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In the aftermath of the awful incident at Bondi, Australia is confronting multiple pressing reckonings. We are seeing a long-overdue national spotlight on anti-Jewish sentiment, an persistent concern about national security, and inquiries about the way such an tragedy could happen. But, as viewed of a health professional and Australian Jew, the most important dialogue we are now having revolves around firearms.

A Decade of Warnings and a Successful Response

Public health specialists have been sounding alarms about firearms for at least a ten-year period. In the wake of the Port Arthur massacre, Australians came together and implemented a suite of measures to reduce gun violence nationwide. The strategy succeeded. Before 1996, the nation witnessed roughly one mass shooting per year. In the decades since, there have been vanishingly few major events, with none approaching the fatalities of the incidents in the 1980s and 1990s.

The Bondi Attack and the Function of Current Laws

Amidst the Bondi events, the nation's firearm regulations were not entirely useless. It has been suggested the individuals involved might have been armed with bolt-action rifles and a straight-pull shotgun. These firearms are limited to firing a single bullet at a time, requiring a manual operation to ready the next round. Although these guns can be fired quite quickly with lethal results, they remain far slower and more cumbersome than the large-magazine, semi-automatic rifles commonplace in overseas mass shootings. The casualty count at Bondi would've been far higher if different weapons had been accessible.

Preventing another Bondi requires national cohesion. Regrettably, we have already seen cracks in the united front.

Legislation Showing Weakness

Yet, the horrific consequences of the incident reveals that existing gun laws are inadequate. Crafted in the late 1990s with the best of intentions, years have worn away their effectiveness. Concerningly, there are now more firearms in Australia than before the Port Arthur shooting, with some citizens in urban areas owning arsenals of hundreds of weapons.

We have been complacent and it has exacted a terrible price.

The Road Forward: Proposed Changes

In the time after the Bondi attack, there have been numerous announcements regarding strengthened firearm legislation. New South Wales specifically will soon introduce a suite of measures to reduce the collective risk posed by firearms. The federal government has proposed a fresh firearm surrender scheme, and there is potential for a national firearms registry, despite the complexities of aligning state and federal governments.

These measures are feasible if the nation acts in unison. As noted, regarding gun control, the country is dependent on its least stringent jurisdiction. This is the very nature of the Australian system – laws in one state are easily circumvented if they can be avoided with a short drive across a border.

Countering Frequent Arguments

We hear the predictable response that "guns don't kill people, individuals are". This is accurate in the identical way that planes don't transport people, pilots do. Certainly, aircraft require operators, but it would be virtually impossible for a captain to transport 500 people internationally without the aircraft. The mass slaughter witnessed at Bondi would be all but impossible without firearms, and would have been far less damaging if the accused individuals had been denied access to the firearms they possessed.

Balancing Need and Safety

There are valid needs for some Australians to possess guns. Managing livestock or culling pests in many places is incredibly hard without them. A total ban of guns from the country is impractical, as in certain contexts they are indispensable.

What we can do – the imperative action – is to guarantee that gun laws are updated to better match the society we live in today. Australia's laws have historically been the envy of the world, but the passage of years has taken a toll and the nation is no longer as safe as it once was. It is critical to take the lessons of Bondi seriously, and ensure that future generations are equally safe as previous generations have been.

A friend remarked after the Bondi events, "such tragedies just don't happen here". They don't, but only because the country has made concerted efforts to maintain its security. However horrific as the attack was, there is an aspiration that it can serve as the final tragedy the nation ever sees.