By Byron Kaye Reuters

After Australia’s worst mass shooting in 1996, it took the government 12 days to ban semi-automatic weapons, organise a gun buyback scheme and introduce a licensing system to weed out people considered unfit to carry a weapon.

Sunday’s shooting at a Jewish celebration in Sydney’s Bondi Beach, which left 15 people dead as well as one of the two gunmen, raised questions about whether Australia’s gun laws, already among the toughest in the world, remain fit for purpose.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he would ask Cabinet to consider limits on the number of weapons permitted by a gun licence, and how long a licence should last.

“People’s circumstances can change,” he told reporters on Monday as police investigated what they called the terrorist attack on Sydney’s waterfront.

“People can be radicalised over a period of time. Licences should not be in perpetuity.”

Australia’s gun ownership system has been widely credited with one of the lowest per capita gun homicide rates.

But the number of guns held legally has risen steadily for more than two decades and now, at four million, exceeds the number before the 1996 crackdown, think tank the Australia Institute said earlier this year.

“Events like this feel unimaginable here, which is a testament to the strength of our gun laws,” said Gun Control Australia president Tim Quinn in a blog post about Sunday’s attack.

“It is essential that we ask careful, evidence-based questions about how this attack occurred, including how any weapons were obtained and whether our current laws and enforcement mechanisms are keeping pace with changing risks and technologies.”

Chris Minns, New South Wales state premier, whose jurisdiction includes Sydney, said he would consider recalling state parliament to fast-track new gun legislation.

“It’s time we have a change to the law in relation to the firearms legislation … but I am not ready to announce it today. You can expect action soon,” Minns told reporters, without going into detail.

As things stood, the licence held by one of the suspects entitled him to own the weapons he had, NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told reporters.

Maya Gomez, a lecturer in criminology at Swinburne University of Technology, said NSW gun licence holders must first prove a genuine reason for needing a weapon.

In the aftermath of the Bondi shooting, “questions may turn on the genuine reason provided in terms of the amount, as well as the reasons linked to the types of guns registered and used in the attack”, Gomez said in an email.

Although Australia’s gun numbers are rising, gun-related crime remains low by global standards. In the year to June 2024, 33 Australians died in gun homicides, according to the latest published data from the Australian Institute of Criminology.

That compares with 49 gun homicides per day in the United States through 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.