The reputation of Australia's gun control took a massive hit with the Bondi Beach attack. For decades, it was held up as the perfect example of gun control, one that former President Barack Obama said he favored for implementation here. In other words, he literally thought it was consistent with the Second Amendment.
Insane.
But the selling point was never its constitutionality, but the fact that it supposedly prevented mass shootings and crime as a whole.
Bondi Beach shattered that myth.
Still, officials immediately jumped to gun control. It seems, though, that not everyone was interested in buying that.
“Of course, there is a significant reframing of the narrative here,” PR Counsel Managing Director Kristy McSweeney told Sky News host James Morrow in an interview. “Don’t forget the government has spent the first 25 days trying to make this issue about gun laws, about gaps in security legislation … everything but antisemitism.”
Nationals Leader David Littleproud, speaking also to Sky News, clarified it a bit further. He said that Australia doesn't have a gun problem, but an "extreme Islamic ideological problem" instead.
The truth is that the officials pushing the anti-gun narrative here are doing everything they can to avoid the elephant in the room. This was, in fact, an act of Islamic terrorism, one targeting Jews because of the radical Islamic antagonism toward Jews and Israel. By making it about guns, these people think they can avoid having to talk about the real problem and appearing Islamophobic.
While I know that not all Muslims are terrorists in the making, the truth of the matter is that Islamic terrorism was the problem on Bondi Beach, and failing to address that underlying cause is just enabling the next attack.
More gun control won't stop it, either. Look at the attacks we've seen in Paris or Mumbai. These aren't exactly pro-gun locales, but terrorists got guns and slaughtered innocent people.
Even if they can't get guns for some reason, have we forgotten the Nice truck attack? Have we forgotten New Orleans on January 1st of last year?
The ruling elite in Australia would rather stick their heads in the sand and blame an inanimate object rather than risk the potential of being called bigoted or other mean things. They'd rather leave Australians vulnerable than address the underlying problem, which is radical Islamic terrorism.
And really, how is that any different than here?
When Charlie Kirk was murdered in front of a crowd at a Utah university, the anti-gun brigade tried to make it about gun laws, not the rhetoric that painted people like Kirk as somehow dangerous. Over and over again, they try to make it about the tools, not the tools using them.
Personally, I'm glad to see some people in Australia calling out this particular flavor of stupidity. It's one thing to not like guns in the hands of private citizens. It's quite another to blame them for the actions of terrorists when we know that terrorism doesn't care about what laws are in place. If they did, they wouldn't commit acts of terrorism, for crying out loud.
This isn't difficult, but the truth of the matter is that too little of the "free world" is all that free in this day and age.
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