Australia’s largest city, Sydney, is reeling after a weekend attack on a popular beach where Jews were enjoying a Hannukah event. The two Islamic attackers, a father and son, shot and killed 15 people and wounded nearly 40 more during their killing spree.
Famous for its rugged Outback and a reputation of independent people, Australia stunned the West when its government confiscated more than 600,000 guns after a 1996 massacre, in Port Arthur, killed 35 people.
Passage of the gun ban law, the National Firearms Agreement, meant Australians surrendered not only semi-auto rifles, such as the AK-47 and AR-15, but also pump-action shotguns and handguns above a .38 caliber.
The two attackers used a “straight-pull” rifle, which is common in Europe, and two straight-pull shotguns, in a country where self-defense is not a legal reason to purchase and own a firearm.
The father, however, owned six registered firearms in all.
Luis Valdez, national spokesman for Gun Owners of America, says Australia’s politicians assured the public that surrendering their firearms would stop crime.
“Well, as we've seen repeatedly in Australia and across the globe, that's not the case,” he told AFN. “I say this as a former law enforcement officer: criminals are criminals because they break the law.”
After the Bondi Beach massacre, Australians will now likely watch their government pass even more restrictive gun laws, such as limiting the number of guns per person, a citizenship requirement, and banning 3D-printed weapons, SBS News reported.
Beyond the issue of legally-owned firearms, Australia’s liberal politicians and liberal news media are being challenged to lay the blame where it belongs: on radical Islamists living in their own country.
Australia, mirroring massive and culture-changing Muslim immigration in Western Europe, has welcomed Muslims from around the world as refugees and asylum seekers, and foreign workers with visas.
That number officially hovers at 813,000, 60% of them foreign-born Australians, according to the last national census in 2021.
Australia's Jews don't hold back
In a TV news interview, a Jewish woman whose father was wounded in the beach attack bluntly told Australia’s ABC News to stop its pro-Palestinian, anti-Jewish reporting.
“Is this what you wanted? Is this enough now?” the woman told two news reporters standing just feet away.
In a CBS News interview, Bondi Beach survivors Wayne and Vanessa Miller told the U.S. news outlet they are victims of a Muslim-appeasing government that has failed to protect Australia's Jews after the October 7 attack in Israel.
"The acts of terrorism have been awarded by the Australian weak government," Wayne Miller said.
Vanessa Miller said Australia's liberal prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has "blood on his hands" after the attack.
Albanese, who supports a Palestinian state, has blamed the attack on "right-wing extremism" and is vowing to strengthen the nation's gun laws even more.
"Western Europe, and now Australia, you're pathetically weak in the face of religious Nazis," Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.) told Fox News in a Monday interview.
Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, told AFN the Australian government has been “bending over backwards” for years to make Muslims feel welcome.
“To accommodate Islamic practices, to look the other way about the rise in crime, the rise in rapes, the jihad activity,” he complained. “And none of it has pacified the Muslim community.”
