as that sounds.

Sixty people killed at a music festival in Las Vegas.

Forty-nine at a nightclub in Orlando.

Thirty-two at a university in Virginia.

Twenty-seven at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, most of them young children.

Twenty-six at a church in Texas.

Twenty-three at a Walmart in El Paso.

Twenty-one, again mostly children, at a primary school in Uvalde.

Eighteen at a bowling alley and then a restaurant in Maine.

Seventeen at Parkland High School in Florida.

Fourteen at Fort Hood, a military base in Texas.

Another fourteen in San Bernadino, California.

Fourteen at Columbine High School in Colorado.

Thirteen at a movie theatre in Aurora.

Thirteen at a civic centre in Binghamton, New York.

Twelve at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California.

Twelve at Washington Navy Yard in the District of Columbia.

Twelve at a government building in Virginia Beach.

Eleven at a dance studio in Monterey Park, California.

Eleven at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Ten at Santa Fe High School in Texas.

Ten at multiple locations in Geneva County, Alabama.

Ten at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

And 10 at another supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

Those are just the worst incidents. Most of them were made deadlier by a system that gave the perpetrators access to semiautomatic or automatic weapons.

America’s deeper problem with gun violence has nothing to do with such huge, shocking attacks though. It lies in the constant drumbeat of smaller-scale tragedies; of people killing themselves or usually, those close to them.

That is the chief reason the country’s rate of gun deaths, per capita, is so much higher than you see almost anywhere else in the world.

You cannot separate all those needless deaths from the argument here.

Yes, it might have helped yesterday if a good guy had a pistol stashed away in his budgie smugglers. (That is not how it always works in practice, by the way. Few of us are as brave, in the moment, as we’d like to imagine. What Ahmed al Ahmed did at Bondi Beach would have been incredible even if he were armed.)

But any laws permitting that would: one, make it easier for bad guys to carry guns too, leading to more violent crime; and two, drastically increase those smaller acts of gun violence that don’t make global headlines.

That is the story of America’s approach to guns. That, and the almost indescribably twisted culture of fetishisation that inspires politicians to make their children pose with assault rifles for the annual Christmas card.

All of which is a very long prelude to saying: thank you, Americans, for the sympathy and the prayers, but spare us the lecture.

This country recognised gun violence was an unacceptable problem, decided to do something substantive about it, and decades later this one horrific tragedy has stained our efforts. At least we’ve made an effort.

Australia copping sledges from Americans on this is like a straight-A student who failed one test being mocked and pelted with spitballs, by the delinquent kid at the back of the class who’s been made to repeat two years in a row.

It would be insulting if it weren’t so farcical.

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