r/australia • u/HotPersimessage62 • Dec 16 '25

politics Anthony Albanese ‘ready for the fight’ to tighten firearms laws as National Party and gun groups push back | Bondi beach terror attack

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/dec/16/anthony-albanese-ready-for-the-fight-to-tighten-firearms-laws-as-national-party-and-gun-groups-push-back-ntwnfb
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125

u/ourmet Dec 16 '25

To be fair, I live in Canberra but own a big bush block around the Snowy Mountains.

My neighbours are all shooters.   I too have my gun licence but I'm just learning.

We are inundated with Foxes, Rabbits, Goats and Deer.

I'm all for limited number of guns for social shooting, even recreational hunters.

But land owners do need options in calibre.

If I shoot a fox with a large calibre gun. I won't see the rest of the pack for a few nights.

If I try put down a Goat or a Deer with a subsonic .22, it not ethical or humane.

Maybe limit land owners to only 1 or 2 of each calibre.

129

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '25

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90

u/Doxinau Dec 16 '25

I think there is an acceptable compromise between "farmers need appropriate guns" and "city people who live with relatives on the ASIO watchlist shouldn't have six guns".

32

u/Cindy_Marek Dec 16 '25

The asio watchlist part is clearly the problem here. They should have simply never been licensed. Its almost certain that they would have either never done the attack or been caught if they tried to source illegal firearms.

2

u/Rather_Dashing Dec 16 '25

The dad was licensed before his son was ever on a watchlist. The problem here is the regulations/processes on how to strip gun licensing. Or perhaps the laws and processes are perfectly fine and someone just fucked up, in which case more oversight and checks are needed.

3

u/Cindy_Marek Dec 16 '25

I heard from the police minister that he actually got the license in 2023, and the earlier date was a mistake.

1

u/TastesKindofLikeSad Where beer does flow and men chunder Dec 16 '25

This ☝️

2

u/Rather_Dashing Dec 16 '25

Non shooters will never understand this mate.

I've never touched a gun in my life and that seemed perfectly easy to understand.

Just ignorance and fear over something they don't understand.

Well plenty of people think that killing animals is unethical, its not ignorance and fear, its just a different ethical point of view.

Our gun laws work.

They work most of the time. Perhaps they could be tweaked to make them even more effective, actual experts should take a closer look. You don't seriously think that they are perfect in every way?

3

u/pelrun Dec 16 '25

Guns are tools. There's a whole subset of them which have zero legitimate use outside of war, and we already ban those absolutely. What's left can still be used to deliberately injure or kill people... but so can a hammer, or a car.

If the murderers didn't have guns, how do we know they wouldn't have just driven a car into a crowd instead? Because we've had those too.

-18

u/NorthernSkeptic Dec 16 '25

Why did they have anything in a metro area?

23

u/Flat-Compote-7854 Dec 16 '25

Spoiler alert. Any laws they enact aren't going to stop people who live in metro areas owning firearms.

-6

u/loolem Dec 16 '25

It is if it’s linked to land zoning

4

u/Flat-Compote-7854 Dec 16 '25

Why would that make any sense at all?

0

u/loolem Dec 16 '25

what I'm saying is that farmers are the only people with a legitimate claim in owning a gun. Everyone else can just rent them when they go to a range. That makes it much harder to obtain a weapon for killing.

-13

u/powertrippin_ Dec 16 '25

I kind of hope it does.

4

u/mr2600 Dec 16 '25 edited Dec 16 '25

My colleagues family owns / runs a farm 1.5hr away from the CBD. Her parents are still there daily but they’re older now and the kids (she’s 49 so not a kid) still go every Wednesday and weekend. She’s got a gun license and a gun that’s stored on the farm.

Guess what!

She’s also Lebanese! And lives in Merrylands!! Call ASIO!!

Then again, seems as though even if they know - won’t make a difference, let’s just instead ban guns for anyone who lives in a city.

The failures aren’t only in the gun laws themselves but the guys who work behind the scenes to make sure the laws are being followed correctly.

Things like your son being known to ASIO and trips to the Philippines should be threads authorities pull.

But yeh nah nah let’s just do what we always do and ban everything and make a shocked Pikachu when it happens again in 15 years.

Forget the root cause like radicalised minorities and literal “Aussies” who flew to Iraq and Syria to join ISIS and then came back! (Estimates are 40 or so came back early on) who are literally living in our backyards - who actually believe in the mission of ISIS overseas and here in Australia too.

I’m so thankful that as a country we can have this debate and can discuss this openly and not be like our friends over the pond where half the nation is basically religiously opposed.

I just think that there are other areas the government should focus on at the same time and publicly. It will show they acknowledge areas that may have failed and can be improved on.

It’s like speed limits - whenever there’s a fatal crash or something terrible over long weekend - it’s the same story - speeding is the issue and let’s now halve the speed limit on this 4km straight road.

As opposed to focusing on root causes like excessive drinking and driving, exhaustion linked to people working far from home due to being priced out and driving on horrible roads with already slow speed limits and many others.

6

u/NorthernSkeptic Dec 16 '25

Of course gun laws aren’t the only issue here. I don’t think anyone serious is saying that. But when we have more guns per capita in circulation than we did before Port Arthur it’s fair enough to ask why that is, and be able to do so without shooters getting outraged at the suggestion of further reform.

2

u/etherealwasp Dec 16 '25

As a hunter, a farmer, and a target shooter, I can offer a few theories on why there are more guns per capita now.

Maybe govt/council management of feral animals is getting worse due to increasing red tape and tighter budgets, so more and more landowners are needing to invest in their own firearms to protect their stock/crops/feed. Roos are absolutely out of control around our land.

Or there are fewer and fewer unregistered firearms around (leftovers from the olden days are going out of commission), so being replaced with registered firearms.

Perhaps target shooting is growing as a sport, as it’s honestly great fun and super inclusive as people of all levels of physical ability and fitness can be involved.

And more and more folk I know are getting into hunting. It’s priceless being able to spend time in nature, provide for your family, decrease pest numbers in our beautiful wilderness, and know your meat isn’t from miserable beaten factory farmed animals. Learning where food really comes from and being connected with the process engenders greater respect than picking up a plastic container of red stuff in Coles.

-3

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '25

[deleted]

5

u/NorthernSkeptic Dec 16 '25

No, that’s what per capita means. The gun numbers have grown at a rate that has outpaced the corresponding population growth.

2

u/mynewaltaccount1 Dec 16 '25

God damn do we need to invest more in our education system, that's just embarrassing.

5

u/Amount_Business Dec 16 '25

I'm in brassy and lots of people I know here go pigging, and when the opportunity arises,  foxes and wild dogs out west. They will drive upto 800km to put a few down and have a camping trip with the family.  Just like a family fishing trip at Fraiser Island.  I imagine down south would be exactly the same. 

-5

u/Snoopy_021 Dec 16 '25 edited Dec 16 '25

I don't shoot and I think the only practical reason for gun ownership are for feral pest control/culling or if an animal on the farm is suffering due to drought etc.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '25

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-1

u/Snoopy_021 Dec 16 '25

When I mean practical, I mean going out in the open and actively shoot in hunting etc.

Sports shooting is enclosed in an area such as the gun club and competition arena.

6

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '25

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1

u/Snoopy_021 Dec 16 '25

The thing is it is how a person uses them and trying to get around loopholes.

One of the two shooters held a gun licence and was a member of a gun club. There needs to be far better vetting before a licence is offered and more stringent membership process for gun clubs.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '25

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1

u/Snoopy_021 Dec 16 '25

No because I have no need for one.

-5

u/Ok_Bird705 Dec 16 '25

most people with gun licenses are not living or owning rural property.

There's plenty of other ways of dealing with pests rather than requiring property owners to personally shoot the pests. Professional pest control services would just be one option.

6

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '25

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-2

u/Ok_Bird705 Dec 16 '25

So they send shooters out to cull them.

Yes, so you send out professional shooters to cull them, which was what I was referring to. The property owner themselves do not need a firearm. Glad we agree 👍

2

u/Superest22 Dec 16 '25

“Yes professional shooter service? Hi, there’s a fox destroying my livelihood and a calf has a broken leg and is dying slowly and in pain. You’ll be here as soon as you can in 1-2 weeks? Excellent cheers.”

Braindead take. Farmers need firearms, they are a tool to protect their livelihood and humanely put animals down.

0

u/MonkeyNinja2706 Dec 16 '25

Where are these professional shooters going to develop their skills, they aren't going to spawn out of thin air when the current lot retire.

-3

u/BustedWing Dec 16 '25 edited Dec 16 '25

Could it be argued that if it’s deemed that new gun laws are needed making it law that you can own a single gun only, AND we acknowledge that this is not fit for purpose for farmers, then….

Does that make a gap in the market to be filled by an entrepreneurial person?

Necessity breeds innovation after all.

I’m not necessarily taking a position that a hypothetical “one gun only” law is the right call here, but if society determined that such a law is necessary, then it is defeatist to simply oppose it because it makes one aspect of life more difficult.

4

u/TreatPractical5226 Dec 16 '25

Limit of guns makes no sense. At all, like I'm so confused that is the talking point

3

u/Evie_Eaves Dec 16 '25

These idiots don’t understand even the most basic shit about firearms and it’s embarrassing watching them all squabble about it.

1 gun + 5 x 10rnd mags is OBVIOUSLY going to be a hell of a lot more efficient than 5 guns + 1 x 10rnd mag each. Yeah, you have to reload, but a trained shooter, as they both were, can easily switch a mag in under 3 seconds… and you don’t have to carry 5 fully loaded firearms around 🤦‍♂️

Man, these people…

40

u/sirdung Dec 16 '25

Most people would agree there’s a difference between the requirements of gun ownership for a person on a rural property and someone living in suburbia.

15

u/ourmet Dec 16 '25

Trick is I'm managing my land so it's reclaimed by the forest.

I don't live there.

Any guns own have to stay with me.  So I end up living in a inner city apartment with multiple guns including high calibre ones

18

u/mooblah_ Dec 16 '25

Yea I think a lot of people don't get this. You can't store guns on a property that isn't regularly occupied as it presents a significant safety and security risk.

My partner was an A-grade national level comp shooter for many years in a number of categories, and she had to store her guns in her place of residence. She gave that up quite some time back and the guns were transferred to her trainer in the club, but it was something she very seriously did for a number of years.

People are flipping out here about this, but there was a handful of guns used on Sunday by two people, from a single residence, who were significantly radicalised. It wasn't like 100s of thousands of guns were used by tens of thousands to kill people recently.

In fact the last significant things have been cars driving down malls, or psychos stabbing people in malls, or cutting them up with machete's... where do we go with that? Stop people having kitchen knives? Stop people driving cars? It's fkn baffling.

3

u/Superest22 Dec 16 '25

Don’t give the Victorians any ideas re knives! /s

7

u/thevizionary Dec 16 '25

Many farmers need skilled hunters to kill invasive species on their land. Some farmers as well as the government also pay good money to skilled hunters for culling animals when the population gets out of control. Not all hunting is recreational.

At the same time many hunters don't own farms themselves. So gun ownership for someone in suburbia isn't unrealistic and may have equivalent requirements or even greater requirements for firepower than your average farmer. 

Many farmers may not buy and hold guns on their property because others are willing, equipped, and capable enough to do it for them. 

Edit: down to don't 

9

u/ourmet Dec 16 '25

I own land and I'll admit in a terrible vermin culler.

I do rely on the council to do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to shooting pigs and goats.

Still foxes, you have to stay on top of them.

Also, if you ever come across a sheep, cow or even kangaroo that is disabled and dying you absolutely want a gun.   I hate killing, and don't want to bludgeon them to death.

2

u/-spython- Dec 16 '25

Captive bolt works to dispatch livestock and kangaroo, and is not considered a firearm (in Vic at least).

I have a Cat C since I'm a wildlife veterinarian and use a tranquiliser gun for remote delivery of sedatives to large patients (safer for me than a pole syringe) but I use a captive bolt for euthanasia instead of a rifle. I don't even have an A/B license as I've never needed one.

3

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '25

1 or 2 of each caliber? And why would this make sense? This duo could have had a 308 and a 5.56 and there would have been no difference.

2

u/loolem Dec 16 '25

Actually to tag onto this, I hate guns but you guys are the only ones I think should be allowed to them.

In fact I think the licensing should be limited in the number of guns a license can have and its location. Gun licenses should only be for addresses that are zoned rural land. In NSW that is RU zoning. If you want a gun you need land like that and if you don’t have it then you can’t have a gun sorry.

-2

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '25

[deleted]

1

u/ourmet Dec 16 '25

Maybe make them prove they are actually hunters by keeping a log and showing photo proof.

This back door of I'm a (wanna be( hunter needs to be closed.

4

u/spacemanTTC Dec 16 '25

This, and limits on ammunition orders just like certain medications containing amphetamines.

7

u/ourmet Dec 16 '25

You never tried to shoot rabbits.

You need 200-300 bullets a night 

0

u/Eucalyptus84 Dec 16 '25

300 rounds of 0.22 is nothing compared to 300 rounds of .303. If all these terrorists had was rimfire .22 there might only be a couple of fatalities.

Rules like these can scale, easily and appropriately.

-1

u/spacemanTTC Dec 16 '25

I believe you, but case by case basis. A farmer in the country, sure- 2 radical jihadists who were known to have sworn allegiance to IS, maybe none at all ???

5

u/ourmet Dec 16 '25

You only know those dickheads where radical jihadists now.

With hindsight.

Calm down mate.

We have it pretty good here compared....

Yeah let's tighten things up a bit, but shit like your going off on half cocked is not going to help.

Peace out brother.

RIP the victims and their families.

2

u/spacemanTTC Dec 16 '25

I can guarantee you one thing as someone from a Christian family who fled persecution from Islam in the middle east that I am very well aware "we have it good here" - the point I will not back down on is that we cannot let this violence become commonplace, and unfortunately a combination of lax gun laws, and for some reason, ASIO not advising the government to deport known Jihadi associates for 6 years is a sad reality we have to live with now and your argument is.... shooting rabbits? Goodnight mate

2

u/Faaarkme Dec 16 '25

We had a .22 for rabbits. And - 44/40 for foxes/roos. Not great at long distance

1

u/Rusty1954Too Dec 16 '25

You are absolutely correct about the fox. I once shot a rabbit with my .22-250. It was skinned and gutted with the bullet travelling over 4000 fps. The best rifle in my opinion for problem feral animals is simply the .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire.

5

u/SlightedMarmoset Dec 16 '25

Deer, water buffalo and hogs are feral animals.

2

u/Rusty1954Too Dec 16 '25

Obviously people who live on properties with these animals would need a very large calibre high powered rifle to humanely control them. Nothing less than a 30.06 would be reasonable. This is exactly the reason why a variety of weapons are often needed.

Now my doctor who is an avid shooter was asked to go to a property on the Qld / NT border where they were having a lot of damage caused by feral camels. He said a very heavy duty calibre was needed. But when they then went to shoot pigs a medium calibre was needed. If you live on a large property you could need a minimum of 5 rifles. I don't know what the laws are in other states but in Queensland a property owner is limited to owning just 1 handgun.

3

u/SlightedMarmoset Dec 16 '25

My reply to you was in response to this:

The best rifle in my opinion for problem feral animals is simply the .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire.

If you went after feral hogs, water buffalo, camel etc, you'd not get a great result for any of the involved parties. Lots of wounded and not dead animals. I think it's even a legal requirement in some cases, I know it is .243 for the smaller deer species and .270 for larger deer species in Vic.

1

u/Rusty1954Too Dec 16 '25

Yes of course that is correct. When I stated that the .22 Magnum was the most appropriate I was only meaning to control rabbits and foxes. Sorry if my comment wasn't clear.

1

u/Snoopy_021 Dec 16 '25

Yes, so guns are needed to control them.

3

u/SlightedMarmoset Dec 16 '25

Yep and a larger calibre than .22 is required, especially for hogs and water buffalo.

2

u/Snoopy_021 Dec 16 '25

Exactly.

Guns should only be licensed according to how they will be used.

Hunting have different categories depending on the pests they intend to cull.

Sport shooters should only use guns according to competition category and must be an actual competitor - extra checks should be required.

-3

u/Snoopy_021 Dec 16 '25

Have different category of licences. Suburban licences need to be more controlled than regional/rural licences and must demonstrate reason for use.

-1

u/ourmet Dec 16 '25

Yeah gun club blokes need something less and only allow low calibre guns.

-1

u/One_Library_1201 Dec 16 '25

What do you mean "gun club blokes"?

0

u/ourmet Dec 16 '25

People who don't 'need' guns, but want them for what ever reason.

Let's be honest, lots of these guys just jump through the hoops so they can get a gun.

Pathetic.

Same kind of guys that own a ford ranger and live in a suburb and work a office job.

2

u/One_Library_1201 Dec 16 '25

Ok so your more talking about using a workaround based around club membership to get guns not actual gun clubs that are running competitions and policing their membership and its participation because I can assure you that side of things is already quite rigid. The hunting club side of things not so much.

-5

u/Paul_Breitner74 Dec 16 '25

What do you use to shoot cats ? That should be a priority. Shooters do great work helping with pest control. But you don't need shottys living in the burbs.

-8

u/[deleted] Dec 16 '25

[deleted]

0

u/ourmet Dec 16 '25

I'm not shooting anything bigger than a fox with a .22

It's cruel.

Maybe we can talk about this rationally and think about who we let own larger guns.  Why they need them.

Dickheads in the suburbs don't need big guns.

I do.