It's been almost 30 years since Australia collected more than 500,000 guns after the government instituted sweeping bans on semi-automatic firearms and other gun controls like a 28-day waiting period and strict licensing laws for gun owners, and in the aftermath of the Bondi Beach shooting this past weekend Australian politicians are tripping over themselves to demand another crackdown on gun ownership like the one sparked by the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.
The U.S. gun control lobby loves to point to Australia as an example for this country to follow, so we should be paying very close attention to what's happening Down Under at the moment. That will definitely include laws to limit the number of firearms that someone can legally own, but there are plenty of other potential restrictions still on the table.
Leaders of the federal and state governments on Monday also proposed restricting gun ownership to Australian citizens, a measure that would have excluded the older suspect, who came to Australia in 1998 on a student visa and became a permanent resident after marrying a local woman. Officials wouldn’t confirm what country he had migrated from.
His son, who doesn’t have a gun license, is an Australian-born citizen.
The government leaders also proposed the “additional use of criminal intelligence” in deciding who was eligible for a gun license. That could mean the son’s suspicious associates could disqualify the father from owning a gun.
Chris Minns, premier of New South Wales where Sydney is the state capital, said his state’s gun laws would change, but he could not yet detail how.
“If you’re not a farmer, you’re not involved in agriculture, why do you need these massive weapons that put the public in danger and make life dangerous and difficult for New South Wales Police?” Minns asked.
I doubt the U.S. gun lobby would echo the calls to limit gun ownership only to United States citizens, but only because that would put it at odds with the pro-immigration and open borders advocates in the Democratic coalition they belong to. I have no doubt whatsoever, though, that if Everytown, et al are successful at imposing a federal ban on semi-automatic long guns, their appetite for destruction of the Second Amendment will still be voracious.
The Australian media is already doing its best to portray the guns used in the attack in the most sinister terms possible. The Sydney Morning News, for instance, took a close look at the bolt-action rifle one of the killers used, and readers are clearly meant to conclude that these guns have no place in civilized society.
Police are yet to reveal officially which weapons were used in the attack, but Dr John Coyne, the director of the national security program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said it appeared that among the weapons police found at the scene, the terror suspects had a bolt action high-powered rifle and shotguns.
The two suspects – 50-year-old Sajid Akram and his son, Naveed Akram, 24 – were able to fire the weapons in quick succession because of the rifle’s “straight-pull bolt action”, Coyne said, which made for quick reloading.
The straight-pull action – clearly demonstrated by Naveed Akram in one video – means that after the gun is fired, the shooter needs only to pull the bolt back in one movement to load another round.
The younger suspect’s apparent proficiency suggests he’d had plenty of practice.
But as American arms expert Brian Kimber noted on X, the gun itself also makes this easy.
“So for the non-gun people: it’s really not hard to [practise] weapons manipulation at home and become proficient,” wrote the US military veteran and podcaster. “I promise I could have you cycling the bolt like this in a few days, easy.”
... The speed of firing is also one of the key marketing points that gun makers use to sell these models.
Beretta’s straight-pull bolt-action rifle, which retails from about $2600 in Australia, “guarantees the utmost speed, accuracy, precision, safety and ease of use, from the first pull of the trigger through to the smoothness of reloading”, the manufacturer boasts on its Australian website.
The weapon is “a versatile, modern, modular weapon suited to every kind of hunter and shooting environment … [and] encapsulates all of Beretta’s experience, acquired over years of working in both the military and civilian spheres”.
Speed, accuracy, precision, safety, and ease of use are all things that gun owners look for in a firearm. Those same attributes, however, are reason enough to ban those same firearms (with perhaps the exception of "safety"). We already hear gun control activists and anti-gun judges here at home complain that the rate of fire of a semi-automatic gun is too fast and machine-gun like, so why would we think that anti-gunners would leave bolt-action, pump action, and lever-action guns alone if semi-automatics were ever banned outright?
We've even seen some federal judges suggest that handguns are perhaps the only firearms protected by the Second Amendment, since they're the ones most commonly used for self-defense. If SCOTUS ultimately accepts that logic it would open the door for gun bans on rifles and shotguns off all types, and the gun control lobby would also immediately launch a campaign to prohibit the sale and possession of semi-automatic handguns.
The anti-gunners have spent considerable time and money rebranding themselves as a "gun safety" movement that's not opposed to the Second Amendment at all. "We're just in favor of responsible gun ownership," they proclaim. When a high profile shooting takes place, though, their first impulse is to go after all gun owners, as well as the arms they commonly possess.
As if anyone needed further proof that they're opposed to "Second Amendment rights" pic.twitter.com/kU6Q1svUXx
— Rob Romano (@2Aupdates) December 15, 2025
No, I don't think we needed any more proof, but Rob's point still stands. If you're not opposed to the Second Amendment, then why be opposed to the DOJ actively defending the Second Amendment rights from abuses like charging $2,000 for a concealed carry permit or forcing people to wait a year or more before they can legally carry a gun?
We may not have needed any reminders about the long-term goals of the gun control lobby, but the terrible act of domestic terrorism in Australia is giving us one anyway. Whatever successes the gun control lobby has, until gun ownership is eradicated altogether they will never give up and never go away, which means we can never stop our defense of this fundamental civil right, no matter how secure we might believe it to be.
