One month after a terrorist father-and-son duo unleashed a barrage of bullets at Australia’s Bondi Beach in an effort to kill Jews celebrating Hanukkah, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will reportedly pressure different political factions to support so-called “gun reform.”
Quoted by The Guardian, Tom Kenyon, chief executive of the Sporting Shooters’ Association of Australia, declared, “We’re in the fight of our lives.”
VisaHQ is reporting Albanese has called a two-day special session of the Australian Parliament to debate guns and legislation to crack down on hate speech. Part of this is a proposed gun buyback, billed as the largest since the one following the Port Arthur attack many years ago. That session is slated for Jan. 19-20.
While the Albanese government is working on this gun control scheme, in an essay published by the Fair Observer, writer Sonali Kolhatkar exhibits a disdain for white male gun owning Americans whom she identifies as “disproportionately right-wing,” blaming them and the National Rifle Association for having a “stranglehold” over this country’s political system.
Actually, the roadblock she deliberately fails to mention in her 1,457-word essay—the one element which makes Australian gun control impossible in the U.S.—isn’t the NRA, but the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and similar protections in a majority of state constitutions.
NBC News essentially acknowledged this back in 2018, noting, “(T)he United States has a uniquely strong gun culture — gun ownership is written into the nation’s founding document. Any talk of taking guns sparks an immediate backlash from gun rights groups, which have long rallied supporters by warning more modest restrictions are a first step toward a broader crackdown. Prominent activists and politicians who mention Australia often gloss over the mandatory buyback element and pro-gun activists are eager to highlight exceptions.”
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign suffered the consequences when she suggested an Australian-type “buyback” would be worth trying in the U.S. Remember this?
If Australia had the equivalent of a Second Amendment, Kolhatkar, Albanese and other Island Continent gun grabbers would be having a rough time pushing “mandatory buyback” schemes—also known as “compensated confiscation’—and they know it. The frustration they share with their North American contemporaries isn’t just about the NRA and other gun rights organizations. It is with the constitutional provision which protects the individual right to keep and bear arms, and it is that roadblock which infuriates global gun grabbers.
One correspondent writing about the cultural, and legal, differences between the U.S. and Australia is Jessica Gardner with Australia’s Financial Review. She accurately notes that gun control finds far more support in the U.S. among Democrats than with Republicans. There is also a massive disparity between the two nations in terms of raw numbers. Australia has an estimated 3 million guns in circulation. In the U.S., there are an estimated 400 million guns in private hands. No national “gun buyback” effort would have a chance in the U.S.
According to The Guardian, Albanese is recalling Parliament two weeks early in Canberra next Monday. They will consider new, tougher “hate speech” laws and gun control measures, the news agency said.
It apparently doesn’t matter that the two terrorists were armed with guns legally obtained under Australia’s already-restrictive gun laws, or that they were able to gun down so many people because none of them could fight back.
The December 14 Bondi Beach attack killed 15 people. One of the two anti-Semitic killers—the father—was fatally shot while his son was captured. But instead of zeroing in on holding him responsible, Australian gun prohibitionists just can’t resist criticizing U.S. gun laws and President Donald Trump’s focus on the fact that the killer of a National Guard trooper in Washington, D.C. in November was in illegal possession of a stolen handgun—something existing gun control laws in Washington State did not prevent—critics such as Kolhatkar complain, “The Trump administration extrapolated the actions of one suspect to an entire group of people, while ignoring the easy availability of guns.” She evidently has never tried to purchase a firearm legally in Washington State, or California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois or any other state with the kinds of gun laws adored by the gun control crowd.
But not to fear, because gun control laws are still on the front burner for American anti-gunners in Democrat-controlled legislatures and assemblies in Washington, Virginia and elsewhere. Legislative sessions have already kicked off, and among Democrats, eroding the Second Amendment remains at the top of their agenda. Legislative monitor Tanya Metaksa at TheGunMag.com keeps an eye on new developments.
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About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
