SYDNEY: Australia’s prime minister proposed more durable gun legal guidelines on Monday (Dec 15) after gunmen killed 15 people in a mass capturing focusing on a Jewish pageant at a Sydney seaside.
After Australia’s worst mass capturing in 1996, it took the federal government 12 days to ban semi-automatic weapons, organise a gun buyback scheme and introduce a licensing system to weed out folks thought-about unfit to hold a weapon.
Sunday’s capturing at a Jewish celebration in Sydney’s Bondi Seashore, which left 15 folks lifeless in addition to one of many two gunmen, raised questions on whether or not Australia’s gun legal guidelines, already among the many hardest on this planet, stay match for function.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese mentioned he would ask Cupboard to contemplate limits on the variety of weapons permitted by a gun licence, and the way lengthy a licence ought to final.
“Folks’s circumstances can change,” he advised reporters on Monday as police investigated what they referred to as the terrorist assault on Sydney’s waterfront.
“Folks might be radicalised over a time period. Licences shouldn’t be in perpetuity.”
Australia’s gun possession system has been extensively credited with one of many lowest per capita gun murder charges.
However the variety of weapons held legally has risen steadily for greater than 20 years and now, at 4 million, exceeds the quantity earlier than the 1996 crackdown, suppose tank the Australia Institute mentioned earlier this 12 months.
“Occasions like this really feel unimaginable right here, which is a testomony to the power of our gun legal guidelines,” mentioned Gun Management Australia president Tim Quinn in a weblog publish about Sunday’s assault.
“It’s important that we ask cautious, evidence-based questions on how this assault occurred, together with how any weapons had been obtained and whether or not our present legal guidelines and enforcement mechanisms are conserving tempo with altering dangers and applied sciences.”
