Australia weighs new gun laws after antisemitic attack

What happened

Two gunmen, identified as a father and son, opened fire Sunday on hundreds of Jewish families gathered to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah at a park in Sydney’s Bondi Beach. The attackers killed at least 15 people, and another 38 remained hospitalized. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese today said that the attack was an “act of pure evil, an act of antisemitism, an act of terrorism on our shores,” and his government would pursue “tougher gun laws.” One alleged gunman was shot dead by police and his 24-year-old son was in a hospital and expected to survive and face charges, police said.

In a separate mass shooting in Rhode Island on Saturday, two students at Brown University were killed and nine others were hospitalized. Police in Providence last night released a “person of interest” who had been arrested, saying a review of the evidence pointed in a different direction.

Who said what

The people killed in the Bondi Beach attack included a “10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor,” The Associated Press said. “Jewish leaders in Sydney reacted with grief and rage,” The Washington Post said, “after what they said were months of unheeded warnings about the dangers of rising antisemitism” amid a “surge in antisemitic incidents over the past two years,” following the start of the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza. Police have now increased security at synagogues and other Jewish centers in Australia as well as New York, London and elsewhere.

The “horror at Australia’s most popular beach was the deadliest shooting in almost three decades in a country with strict gun control laws” enacted after a 1996 attack that left 35 people dead, the AP said. The 50-year-old suspect killed by police Sunday “had licenses for six guns” for recreational hunting as a member of a gun club, The New York Times said, “and a total of six were recovered from the scene and two searched properties.”

What next?

Albanese said he would propose new gun laws at a Cabinet meeting today attended by state leaders, as “some laws are implemented by the states.” The proposed reforms include limiting the number of allowed firearms and reviewing licenses periodically. “People’s circumstances can change,” he said. “People can be radicalized over a period of time. Licenses should not be in perpetuity.”

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