SYDNEY (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday proposed tougher national gun laws after a mass shooting targeted a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney's Bondi Beach, leaving at least 15 people dead.
Albanese said he would propose new restrictions, including limiting the number of guns a licensed owner can obtain. His proposed measures were announced after the authorities revealed that the older of the two gunmen — who were a father and son — had amassed his six guns legally.
“The government is prepared to take whatever action is necessary. Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws,” Albanese told reporters.
“People’s circumstances can change. People can be radicalized over a period of time. Licenses should not be in perpetuity,” he added.
At least 38 people were being treated in hospitals after the massacre on Sunday, when the two shooters fired indiscriminately on the beachfront festivities. Those killed included a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor.
The horror at Australia’s most popular beach was the deadliest shooting in almost three decades in a country with strict gun control laws primarily aimed at removing rapid-fire rifles from circulation. The mass shooting, which Albanese called a terrorist attack, has shocked and anguished Australians and provoked questions about whether the country’s leaders had done enough to curb rising antisemitism.
Jewish leaders and the massacre’s survivors expressed fear and fury as they questioned why the men hadn’t been detected before they opened fire.
“There’s been a heap of inaction,” said Lawrence Stand, a Sydney man who raced to a Bar Mitzvah celebration in Bondi when the violence erupted to find his 12-year-old daughter. “But the people were warned about this. ... And still not enough has been done by our government.”
“I think the federal government has made a number of missteps on antisemitism,” Alex Ryvchin, spokesperson for the Australian Council of Executive Jewry, told reporters gathered on Monday near the site of the massacre. “I think when an attack such as what we saw yesterday takes place the paramount and fundamental duty of government is the protection of its citizens, so there’s been an immense failure.”
An investigation was needed, Ryvchin said, into “how that was allowed to take place.” Those investigations were beginning to unfold Monday.
The gunmen haven't been officially identified and the authorities won't divulge their believed motives. The father, 50, was shot dead while his 24-year-old son was being treated at a hospital on Monday.
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Graham-McLay reported from Wellington, New Zealand and McGuirk from Melbourne, Australia.
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