Foreign Affairs

Australian PM Announces Plan To Punish Country’s Gun Owners For ISIS-Inspired Terrorist Attack

U.S. Secretary of Defense/Wikimedia Commons

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced plans on Friday for a mass confiscation of firearms from law-abiding gun owners in response to Sunday’s terrorist attack at Bondi Beach.

Two Pakistani migrants opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration on Dec. 14 in an attack inspired by the radical Islamic terrorist group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, killing at least 15 people and wounding 40, with one gunman being slain on the scene by police and the other being wounded. Albanese decried in a Friday release the fact that more guns were in private hands than at the time of the 1996.

“Sunday’s deadly ISIS inspired antisemitic terrorist attack at Bondi Beach highlights the need to finish the job the Howard Government started on gun reform,” Albanese claimed in the release. “We know that one of the terrorists from the weekend’s attack held a firearm licence and had six guns. There is no reason someone living in the suburbs of Sydney needed this many guns.”

“There are now more than 4 million firearms in Australia – more than at the time of the Port Arthur massacre, nearly 30 years ago,” Albanese continued.

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The new restrictions proposed by Albanese would include a limit on how many firearms a person could own, limiting firearms licenses to Australian citizens and “additional use of criminal intelligence” to determine if a license to own a firearm should be granted.

“We expect hundreds of thousands of firearms will be collected and destroyed through this scheme,” Albanese said in remarks that aired on 9 News. “Consistent with the approach that was taken in 1996, the government is proposing that states and territories will be responsible for the collection, processing and payment to individuals for surrendered firearms. The Australian federal police will then be responsible for the destruction of these firearms.”

The National Rifle Association and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Australia passed legislation that required owners of semi-automatic firearms and certain pump-action firearms to surrender them in a mandatory “buyback” following a 1996 mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, that killed 35 people and wounded 23 others.

Many Democrats have cited Australia’s sweeping gun ban following a 1996 mass shooting in Port Arthur, Tasmania, that killed 35 people and wounded 23 others as a model response to mass shootings, specifically citing so-called “assault weapons.”

“Assault weapons” is a euphemism that gun-control advocates use to gain support for banning certain semi-automatic firearms with features that provide a cosmetic similarity to firearms capable of fully-automatic operation or firearms that are in service with various militaries around the world. The National Shooting Sports Foundation estimated that over 24 million “modern sporting rifles,” which include the AR-15, are “in circulation” in the United States, as of a July 2022 release.