The shooting at Australia’s Bondi Beach has raised questions over the country’s gun laws.
Despite already being some of the toughest in the world, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his government is now considering tightening legislation.
It comes as one of the gunmen who carried out Sunday’s attack, which has left 15 people dead, had held a firearms licence since 2015, along with six registered weapons.
Police have given no details of the firearms used in the shooting, but Sky News has identified from the footage that the younger gunman, Naveed Akram, was using a rifle, while the older one, Sajid Akram, was using a semi-automatic shotgun.
Here’s what the country’s gun laws say and what changes could be made.
What are Australia’s gun laws?
Australia has strict gun laws, especially compared to the US.
You have to have a “genuine reason” to obtain a firearms licence.
The government of New South Wales says such reasons include:
• Business or employment
• Animal welfare
• Recreational hunting and vermin control
• Sport
What has the PM said about the law?
Mr Albanese said his cabinet agreed to strengthen gun laws and work on a national firearms register to tackle aspects such as the number of weapons permitted by gun licences, and how long licences are valid.
Other measures being considered include the types of guns that are legal, including modifications, and using “additional criminal intelligence” to decide who is eligible for a gun licence.
That could mean someone known to have suspicious associates could be disqualified from owning a gun.
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“The government is prepared to take whatever action is necessary. Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws,” Mr Albanese told reporters before a cabinet meeting on Monday.
“People’s circumstances can change. People can be radicalised over a period of time. Licences should not be in perpetuity.”
New South Wales premier Chris Minns added: “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?”
Read more:
What we know about Bondi Beach shooting
Site of celebration now a memorial to mass shooting
Why was the law previously strengthened?
Australia tightened its gun laws significantly after Martin Bryant killed 35 people with semi-automatic weapons at a tourist spot in Tasmania in 1996.
John Howard, the prime minister at the time, reacted by pushing for tough new national gun laws that made it much more difficult for Australians to acquire firearms.
Twelve days after the shootings at Port Arthur, the national firearms agreement was finalised, banning most people from owning rapid-fire rifles and shotguns.
In a government buyback scheme, more than 600,000 weapons were handed in and destroyed.
By 2009, there were 0.1 gun murders per 100,000 people in Australia compared with 3.2 per 100,000 in the US, according to contemporaneous data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Have there been other mass shootings?
Since the national firearm agreement was introduced, there has been two murder-suicides in 2014 and 2018 – with five and seven people killed respectively.
The most recent before the Bondi Beach attack was in December 2022, when two police officers were ambushed and killed during a routine visit in the rural settlement of Wieambilla. One civilian also died.
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The three attackers were shot and killed by police after an extended stand-off.
The attack was long deemed a Christian fundamentalist terror attack, but an investigation found last month that the trio were believed to be acting “defensively within their delusional framework”.
