Australia will launch a sweeping national gun buyback in response to the Bondi Beach mass shooting, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, as hundreds of residents returned to the surf Saturday to honor the victims with a solemn ocean gathering.
Albanese vowed to “get guns off our streets” and to tighten firearms laws that allowed the suspected gunman, 50-year-old Sajid Akram, to legally own six high-powered rifles. The prime minister said it would be the largest buyback since 1996, when Australia overhauled gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre that killed 35 people.
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Authorities say Akram and his 24-year-old son, Naveed, opened fire during a Jewish festival at Bondi Beach on Sunday, killing 15 people in one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern Australian history. Akram was killed in a gunfight with police. Naveed, an unemployed bricklayer, survived and has been charged with 15 counts of murder, committing an act of terrorism and dozens of other serious offenses.
Investigators believe the pair drew inspiration from the Islamic State group and are examining whether they met with Islamist extremists during a visit to the Philippines in the weeks before the attack.
“There is no reason someone living in the suburbs of Sydney needed this many guns,” Albanese said, announcing a national day of reflection for the victims. He urged Australians to light candles at 6:47 p.m. local time Sunday — exactly one week after the attack began.
At dawn, the Bondi community sought solace in the ocean. Hundreds of swimmers and surfers paddled out through a gentle swell and formed a wide circle, splashing water and shouting in grief and defiance. Security consultant Jason Carr, 53, said he joined the gathering to reclaim the beach’s spirit after the “slaughter” of innocents.
“They slaughtered innocent victims, and today I’m swimming out there and being part of my community again to bring back the light,” he said. “I’m not going to let someone so evil, someone so dark, stop me from doing what I do and what I enjoy doing.”
Carole Schlessinger, 58, chief executive of a children’s charity, said the event carried a “beautiful energy.” She added: “To be together is such an important way of trying to deal with what’s going on. It was really lovely to be part of it. I personally am feeling very numb. I’m feeling super angry. I’m feeling furious.”
Amid the grief, the community gathered for funerals. Boris and Sofia Gurman, a married couple from Bondi, were among the first killed as they tried to wrestle the suspected gunman to the ground, mourners were told at a Jewish funeral home. “The final moments of their lives they faced with courage, selflessness and love,” Rabbi Yehoram Ulman said. “They were, in every sense of the word, heroes.”
Sydney remained on high alert nearly a week after the attack. On Thursday evening, armed police arrested seven men following a tip that they may have been plotting a “violent act” at Bondi Beach. Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said there was no established link to the alleged shooters, but detectives were investigating whether the group shared similar “radical Islamist” views.
The Albanese government has not yet detailed the scope or timeline of the buyback, but signaled it will target high-powered weapons and loopholes exposed by the Bondi case. Australia’s 1996 reforms — including a national firearms registry, bans on certain semi-automatic weapons and the purchase and destruction of more than 600,000 guns — have long been credited with sharply reducing gun deaths and mass shootings.
As the nation prepares to pause Sunday evening, the images from Bondi’s shoreline — the circle of paddlers, the crash of small waves, the tears of witnesses and neighbors — underscored a dual impulse now driving Australia’s response: collective mourning, and a renewed push to ensure such a massacre does not happen again.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
