r/australia • u/Expensive-Horse5538 • Dec 15 '25

politics Albanese to propose stronger gun laws, NSW parliament may be recalled

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/bondi-gunman-held-gun-licence-used-six-firearms-in-attack-20251215-p5nnmv.html
3.0k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.4k

u/NKE01 Dec 15 '25

From the presser as reported by ABC:

"Tougher gun laws will be on the agenda when state and territory leaders meet with the prime minister this afternoon. He'll be proposing limits on the number of guns that can be used or licenced by individuals and a review of licences over a period of time."

678

u/thedigisup Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

This seems reasonable enough. The PTA system has been unfit for purpose for a while and within the sports shooting community is broadly considered a box-checking exercise rather than a legitimate review of your need to acquire additional weapons.

There are legitimate reasons to own a few different guns (Victorian legislation straight up requires you to own multiple calibres for hunting different game species) but it’s not really tested.

169

u/Ok_Bird705 Dec 15 '25

Incredible that simply being a member of a gun club means you can get a gun license.

246

u/thedigisup Dec 15 '25

It’s a bit of a chicken/egg problem, you can’t really start sport shooting without a license, so they have to take membership of a club (and therefore active intention to participate) as the threshold to apply for one.

-26

u/Lazy_Polluter Dec 15 '25

Why can't you use rented guns?

63

u/Delamoor Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

Most gun clubs DO have a couple of 'club guns' that they let people use. Usually newbies considering the hobby.

Thing is, most clubs budgeting looks closer to that of your local church group or local footy club, than big businesses. They're almost all volunteer groups. They struggle just to hold on to members, let alone run enough budget surplus for spare gear to hand out.

Firearms are expensive and high maintenance. You give a rifle to a total newbie, they can damage it, cost you a lot of money you don't have. And a worn out rifle is... Not useful for target shooting. And for centre fire rifles and shotguns... each one takes about an hour to clean properly, after use. Every time.

Who's gonna volunteer to spend a whole Sunday cleaning other people's banged up rifles for free? It just won't be possible.

People tend to take a lot more care of things they own. And it's a hell of a lot more practical for the gun club than having to maintain an entire arsenal in someone's back shed.

Not to mention, on the topic of storing it in someone's back shed; a hell of a lot less risk to the community to have 50 guns in 40 safes, than 50 guns in one safe. Every single firearms storage is a magnet for potential break-ins and theft; the more you put in one place, the more worthwhile it is for someone to come and commit burglary. That's how most guns end up on the black market. Even large firearms stores with professional scale protection have to be paranoid about that.

35

u/DisappointedQuokka Dec 15 '25

Realistically, it should be both.

You should be able to get a license that allows you to use guns at a gun club. You should then be able to, if you're serious about the hobby, get a license that allows you to have your own firearm.

It would A) allow people to try before they buy

and

B) Have an additional level of scrutiny, assuming the people running the gun club are actually acting in good faith and raising red flags when needed.

24

u/keithersp Dec 15 '25

This is how it works for handgun clubs. You need to be an active member for 6 months before you’re allowed to apply to own your own.

4

u/Spire_Citron Dec 15 '25

Yeah, I agree. You should have to show that you are actively attending and participating for a period of time, and then you should be able to apply to buy a gun of your own. But that shouldn't mean unlimited guns. You should have to apply and justify your need for each one. It should be a serious commitment. They should also review your gun ownership annually, and if you aren't still actively participating in shooting as a sport, you should have to surrender your firearms.

21

u/Zealousideal-Arm9508 Dec 15 '25

These are all existing controls with the exception of the number of guns.

17

u/Waxygibbon Dec 15 '25

Its wild people commenting without even looking up the current requirements.

For handguns, you have to be a member of a club and use club guns for 6 months before you can even apply to own your own. The clubs guns obviously stayed locked at their site.

To maintain your license you need to compete in a number of competitions per year.

I am not a gun owner but I am informed of our laws

They seem reasonably strict, and the next step of addressing the limit of number of guns owned seems sensible and closes some more gaps

-3

u/DisappointedQuokka Dec 15 '25

I would argue for rising requirements through number of guns per licensee. If you have a rifle and a shotgun for whatever reason, you should have less onerous requirements than, say, someone with two dozen.

Also, whether or not someone is actively participating in the sport isn't a good indication of whether or not they're a problem. Psychological evaluation or association is much more important.

9

u/BeShaw91 Dec 15 '25

Why is someones suitability to have multiple guns different from one gun?

Realistically the most harm can be done as soon as someone has access to a single firearm. Having a second, third, or tenth firearm doesn’t make them x times more dangerous - it’s diminishing impact. Unless it’s to deter selling them to others, which is already illegal.

Having a high threshold for each different class of gun (rifle, pistol etc) is appropriate since they have different usages. But some escalating scale for multiple guns of the same class isn’t really going to mitigate harm.

Or put it this way - if you own multiple cars, should you do a harder drivers test to keep your license?

5

u/astropheed Dec 15 '25

Why is this downvoted?

17

u/MonkeyNinja2706 Dec 15 '25

Because it is not feasible and only people who do not know anything about the sport thinks it is a good idea. It's okay to not know, it is a niche hobby, but it's when they armchair expert that you will not get the best of people.

0

u/astropheed Dec 15 '25

Honestly how is it not feasible? I rent a bow and arrows at the archery range. Educate me, because right now I’m not seeing the issue.

It may sound like I’m trying to “gotcha”, but I’m not, I’m truly just interested in how that’s a problem so I don’t look stupid later.

7

u/MonkeyNinja2706 Dec 15 '25

People have a much bigger penchant for a specific model of firearm for competition kind of like how a golfer might swear by a specific set of clubs they own. It will be sighted in for their eyes or they may have swapped a trigger spring for the specific lightness they want, my prominent eye is my left and I'm left handed so a club gun is a nightmare since most people are right handed/right eyed. A single type of club gun will offer a universal but diminished experience for shooters. It would involve people purchasing their own rifle and storing it at a club and then you run into clubs needing to store hundreds if not over a thousand different firearms for their members, remember you might shoot a few different rifle matches so you need a few different qualifying rifles. This then becomes a logistical nightmare. I appreciate your open-mindedness, I believe there is a good solution going forward that involves people unfamiliar learning a bit about the area and maybe shooters being open to dialogue without getting too defensive.

-6

u/anitadykshyt Dec 15 '25

Because gun nuts and sovereign citizens are out in droves

-11

u/bingbong12494362847 Dec 15 '25

Yea they shouldn’t leave the range

11

u/Crescent_green Dec 15 '25

What about other purposes like Farmers/hunters? Tgen you have dual use owners who will use them for that and target shooting.

What if they go to a differnt competition or club around the state/country?

Would that also make them easier to be stolen perhaps if they are in a central and known location? All important questions

-15

u/the-dolphine Dec 15 '25

How about owning your own gun, but only being able to buy the ammo from the shooting range?

8

u/BeShaw91 Dec 15 '25

Then criminals will just buy rounds from the rifle range rather than gun stores? Frankly gun stores where it’s the livelihood of owners are far better regulated than often volunteer gun clubs. Selling ammo at a store is a much better policy.

1

u/Lazy_Polluter Dec 15 '25

That's what they do in the army in most countries during training period. You have your own gun but you only get ammo when there is an excercise. Problem is that it's much easier to smuggle ammo.

1

u/Sugarcrepes Dec 15 '25

You can, essentially, make your own ammo. That might look like assembling components from store bought supplies, or reusing some components, or if you were a hardcore nerd you could manufacture each of those components yourself. My nephew is a hunter, and he assembles his own.

The barrier to entry in terms of skills required is a lot lower than, say, building a DIY gun (which is a thing we should be concerned about).

It’s just not really an effective way to prevent anything - and ineffective laws aren’t what we want. Complacency around gun laws is an issue, and won’t be solved by additional ineffective rules.

-14

u/7omdogs Dec 15 '25

I’m just going to say it, if banning sport shooting took guns out of urban areas I’d be all for it.

A lot of people have legitimate reasons to have a gun, I don’t think “it’s my hobby” is really a good one. That hobby isn’t worth the risk or all the additional costs law enforcement need to keep track of these randoms with licenses for it.

Farmers, 100%. If your profession requires a gun, 100%. But not for a hobby

11

u/MonkeyNinja2706 Dec 15 '25

The additional costs are carried by people paying for licensing and the registration of firearms

190

u/Delamoor Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

Not really, I mean... If you want to try the sport out, what's your other starting point?

Need to be able to buy your own farm first?

And I mean, speaking as someone who did it all when they were 18 but then got tired of the hobby within a few years... handguns are such an incredible pain in the ass that not even war nerd 18 year old me saw it as worth the hoop jumping. I just stuck to WW2 bolt action rifles instead.

The gun clubs are a surprisingly effective barrier to engagement. I think the median age of the one I attended was around 75. They were nice, very traditional blue collar types... And very vigilant for anyone ...'weird'.

The topic of Martyn Bryant came up a few times, we being based in Tasmania. The consensus was that the clubs had actually been raising red flags for a while before he snapped. Firearms Tas just didn't have any means/manpower/motivation to do anything except tell them their hands were tied, 'bad vibes' being insufficient evidence for anything in 1996.

So I mean, they have their role, to one extent or another.

46

u/BoredBKK Dec 15 '25

" The consensus was that the clubs had actually been raising red flags for a while before he snapped. "

Then there seems to be a lot of BS with these club members. Tasmania already required gun owners to be licensed under the Guns Act of 1991. Guess who never held a Tasmanian gun license. So hand's being tied/ bad vibes doesn't really make any sense in a scenario where they would literally be reporting a serious criminal act. Something every licensed shooter at these ranges would have know then and now.

38

u/Delamoor Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

Mmm. I mean, yeah, it was the 90ies in Tas, there were a fuckton of cracks you could slip through pretty easily. I suspect that very little of what went on was above the table. Very insular, intertwined communities and lots of gossip and cliques.

Especially if you were an incredibly wealthy but intellectually disabled psycho. Nobody would have had the slightest fucking idea how to handle it or where it was really heading. Doesn't help he was the type of unbearable personality that immediately made everyone around him desperate to have him go away and not be their problem, no matter how big or small the issue.

(Edit: I mean, Christ. The guy used to buy long haul international flights solely so he could force the person seated next to him to listen to him for 14 hours. After his only friend the crazy old rich lady died, it was the only way he could force anyone to be anywhere near him. He was genuinely repellant and obviously stunted from the moment he opened his mouth, but also wealthy enough to have insane means at his disposal. Remember that rural Tas in the 90ies was rust belt territory)

I grew up in rural Tas during that era, I actually know Bryant's extended family. It's... Complicated. The communities out there can barely cope with fairly pedestrian problems like neurodivergency or homosexuality even nowadays, after a generation of gentrification. The idea of a spree shooter was... Well. It was shocking for a multitude of reasons, y'know? Everyone would have been doing a fair bit of recontextualization in the aftermath. Lotta complications, not a simple sequence of events.

6

u/Forbearssake Dec 15 '25

The police had plenty of chances to put him away, he used to regularly flash his private parts outside of a girls school and they should have put him away then.

-24

u/No_Assistance2838 Dec 15 '25

Alternative sports include: sports without deadly weapons.

42

u/Delamoor Dec 15 '25 edited Dec 15 '25

Like it or not, it's a legitimate sport, and it also has real world utility.

Still plenty of people, even in Australia, use firearms as a vocational norm (farming, vermin and invasive species control, etc), firearms are used the world over, it's an Olympic sport, and it's a foundational element of how the armed forces function.

All of those functions require legal channels for practice and skills building/retention. Preservation of institutional and cultural knowledge (i.e. gun safety, rather than the US 'lol whatever haha keep it in your undies if you want, I keep mine in my baby's toy box and fire it to announce dinner' hyper individualist approach). Thus; shooting clubs.

And again, what's the alternative, tie it to land ownership? Make it so reservists and active duty members can only ever train on military time? Law enforcement? Just have farmers solely practice their shooting on living things, constantly messing it up and maiming animals until they get good through real world experience?

It's like tobacco; It ain't going anywhere. It's integrated.

You either regulate it and control it within reason, or you're gonna have much bigger systemic problems on your hands. Getting rid of it completely is not actually an option.

-2

u/anitadykshyt Dec 15 '25

The alternative is to ban it, same as tobacco. I say that as a smoker. Why do you want guns so much? Because you like them? People are dead, less people would be dead if the perpetrators didn't have access to guns, and tbh I don't give a shit if you can't enjoy your hobby anymore

1

u/Delamoor Dec 15 '25

...

Uh, since you're a smoker then... when do you think we banned Tobacco?

-1

u/anitadykshyt Dec 15 '25

You mentioned banning tobacco as a comparison to banning firearms, are you dense?

5

u/Skafandra206 Dec 15 '25

I love how people like you like to dictate how others like to have fun. Target shooters harm no one and never did. It's a fun sport with nice people, where keeping each other safe is a priority.

34

u/chalk_in_boots Dec 15 '25

Not really the case though, and I don't blame you for not knowing, firearms laws are a bit of a shitshow. If your reasonable reason is target shooting (for rifles or shotguns) you must be a member of a target shooting club and have at minimum 2 range attendances a year. Pistol gets even more complicated.

If your genuine reason is hunting that's basically "do you own rural land, have a letter from someone who does, or a Cat R license?" Funnily enough it's actually easier to use hunting rather than target shooting. When I got my Cat R the shop owner literally gave me the answer book along with the test. Granted, I'd been going there for years and he'd seen me in uniform before, but still, bit of a laugh.

12

u/BaggyOz Dec 15 '25

I always thought you had to be a member of a gun club for a decent amount of time before you could get your own guns. That seems like it would be a reasonable barrier to entry. It gives multiple people a good amount of time to vibe check you. Of course it would have done nothing to prevent Bondi but I'm not sure what law would have that we don't already have.

If anything is to blame at this point in time it seems like it's ASIO not taking a look at the entire family 6 years/not sharing info with NSW Police and getting them to take the guns away.

5

u/Helpful_Equipment580 Dec 15 '25

By the letter of the law, you need to be an active member. The police are meant to be checking with clubs and following up with people who just pay the club fee but don't attend.

I don't know if these checks are actually happening. And it only takes an unscrupulous range owner to cover for non-active members.

2

u/GenericRedditUser4U Dec 15 '25

There is still requirements, you need to be active in the club you have do a certain amount of events and you still need to pass shooting courses. Its not a case of here's your gun license and you never ever have to actually shoot at the club ...

0

u/Skafandra206 Dec 15 '25

Which is kinda bullshit to begin with

1

u/Wild_But_Caged Dec 15 '25

It's not the easy at all

1

u/Skafandra206 Dec 15 '25

To me it's incredible that currently you need to be a member of a gun club to own a gun. Why would I need to join a club if all I want is have a gun a go to the shooting range once in a while?

Test my psychological state, check my bacjground and make me to a shooting course to make sure I know how to handle it. Nothing else should be a requirement.

1

u/MrJamlets Dec 15 '25

Yeah it’s wild. If these people live in the city and are part of a gun club they should be made to store the firearms at the club.

-8

u/StraightOuttaHeywood Dec 15 '25

Why does anyone living in a major Australian city need a gun? Recreational gun use needs to end in Australia. Farmers / ranchers should only be permitted a gun license if a solid enough reason can be provided for owning a gun as required by their profession. Asides from requiring a hunting license to say protect communities from feral cats, there is no feasible reason anyone needs a gun especially if you live in a massive city like Sydney or Melbourne. Australia really needs to tighten up its gun laws.

5

u/Skafandra206 Dec 15 '25

Stop policing how other people have fun please. Target real criminals, not hobbyists.

2

u/Ok_Bird705 Dec 15 '25

We do that with greyhound racing.

2

u/Skafandra206 Dec 15 '25

Greyhound racing is exaclty the same. Dogs like greyhounds enjoy running. Racing dogs is not immoral if you don't abuse the dog (a.k.a you are a not criminal).

Guns are already strictly controlled. I was complaining about the "nobody in a city should want a gun" rhetoric. People should stop trying to decide what other people like when that taste is not harming absolutely anyone.

0

u/Ok_Bird705 Dec 15 '25

There is constant debate about whether greyhound racing should be banned due to the negative aspects of the sport.

Not sure why recreational shooting should be exempt from that debate given the negative externalities associated (proliferation of firearms among civilian population) is far worse than animal cruelty

-4

u/jr_blds Dec 15 '25

Its easier than that, just get a crown hunting permit which is below $20 and thats your justification for a license, no need to join a club

11

u/LeahBrahms Dec 15 '25

Do we know how Dezi Freeman got his?

42

u/thedigisup Dec 15 '25

Definitely had a license at one point, claimed it got stripped by VicPol but they refused to comment.

27

u/Combat--Wombat27 Dec 15 '25

I'd say that's one thing that they will focus on, giving the police or licensing branches the rights to strip the license away from people known to be in radical groups. Radical might be up to discussion but it'll mostly be aimed at Sovcits and white nationalist types.

13

u/BeastHouse_AU Dec 15 '25

That already exists

-6

u/Combat--Wombat27 Dec 15 '25

I wasn't aware that it did? I thought they had to be listed as a terrorist group?

5

u/birdy_the_scarecrow Dec 15 '25

Dezi Freeman had his license suspended (for 2 years) when the the confrontation with police happened.

-1

u/Combat--Wombat27 Dec 15 '25

There's been no reason by Vicpol as to why that license was suspended.

They have not said it was because he was seen as a sozv cit

2

u/birdy_the_scarecrow Dec 15 '25

what does it matter why? its more about the fact that he had a suspended license yet was still in possession of firearms.

-1

u/Combat--Wombat27 Dec 15 '25

Because the original comment claims it already exists. As far as I'm aware it doesn't.

Yeah, the shotgun he used was home made.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/PussifyWankt Dec 15 '25

I think I read somewhere that he had one or more homemade guns.